Key Arguments

• Husserl calls the universal temporal form a "formal regularity" of a universal genesis in which temporal modes are continuously constituted: "We can call it furthermore a formal regularity pertaining to a universal genesis, which is such that past, present, and future, become unitarily constituted over and over again, in a certain noetic-noematic formal structure of flowing modes of givenness."
• Within this temporal form, life is described as a motivated course of particular constitutive acts and motivational systems that, according to universal laws of genesis, yield a unified genesis of the ego: "But, within this form, life goes on as a motivated course of particular constitutive performances with a multiplicity of particular motivations and motivational systems, which, according to universal laws of genesis, produce a unity of universal genesis of the ego."
• He explicitly characterizes this temporal-genetic unity as a ‘history’ of the ego’s self-constitution: "The ego constitutes himself for himself in, so to speak, the unity of a 'history'."

Source Quotes

Accordingly even this most universal form, which belongs to all particular forms of concrete subjective processes (with the products that are flowingly constituted in the flux of such processes) is the form of a motivation, connecting all and governing within each single process in particular. We can call it furthermore a formal regularity pertaining to a universal genesis, which is such that past, present, and future, become unitarily constituted over and over again, in a certain noetic-noematic formal structure of flowing modes of givenness. But, within this form, life goes on as a motivated course of particular constitutive performances with a multiplicity of particular motivations and motivational systems, which, according to universal laws of genesis, produce a unity of universal genesis of the ego.

We can call it furthermore a formal regularity pertaining to a universal genesis, which is such that past, present, and future, become unitarily constituted over and over again, in a certain noetic-noematic formal structure of flowing modes of givenness. But, within this form, life goes on as a motivated course of particular constitutive performances with a multiplicity of particular motivations and motivational systems, which, according to universal laws of genesis, produce a unity of universal genesis of the ego. The ego constitutes himself for himself in, so to speak, the unity of a “history”.

But, within this form, life goes on as a motivated course of particular constitutive performances with a multiplicity of particular motivations and motivational systems, which, according to universal laws of genesis, produce a unity of universal genesis of the ego. The ego constitutes himself for himself in, so to speak, the unity of a “history”. We said that the constitution of the ego contains all the constitutions of all the objectivities existing for him, whether these be immanent or transcendent, ideal or real.

Key Concepts

• We can call it furthermore a formal regularity pertaining to a universal genesis, which is such that past, present, and future, become unitarily constituted over and over again, in a certain noetic-noematic formal structure of flowing modes of givenness.
• within this form, life goes on as a motivated course of particular constitutive performances with a multiplicity of particular motivations and motivational systems, which, according to universal laws of genesis, produce a unity of universal genesis of the ego.
• The ego constitutes himself for himself in, so to speak, the unity of a “history”.

Context

Central portion of §37, where Husserl explicates time as the universal, law‑governed form of genesis in which the ego’s life and its self-constitution unfold as a motivated history.