Last week, I sat a 6 hour course on 'In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust'. I didn't know that he was informed by Bergsons philosophy on phenomenology of time. I was really trying to get another angle into Gille Deleuze, as he was informed by Bergson. Time for Bergson has nothing to do with measured time like the clock, the calendar, etc. Time for Bergson is linked inextricably to memory. Life is duration sometimes fast sometimes slow and memory is an unreliable testament to it. So what is duration?
From Wikipedia:
Duration is a theory of time and consciousness posited by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. Bergson sought to improve upon inadequacies he perceived in the philosophy of Herbert Spencer, due, he believed, to Spencer's lack of comprehension of mechanics, which led Bergson to the conclusion that time eluded mathematics and science.
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 of the imagination.
Bergson first introduced his notion of duration in his essay Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness.
So I too like to think that life is not made up of quantifiable measures or even a unity. I like to think that duration is also ineffable and is shown through an intuition of the imagination.
