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from Weird Studies/Courses/Bergson/Class Notes
  • duration is his key idea but apparently hard to grasp. It's a philosophical concept that points to something inexpressible (?). Seems simple enough to me...but maybe I don't get it. Duration is not just subjective time, it is the real, it is more real than anything, the foundation (see A consumer's guide to the foundations of reality )

durée

29 Oct 2025 - 30 Oct 2025
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    • Bergson's most central idea. A form of time that is not merely a measured linear dimension, but something More, something Basic, something Underlying Everything.
    • In my understanding this is indistinguishable from Tao. Which sounds like an argument against it, somehow. Not sure why that should be the case. If Bergson is true in the same sort of way that Lao-Tse is true, what's wrong with that?
    • Not wrong exactly, but perhaps unnecessary. We already have the Tao te Ching, it's much shorter than Bergson and more beautiful even if he did win a Nobel for literature.
    • Durée eludes description and explanation. Bergsonism is a form of mysterianism. I don't think Bergson fans would even argue with that, they want to worship and celebrate the mystery. The material, technical, causal universe seems oppressive; durée suggests that our ineluctable and free selves might be realer than all that. (I can't say things like that without sounding a bit sneery but in fact this is how Bergsonians think, I'm kind of paraphrasing in a cartoony way but not distoring).

    • Magic Freedom Juice

    • My sneery and unfair name for durée. It reads the way atheists talk about God, that is, with this sort of deliberate misunderstanding. It's not a substance among substances, just like it is not a dimension among dimensions. Or an agent among agents.
      • Indeed, it is the root of agency, and maybe of everything else besides. That is the point.
    • It's not the idea of durée I am sneering at, but its misuse as an all purpose mystery explainer. Freedom a bit of a conceptual problem? Durée is your answer. To be fair Bergsonites like JFM are explicitly not out to explain mysteries; that is what the bad technic guys do. He's a mystery fan, a promoter, a warrior for it in fact. I'm the one who wants to explain things, why I seem to mostly miss the point of Bergson. Also, sneering at "magic"? Come on.