What Does Time Feel Like? — Henri Bergson
Details
And, with tiny footsteps, the clocks move
separately from our authentic time.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Sonnets to Orpheus (Part One, No. XII)
...If you got it today, you don't wear it tomorrow, man. 'Cause you don't need it. 'Cause as a matter of fact, as we discovered on the train, tomorrow never happens, man. It's all the same f—ing day, man.
— Janis Joplin, in "Ball and Chain"
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Henri Bergson argues that the time we measure—seconds in a row, each one outside the next—isn't time at all, but a picture of it borrowed from space. If you attempt to measure a moment, the moment is gone. Lived, experienced time doesn't come in units: its moments bleed into one another and can't be counted. This substitution is so useful, and so deeply built into how we speak, that we've mistaken it for the real thing.
So join us for a lively discussion—or, in other words, a good time.
Reading:
- Link to PDF – Time and Free Will, Chapter 2: "The Idea of Duration" by Henri Bergson (Abridged, 29 pages).
Read what you can, and we'll work through the core argument together. Showing up with questions and your own experience counts as prep. It's a good one, though, worth the time if you have it.
Optional Resources:
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Henri Bergson
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Henri Bergson
- BBC In Our Time podcast on Bergson
- Here is the collection the reading was sourced from
- Bergson debated Einstein on time, and it did not go well
Feel free to add some timely music to this playlist.