"Time and Free Will" is Henri Bergson's doctoral thesis, which was first published in French in 1889. In the work French philosopher Bergson introduces us to his theory of duration, a response to Immanuel Kant's ideas regarding free will as something only possible outside of time and space. Bergson argues that the traditional concept of free will is merely confusion among philosophers caused by an illegitimate translation of the unextended into the extended and a lack of understanding of mechanics. He contends instead that free will is bound to causality and could only be understood in reference to first-person experience and perception. Duration was a way of understanding free will as it referred to each individual person's experience of time, not as a linear mathematical progression, but as something that slows down or speeds up as the person experiences and reflects upon life events. Bergson was one of the most influential philosophers of his day and his ideas, beginning with the publication of "Time and Free Will", profoundly changed the direction of modern European philosophy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper and follows the translation of F. L. Pogson.
Biografie
Henri Bergson wurde am 18. Oktober 1859 in Paris geboren. Er war zunächst Gymnasiallehrer und ab 1900 Professor für Philosophie am Collège de France. 1907 erschien sein Hauptwerk "Schöpferische Entwicklung", für das ihm 1927 der Literaturnobelpreis verliehen wurde. Der französische Philosoph negierte die Rolle des logischen Denkens und betrachtete die voluntative Intuition, die mystische Schau, als höchste Form der philosophischen Erkenntnis, durch die Wahrheit unmittelbar, außerhalb sinnlicher und rationaler Daten erkannt wird. Sein Denken beeinflusste nachhaltig die französische Philosophie und Literatur bis hin zum Existentialismus. Bergson starb am 4. Januar 1941 in Paris.