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Duration, Temporality and Self

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Duration, Temporality and Self: Prospects for the Future of Bergsonism by Elena Fell A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment for the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy at the University of Central Lancashire 2007 2 Student Declaration Concurrent registration for two or more academic awards I declare that white registered as a candidate for the research degree, I have not been a registered candidate or enrolled student for another award of the University or other academic or professional institution. Material submitted for another award I declare that no material contained in the thesis has been used in any other submission for an academic award and is solely my own work Signature of Candidate Type of Award Doctor of Philosophy Department Centre for Professional Ethics Abstract In philosophy time is one of the most difficult subjects because, notoriously, it eludes rationalization. However, Bergson succeeds in presenting time effectively as reality that exists in its own right. Time in Bergson is almost accessible, almost palpable in a discourse which overcomes certain difficulties of language and traditional thought. Bergson equates time with duration, a genuine temporal succession of phenomena defined by their position in that succession, and asserts that time is a quality belonging to the nature of all things rather than a relation between supposedly static elements. But Rergson's theory of duration is not organised, nor is it complete - fragments of it are embedded in discussions of various aspects of psychology, evolution, matter, and movement. My first task is therefore to extract the theory of duration from Bergson's major texts in Chapters 2-4. In Chapters 5 and 6 I consider duration and time on an abstract level, as general metaphysical concepts, developing arguments beyond Bergson's explicit discourse. In particular, Bergson proposes the idea of duration as heterogeneity wherein all elements entwine and influence each other, and where the past contributes to the present. I challenge this unidirectional view of temporal reality and suggest that if in heterogeneity everything influences everything else, then subsequent temporal phases produce retrospective changes in previous temporal phases. Also,! challenge the exclusion of temporal relations from the theory of time, and incorporate into the theory of duration both time as a quality and time as a network of relations. Chapters 7 and 8 exempli1' and concretise heterogeneous duration as self, examining various aspects of selfhood and its temporality. Chapter 9 deals with the problem of discontinuity within duration that emerges in chapters 7 and 8. Discontinuity comes through in various gaps and leaps involved in the existence of an individual consciousness and in the universal development of evolution, whereby the previous phase cannot account for the novelty of the following phase. I propose a way of saving the idea of the continuity of duration by changing one's observation point in regard to the observed process: the sense of discontinuity is due to our view of the past, contaminated by our knowledge in the present. Instead of examining temporal reality from the imagined present situated in the past to the actual present, we can look at it backwards, from the actual present into the past, descending from the new to the old, from the more complex to the less complex. 4 Table of contents Page Tables and diagrams .6 Acknowledgments.............................................................................................. 7 Introduction...................................................................................................... 8 Chapter 1. Bergson's method and key concepts ........................................................ 13 Chapter 2. Duration in Time and Free Will ............................................................... 21 1. Duration as succession ............................................................................... 2 I 2. Duration as movement ............................................................................... 23 3. Space: what duration is not .......................................................................... 27 4. Duration as consciousness ........................................................................... 28 5. Free will as growth of duration ..................................................................... 30 6. Automatic acts ......................................................................................... 33 Chapter 3. Body, soul and the world in Matter and Memory .......................................... 35 1. Duration as being .....................................................................................35 2. Bond of mind and matter in perception ............................................................38 3. Duration as memory ..................................................................................42 4. The spatiality of time and the temporality of space ..............................................48 5. Continuity of the past, present and future in memory, perception and action ................52 Chapter 4. Consciousness, life and the universe in Creative Evolution .............................. 57 1. Duration as the universe ............................................................................. 57 2. Duration as evolution ................................................................................. 61 3. Human consciousness as a fragment of evolution ................................................ 63 4. Instinct and intelligence .............................................................................. 67 5. Mailer and consciousness in evolution ............................................................ 73 6. Human consciousness prolonging the evolution ................................................. 75 Chapter 5. Heterogeneous duration ........................................................................79 I. Heterogeneous duration: non-numerical multiplicity ............................................79 2. Constructive negation: same and other ............................................................83 3. Changing the past: backward causality ............................................................89 4. Predetermined but changeable future ..............................................................96 5. The present: temporal shift within the self .........................................................99 Chapter6. Time ................................................................................................103 I. Time as a quality and as a relation .................................................................. 103 2. Timeandspace ....................................................................................... 107 3. Space and extensity.................................................................................... 110 4. Three hypostases of time ............................................................................ 113 5. Thepast ................................................................................................ 118 6. The future .............................................................................................. 122 7. The present ............................................................................................. 124 8. Continuity of presents ................................................................................ 129 5 Chapter 7. Duration: from general idea to concrete self ...............................................13! 1. Concretising duration as se!f ........................................................................ 13! 2. Imperfect duration in inanimate matter ............................................................ 133 3. Living matter .......................................................................................... 4. Psycho!ogical duration ............................................................................... 144 5. Heterogeneous se!f ................................................................................... 146 Chapter 8. The structure of rational selfhood ............................................................153 1. The pre-reflective self ................................................................................ 153 2. Unity of the se!f in self-consciousness ............................................................. 156 3. Bergson: intuition versus analysis ................................................................. 158 4. Intuition: knowledge by acquaintance ............................................................ 161 5. Three stages of cognition ........................................................................... 163 6. The self in introspection ............................................................................ 171 Chapter 9. Evolutionary, historical and biographical continuity ................................178 I. The new within continuity: staggered temporal reality .........................................178 2. The observer's position ..............................................................................182 3. The continuity of evolution .........................................................................186 4. Historical and biographical continuity .............................................................190 5. The hypothetical temporality of the self ...........................................................!92
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