Duration and self-striving

pp. 51-85

in: Messay Kebede, Bergson's philosophy of self-overcoming, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Abstract

This chapter begins with a detailed contrast between duration and representative conceptions of time. It shows that philosophers reduce becoming either to an appearance or to an unfolding of what is already given (dialectics) or to a subjective notion (Kant) because they miss that the fusion of moments, and not their passage, defines duration. Conceived as fusion, time is creative continuity and the very substance of reality. This durational monism establishes that tension and relaxation respectively define consciousness and materiality and that their unity is productive of effort. With this notion of effort, the chapter moves to characterize freedom as self-creation: the reality of novelty refutes both determinism and the idea of freedom as the ability to choose between given alternatives.