Time in the Philosophy of Bergson

Abstract

The central point of Bergson's philosophy is the intuitive experience of duration, which is situated on the antipodes of the traditional idea of time. This conception of time, according to Bergson, puts time on the same level as space, as a measurable entity, as the succession of instants to measure what come before and what comes afterwards. However, this conception is a complete fallacy resulting from the illegitimate projection of the characteristics of space in the dimension of time. Real time is not so much a form of exact access to the world of objects, but rather the true substance of life itself; it is qualitative, creative duration, a vital impulse which is grasped intuitively as the essential memory beyond the images and the material which form the present moment of perception and which are in reality the spacial solidification of duration in its flow