Duration (French: ''la durée'') is a theory of

time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

and

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is awareness of a state or object, either internal to oneself or in one's external environment. However, its nature has led to millennia of analyses, explanations, and debate among philosophers, scientists, an ...

posited by the

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

Henri Bergson Henri-Louis Bergson (; ; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopher who was influential in the traditions of analytic philosophy and continental philosophy, especially during the first half of the 20th century until the S ...

. Bergson sought to improve upon inadequacies he perceived in the philosophy of

Herbert Spencer Herbert Spencer (27 April 1820 – 8 December 1903) was an English polymath active as a philosopher, psychologist, biologist, sociologist, and anthropologist. Spencer originated the expression "survival of the fittest", which he coined in '' ...

, due, he believed, to Spencer's lack of comprehension of

mechanics Mechanics () is the area of physics concerned with the relationships between force, matter, and motion among Physical object, physical objects. Forces applied to objects may result in Displacement (vector), displacements, which are changes of ...

, which led Bergson to the conclusion that time eluded mathematics and science.Henri Bergson, ''The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics'', pages 11 to 14. Bergson became aware that the moment one attempted to measure a moment, it would be gone: one measures an immobile, complete line, whereas time is mobile and incomplete. For the individual, time may speed up or slow down, whereas, for science, it would remain the same. Hence Bergson decided to explore the inner life of man, which is a kind of duration, neither a unity nor a quantitative multiplicity. Duration is ineffable and can only be shown indirectly through images that can never reveal a complete picture. It can only be grasped through a simple

intuition Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning or needing an explanation. Different fields use the word "intuition" in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledg ...

of the imagination.Henri Bergson, ''The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics'', pages 165 to 168. Bergson first introduced his notion of duration in his essay ''

Time and Free Will ''Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness'' () is Henri Bergson's doctoral thesis, first published in 1889. The essay deals with the problem of free will, which Bergson contends is merely a common confusion among philo ...

: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness''. It is used as a defense of

free will Free will is generally understood as the capacity or ability of people to (a) choice, choose between different possible courses of Action (philosophy), action, (b) exercise control over their actions in a way that is necessary for moral respon ...

in a response to

Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German Philosophy, philosopher and one of the central Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works ...

, who believed free will was only possible outside time and space.

Responses to Kant and Zeno

Zeno of Elea Zeno of Elea (; ; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Elea, in Southern Italy (Magna Graecia). He was a student of Parmenides and one of the Eleatics. Zeno defended his instructor's belief in monism, the idea that only one single en ...

believed reality was an uncreated and indestructible immobile whole. He formulated four paradoxes to present mobility as an impossibility. We can never, he said, move past a single point because each point is infinitely divisible, and it is impossible to cross an infinite space. But to Bergson, the problem only arises when mobility and time, that is, duration, are mistaken for the spatial line that underlies them. Time and mobility are mistakenly treated as things, not progressions. They are treated retrospectively as a thing's spatial trajectory, which can be divided ''ad infinitum'', whereas they are, in fact, an indivisible whole. Bergson's response to Kant is that free will is possible within a duration within which time resides. Free will is not really a problem but merely a common confusion among philosophers caused by the immobile time of science. To measure duration (''durée''), it must be translated into the immobile, spatial time (''temps'') of science, a translation of the unextended into the extended. It is through this translation that the problem of free will arises. Since space is a homogeneous, quantitative multiplicity, as opposed to what Bergson calls a heterogenous, qualitative multiplicity, duration becomes juxtaposed and converted into a succession of distinct parts, one coming after the other and therefore "caused" by one another. Nothing within a duration can be the cause of anything else within it. Hence

determinism Determinism is the Metaphysics, metaphysical view that all events within the universe (or multiverse) can occur only in one possible way. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes ov ...

, the belief everything is determined by a prior cause, is an impossibility. One must accept time as it really is through placing oneself within duration where freedom can be identified and experienced as pure mobility.

Images of duration

The first is of two spools, one unrolling to represent the continuous flow of ageing as one feels oneself moving toward the end of one's life-span, the other rolling up to represent the continuous growth of memory which, for Bergson, equals consciousness. No two successive moments are identical, for the one will always contain the memory left by the other. A person with no memory might experience two identical moments but, Bergson says, that person's consciousness would thus be in a constant state of death and rebirth, which he identifies with unconsciousness. The image of two spools, however, is of a homogeneous and commensurable thread, whereas, according to Bergson, no two moments can be the same, hence duration is heterogeneous. Bergson then presents the image of a spectrum of a thousand gradually changing shades with a line of feeling running through them, being both affected by and maintaining each of the shades. Yet even this image is inaccurate and incomplete, for it represents duration as a fixed and complete spectrum with all the shades spatially juxtaposed, whereas duration is incomplete and continuously growing, its states not beginning or ending but intermingling.Henri Bergson, ''The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics'', pages 164 to 165. Even this image is incomplete, because the wealth of colouring is forgotten when it is invoked. But as the three images illustrate, it can be stated that duration is qualitative, unextended, multiple yet a unity, mobile and continuously interpenetrating itself. Yet these concepts put side-by-side can never adequately represent duration itself;

''The truth is we change without ceasing...there is no essential difference between passing from one state to another and persisting in the same state. If the state which "remains the same" is more varied than we think,
hen Hen commonly refers to a female animal: a female chicken, other gallinaceous bird, any type of bird in general, or a lobster. It is also a slang term for a woman. Hen, HEN or Hens may also refer to: Places Norway *Hen, Buskerud, a village in R ...
on the other hand the passing of one state to another resembles—more than we imagine—a single state being prolonged: the transition is continuous. Just because we close our eyes to the unceasing variation of every physical state, we are obliged when the change has become so formidable as to force itself on our attention, to speak as if a new state were placed alongside the previous one. Of this new state we assume that it remains unvarying in its turn and so on endlessly.''

Because a qualitative multiplicity is heterogeneous and yet interpenetrating, it cannot be adequately represented by a symbol; indeed, for Bergson, a qualitative multiplicity is inexpressible. Thus, to grasp duration, one must reverse habitual modes of thought and place oneself within duration by intuition.

Influence on Gilles Deleuze

Gilles Deleuze Gilles Louis René Deleuze (18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volumes o ...

was profoundly influenced by Bergson's theory of duration, particularly in his work '' Cinema 1: The Movement Image'' in which he described cinema as providing people with continuity of movement (duration) rather than still images strewn together.

Physics and Bergson's ideas

Bergson had a correspondence with physicist Albert Einstein in 1922 and a debate over Einstein's theory of relativity and its implications. For Bergson, the primary disagreement was over metaphysical and epistemological claims made by the theory of relativity, rather than a dispute about scientific evidence for or against the theory. Bergson famously stated of the theory that it is "a metaphysics grafted upon science, it is not science".

References

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