1st Edition

Time and Free Will An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness

By Bergson, Henri Copyright 2003
    280 Pages
    by Routledge

    280 Pages
    by Routledge

    First published in 2002. Henri Louis Bergson was born in Paris, October 18, 1859. He entered the Ecole normale in 1878, and was admitted agrégé de philosophie in 1881 and docteur és lettres in 1889. After holding professorships in various provincial and Parisian lycées, he became maître de conférences at the Ecole normale supérieure in 1897, and since 1900 has been professor at the Collége de France. In 1901 he became a member of the Institute on his election to the Académie des Sciences morales et politiques.

    Chapter I The Intensity of Psychic States; Chapter II 1I had already completed the present work when I read in the Critique philosophique (for 1883 and 1884) F. Pillon's very remarkable refutation of an interesting article by G. Noel on the interconnexion of the notions of number and space. But I have not found it necessary to make any alterations in the following pages, seeing that Pillon does not distinguish between time as quality and time as quantity, between the multiplicity of juxtaposition and that of interpenetration. Without this vital distinction, which it is the chief aim of the present chapter to establish, it would be possible to maintain, with Pillon, that number may be built up from the relation of co-existence. But what is here meant by co-existence ? If the co-existing terms form an organic whole, they will never lead us to the notion of number; if they remain distinct, they are in juxtaposition and we are dealing with space. It is no use to quote the example of simultaneous impressions received by several senses. We either leave these sensations their specific differences, which amounts to saying that we do not count them; or else we eliminate their differences, and then how are we to distinguish them if not by their position or that of their symbols ? We shall see that the verb “ to distinguish ” has two meanings, the one qualitative, the other quantitative : these two meanings have been confused, in my opinion, by the philosophers who have dealt with the relations between number and space. The Idea of Duration; Chapter III The Organization of Conscious States Free Will; Conclusion;

    Biography

    Henri Bergson