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

Henri Louis Bergson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1995

1913. Contents: The Intensity of Psychic States; The Multiplicity of Conscious States; The Idea of Duration; Conscious States and Free Will; Conclusions.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 276 pages
• Publisher: Kessinger Publishing; New ed of 1910 ed edition (November 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1564595935
• ISBN-13: 978-1564595935
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 7.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,901,285 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A Horrible Edition, October 5, 2009

By 

Stefan P. Georgi - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Time and Free Will; An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (Paperback)

I was seriously so excited to receive my copy of Time and Free Will. This edition disappoints on all levels. I can't help but imagine that all of the reviewers of this book just happened to like Bergson, read his essay a long time ago, and decided to try to influence others to do the same. Not a bad goal, except I looked at the good reviews, bought this copy, and ended up wasting my money. This book is a scanned copy of the online version of the original text. The translation is horrible, and there are textual errors, strange spacings, and phrases of complete gibberish throughout. For example: "Therefore time is? joilndi ord Constructed as..." Tons of errors like this. Find another copy, but do not buy this edition. It sucks.

53 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The duree: life-flow, March 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (Paperback)

Bergson, all the rage in the early 1900's, has now been rediscovered,thanks in part to the work of Deleuze et al. Time and Free Will is a great exemplar of Bergson's work and his idea of the duree and the spatialization of time. Bergson presents to the reader an energetic flux which is the precondition of our more vulgar concept of time. With this flux, the past is pulled along by the future and presented to consciousness in the present as a heterogeneous conglomeration, inseperable and uncategorizable. It is this work which inspired the stream of consciousness novelists, especially Proust. But the most remarkable element of Time and Free Will is its demand on the reader to live the duree, to return to the duree and forget oneself in it. The goal is freedom and authenticity and this can only be achieved when letting oneself go, flying like a bird, and despatializing time. This book does not only open the door to phenomenology, but it also contributes in a significant way to french existentialist thought.

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Superb as always., November 4, 2001

By 

Frank Bierbrauer (Cardiff, Wales, UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (Paperback)

Bergson's works are always inspirational and the remarkable thing is that he doesn't assume anything he always explains what is needed (almost always) unlike the standard treatises on philosophy by other philosophers. It is never that much of an effort to read Bergson and as such it makes his works far more accessible than usual for a philosopher, probably one of the reasons he was all the rage in the early 20th Century, people can actually understand what he was talking about. What is the reason for this ? I think much of it has to do with his unwillingness to separate his insights into distinct pieces as is the norm in philosophy. His essays tend to flow along nicely without being stuck in difficult terminology which must be remembered as you progress, anything such as the word duration which has a special significance in Bergson work becomes part of the flow of the essay rather than being in any way special it is always reinforced through the dialogue. Another interesting aspect is his lack of references to others, possibly a result of the French way of Education which encourages self reliance and expression as much as possible.

In this work, one of his earliest (1887), Bergson introduces his concept of duration which is less of a concept than a real lived sense that is happening in your life right at this moment. But first he introduces the reader to the intensities of psychic states such as beauty, grace, joy, sorrow, pain etc and how a misinterpretation of real lived experience gives rise to a way of philosophy which separates real duration as it is experienced into space-like time, this is also evident in feelings which are modified through the space-like construction of experience. Although this first chapter fails to convince once you proceed onto the construction of the idea of duration you feel on much safer ground, one feels Bergson has seriously studied this phenomenon, not of course just in thought or conceptualisation but, in his own lived experience present at every moment. He goes on to explain the falseness of the spacialisation of time which inevitably leads to the paradoxes of Zeno in ancient days and determinism with its lack of human freedom. He overcomes the usual arguments of determinism by simply just not defining freedom or its prior conditions since this would once again introduce determinism and spacialise duration.

Bergson's work is simply highly insightful of the human condition far more than any dry attempt at it through the usual approaches such as Descarte's or Kant's. He literally lives his work using his own experience to enliven it, I mean literally enliven it, Bergson's work is living in a sense. It is less an argument than a movement through your own feelings and intuitions which then allow you to understand what he is saying, it isn't difficult concepts you can't wrap yourself round. It does occasionally suffer from a lack of clarity wich is an advantage other philosophers have over him but a careful reading will help.

Superb as always.