Henri Bergson
1859-1941. The most influential French philosopher of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Duration ( Durée ) According to Bergson, duration is a theory of time and space. Bergson presented this theory in his doctoral thesis Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness.
For Bergson "duration" is not linear. It is unextended, mobile and incomplete and cannot be juxtaposed as successive parts. An individual may perceive time differently. If you are busy or absorbed in thought time may gain speed, but if you are bored time may slow down. It is your mind that does not work in a linear way, time and present intersect, the individual stands between now and then. Moreover, Bergson explored the inner life of man. He opposed individual time to science. Individual time can change, whereas for science time remains the same.
His doctoral thesis Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness was a criticism on Immanuel Kant who believed that the free will can only exist outside of time and space, that is the reason why people do not know if something like free will does exist at all. For Kant it is a pragmatic faith.
The Spool Image
In his Introduction to Metaphysics Bergson presents the three images of duration, one of them is the spool image The first image represents two spools, one is unrolling depicting the ongoing flow of ageing, the other spool is rolling up illustrating the ongoing growth of memory which corresponds to consciousness.
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