The trans-temporal, noumenal character of being of the self cannot be preserved in so far as it is essentially time. From the viewpoint of phenomenology, which takes consciousness for its proper field of philosophical investigation, the self cannot finally be anything but time, it seems to me. However, do matters really stand so? The self is not a substance categorically; nevertheless, we cannot help thinking that it exists par excellence, because all things—qua factual appearances—exist empirically only in relation to it.