Chapter 3: The Temporality of Presence

By taking temporality into account, we can better understand the presence of an absence, in which the givenness of the transcendent thing consists. But presence never ceases to pass, and thus to be transformed into retention. Retention belongs to the living present, it belongs to the actual presence of the thing perceived, insofar as it is a continually passing presence. But in retention, the thing perceived is no longer there itself, given only in its presence. The thing perceived is given in the retention as having been there, and it is the disappearance of actual perception that is delivered in this way, or if you prefer, its continual passage. This is how mere presence distinguishes itself from the thing that appears, since what we take to be an actually given reality turns out at every moment to be pure presence, just a view of the thing.