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ought as such into the present, it is essentially tainted by an uncertainty. It has whatHusserl calls a “presumptive” character, meaning thereby that it presents itself as inprinciple not fully presentable. 14 But precisely this presumptivity constitutes the particular“horizon” of expectations and possible transformations which surrounds it. With the notionof a horizon, the uncertainty itself can be made into an object of intentional investigation.And, from this point of view, the difference diminishes, between the open infinity surroundingthe givenness of the material object (in all its possible transformations) and theinaccessibility of the past given in memory. The present has a distinct way of receivingand realizing the past, and it is precisely this intentional structure, which is to be revealed.In this sense, the past is -- and can be explicitly made -- present.A third type of givenness is that of the other person. Just as in the givenness of timespast, the experience of the other person involves a certain “absence.” The other is nevergiven to us in evident intuition, as a natural object of experience. Only the body of theother is present in this way, but the sense of his being as an other person is neverexhausted by this bodily presence. This fact never leads Husserl to raise the traditionalphilosophical question of how one can really know that there is actually someone “inthere.” Such a question already presupposes a distinct division between objective andspiritual being, and how they are linked, a presupposition which should have been eliminatedwith the transcendental reduction. But even in the reduced state, the contrast remains.There remains something about the way the other is presented to me, which seemsto be essentially inaccessible. The other is given to me within my “sphere of ownness,”and as such he belongs to it, and yet he belongs to it as something alien. It is alien, notas the inaccessible side of the material object, which is always potentially presentable. Forit is given only in, what Husserl calls, “appresentation.” In a sense, this is a parallel to thesituation with the past, which also cannot be recovered by means of a direct presentation. 15But the past, which can be recovered in memory, is always my past, and thereby it lacksthe peculiar phenomenological sense of that which is truly other. The transcendental fieldsplits, at this point, in a “division into the sphere of his ownness ... and the sphere of whatis ‘other.’” 16Instead of probing deeper into the detailed analysis of the different levels of sense throughwhich the other appears, I will again return to the main question of this paragraph, i.e.,the status of history in this scheme. Where should this phenomenon be located?Within the context of The Crisis, this question does not seem to have been raised assuch, i.e., as a phenomenological problem in its own right. In § 15, where one finds perhapsthe most condensed account of the whole project of an historical Selbstbesinnung,the access to history (and its true interpretation) are taken for granted. The methodologicalquestions are limited to remarks concerning the need to perform this kind of reflection,in order to retrieve “the hidden unity of intentional inwardness which alone constitutes theunity of history.” 17Still, I believe there is such an answer to be found from within the phenomenologicalhorizon, and I will take the risk of suggesting what it could be.Initially, one must distinguish the different levels on which the phenomenon of historyappears. One principal distinction is the one between personal and non-personal history.To my own history, I maintain a particular and inexchangeable bond as to that which Imyself have experienced. It is preserved by means of memories and material souvenirs,14Ibid., §9.15Husserl himself makes this comparison, cf. ibid., 115, but further down on the same page, he alsoacknowledges the limit of it.16Ibid., 100.17Husserl, The Crisis of the European Sciences, 73.240