The Perception of Time between Phenomenology and Gestalt Psychology: Edmund Husserl and Giovanni Bruno Vicario’s Perspectives

This study examines Edmund Husserl’s and Giovanni Bruno Vicario’s perspectives on time. Husserl’s work focuses on consciousness and its processes of synthesis, thus on a transcendental concept of time. Vicario, a member of the Trieste Gestalt school of psychology, rather explores the issue through an experimental perspective. This difference leads Vicario to criticize Husserl, reinterpreting and, sometimes, misunderstanding his texts. Through a careful textual analysis of Husserl’s and Vicario’s works on time, it is argued that, despite methodological differences, their views can be integrated into a pluralistic understanding of time. This includes both phenomenological and psychological perspectives, and offers valid alternatives to a unified and physicalistic view of time.