Introduction

In this doctoral thesis Bergson sets out his central idea. We are used to thinking of time in terms of space, imagining it as a series of evenly spaced, measurable instants on a clock face, like points on a line. But the time we truly experience within is 'duration': the states of consciousness permeate and melt into one another like the notes of a melody, which can be neither divided nor repeated. It is because they have 'spatialised' the time of duration that philosophers have fallen into futile disputes about free will: determinists see human action as a chain of predictable causes, not knowing that a truly free act springs from the whole self, ever coming into being. 'We are free when our acts spring from our whole personality.' The book laid the foundations of Bergson's philosophy of life.