Abstract

This chapter is about time, the fundament of Bergson’s philosophy. He criticizes theories that “spatialize” time and unfolds his alternative understanding of duration. Bergson and Einstein had a fractious dispute, though carefully considered they disagree on little. Bergson uses his conclusions about time to refute determinism by showing that the classical proofs of determinism fallaciously apply spatial thought to consciousness. Bergson’s idea of intuition is a development of his thought on duration. We are not aware of temporal continuity through external sense; we see and hear only where events stop or start, not the continuity of their movement, which we experience only through sympathetic intuition. Bergson’s thought on duration resonates with the Daoist understanding of the _dao_, a point on which a final section of the chapter expands.