Henri Bergson

Time and Free Will: an Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness Henri Bergson

"Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness" is Henri Bergson's doctoral thesis which was first published in 1889. In the work Bergson introduces us to his theory of duration, a response to 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. Bergson was one of the most influential philosophers of his day who rose to prominence by rejecting the conventional wisdom of the philosophers who came before him.