Time and Free Will
by Henri Bergson · Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1889
- Form
- Treatise
- Language
- French
- Length
- Medium · 240 pp120 to 300 pages
- Difficulty
- Difficult4 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendTime and Free Will, translated by F. L. PogsonDover, 2001The standard 1910 translation, reprinted cheaply.
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Bergson's doctoral thesis and first book. He argues that psychologists go wrong by treating states of mind as quantities that can be measured, and that time as we live it, which he calls duration, is not a line of separate instants but a flowing multiplicity in which moments interpenetrate. The spatialised clock time of science is a useful fiction. The final chapter turns this against determinism, claiming that a free act is one that expresses the whole self and cannot be predicted because it is not a sum of parts.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns Time and Free Will are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.
