Henri Bergson: Time and Memory

Why, when waiting in line, does time seem to slow down? Why, in the thrill of excitement, does it seem to speed up? For the French philosopher Henri Bergson, “real” time (as opposed to the abstract “clock” time of natural science) is fundamentally a matter of conscious experience—that is, the experience of duration. Here, in the “immediate data of consciousness,” is the very seat of human freedom, and the basis of memory and perception. In his later thought, it becomes the source of his vitalistic and evolutionary account of nature itself, as the origin of life and creativity, allowing for the genuine production of novelty and the “new.” Is there a difference between time as measured by clock and our internal experience of duration; and if so, what does it mean for notions of causality and human free will? Can intuition lead us to a knowledge of absolute reality? Are there fundamental aspects of experience for which reason cannot account?

In this course, we will attempt to unpack and clarify Bergson’s crucial but often baffling concepts. What is duration? What does it mean for the multiplicity within duration to be purely “qualitative” rather than “quantitative”—and never “juxtaposed”? Why are memory and perception interdependent? We’ll place Bergson in philosophical context, exploring in particular his critical relationship to Kant, whose transcendental philosophy Bergson set out explicitly to refute, as well as his “Process”-oriented rejection of the “substance ontology” that theretofore dominated Western metaphysical thinking. And we’ll look at Bergson’s contemporary and later reception, including his exchange with Einstein on relativity and his posthumous recovery by Gilles Deleuze (for whom Bergsonian “multiplicity” was the source of difference). Readings will draw from the whole of Bergson’s philosophical output, drawing from such texts as Time and Free Will, Matter and Memory, and Creative Evolution.