(BSpace)
The problem of time in human existence has preoccupied philosophers to such an extraordinary degree over recent decades that one could almost describe it as the fundamental problem of contemporary philosophy. Bergson was probably the first to formulate it convincingly as that of ‘durée’, concretely experienced as opposed to objectively measurable, and soon afterwards Simmel introduced this question to Germany. Later Heidegger, in the course of his existential ontology, decisively placed the question of the temporality of human existence at the centre of his entire philosophy, thus making it visible for the first time in its full significance. Sartre and Merleau-Ponty in their turn took up these ideas and disseminated them in France. But the same problem, starting from this impulse, has also proved extremely productive in the individual sciences, and has provoked a very extensive discussion, rich in new questions and results, in psychology and psychopathology as much as in the history of literature and the other disciplines of the arts and humanities. Here we will merely refer, among the extensive and complex literature, to the seminal work of Minkowski on ‘temps vecu’ [lived time].
The problem of the spatial condition of human existence or, to put it more simply, of the concrete space experienced and lived by humans, has in contrast remained very much in the background, which is surprising when one considers the traditional, almost proverbial, link between the questions of time and space. Admittedly, as early as the 1930s, in psychology and psychopathology the question of experienced space was vigorously taken up, evidently under the strong influence of Heidegger, in close connection with the simultaneous research into time. Durckheim, in his Untersuchungen zum gelebten Raum [Investigations into experienced space], was probably the first to develop this question in the German-speaking area. At about the same time Minkowski, in the book on ‘temps vecu’ already mentioned, also introduced the concepts of ‘distance vecue’ and ‘espace vecu’, which he soon afterwards developed further in Vers une cosmologie? Out of the psychopathological literature we will mention only the work of Straus and Binswanger, to which we will repeatedly return in the course of our observations. But these very interesting approaches did not impinge on the narrower area of philosophy and seem in fact soon to have been forgotten outside medical circles. Compared to time, which concerns the innermost centre of humanity, space seemed philosophically less rewarding, because it seemed to belong only to the outer environment of mankind.