The Infinity of experience

In the lecture I discuss the role of infinity in phenomenology. First I survey the reasons of the Kantian view that experience and most prominently its temporal form can be described as a (potentially infinite) successive process and ponder the possible phenomenological versions of this view. In the next step I investigate the two main problems of this conception. Both the Kantian view and its classical Husserlian version are based on a canonical notion of succession and progression.

First, the mentioned views have to face difficulties in discussing the generation of sense, that is the appearance of something radically new.

Second, the views cannot really give an account of the continuity of the immanent time of the experiential stream. After this criticism I show how the Cantorian notion of transfinite makes it possible to form a new notion of progression, and to give an account of both of these problems. In this part I take issue with the way in which Marc Richir and László Tengelyi uses Cantor’s ideas.