Throughout his works, Conrad is concerned with various objects of consciousness. In addition to events, physical objects, and human subjects, he also investigates the human experience of time and its relationship to knowledge of the external world. J. M. Kertzer argues, “For Conrad, time is always in some sense ‘human time’ … The world empty of human activity and judgment is a timeless void.” As was true of objects, subjects, and events, Conrad identifies a gap between objectivity and subjectivity when experiencing time because time can only be accessed through human consciousness. Using impressionist techniques, Conrad considers how human beings experience time in an individual and contextualized manner. Furthermore, he inquires into the relationship between western civilization and the human experience of time. In his inquiry, Conrad considers three different temporal representations: human time, mechanical time, and narrative time. He investigates each of these – and more important how they interrelate. In particular, the relationship between human time and mechanical time attracts much of his attention. Conrad associates human time with the primitive and mechanical time with the civilized, and as is true of primitive and civilized perception in general, primitive time is time experienced without cultural influence, while civilized time is time experienced with cultural influence.

Human time appears in two forms in Conrad's works: personal time and cyclical time, and both blur the boundaries between subject, time, and context.