Bergson, Time and Free Will, Chapter 2, §74 "Conclusion: Space Alone is Homogeneous: Duration and Succession Belong not to the External World..."

by Corry Shores
[Search Blog Here. Index-tags are found on the bottom of the left column.]

[Central Entry Directory]
[Bergson, Entry Directory]
[Bergson Time and Free Will, Entry Directory]

Henri Bergson

Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience

Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness

Chapter II, "The Multiplicity of Conscious States," "The Idea of Duration"

Part XXV: Velocity and Simultaneity

§74 "Conclusion: Space Alone is Homogeneous: Duration and Succession Belong not to the External World, but to the Conscious Mind"

We have seen in the previous sections that motion is not homogeneous. Prior to those sections we learned that duration is not homogeneous. Only space is homogeneous. We also learned that objects in space take-up discrete places. Thus such spatial objects form a discrete multiplicity. Also, we only obtain discrete multiplicities by separating things out in space.

Our consciousness experiences the durations and the successions of mental states. But these durations and successions are not to be found in the extensive space around us. They are purely mental phenomena. Thus their multiplicity is only real in a consciousness that retains them and then sets them out side-by-side "by externalizing them in relation to one another."

Our consciousness retains the exterior world's discrete states in a certain way:

1) the external discrete states bring about corresponding conscious states that permeate one another;

2) by means of this interpermeation, the states "imperceptibly organize themselves into a whole" [or as Deleuze describes it, they "contract" into one another]; and in this way we

3) bind the past and the present through this process of connection [that is, by contraction.] (121a)

Then, our mind might externalize each interpermeated state and place them into relations with one another. We do so because

a) they are qualitatively distinct, and also one appears only when the other ceases to be; hence we consider them as radically distinct [see Deleuze's description of the "rule of discontinuity or instantaneity in repetition."]

b) hence our mind perceives these states "under the form of a discrete multiplicity" by setting them out in a line.

The space of this line is homogeneous time.

[Next entry in this series.]

[Directory of other entries in this series.]

Images from the pages summarized above, in the English Translation [click on the image for an enlargement]:

Images from the pages summarized above, in the original French [click on the image for an enlargement]:

Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, Transl. F. L. Pogson, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2001).

Available online at:

http://www.archive.org/details/timeandfreewill00pogsgoog

French text from:

Bergson, Henri. Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience. Originally published Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France, 1888.

Available online at:

http://www.archive.org/details/essaisurlesdonn00berguoft