The Origin of Time

Heath Massey

Description

The recent renewal of interest in the philosophy of Henri Bergson has increased both recognition of his influence on twentieth-century philosophy and attention to his relationship to phenomenology. Until now, the question of Martin Heidegger's debt to Bergson has remained largely unanswered. Heidegger's brief discussion of Bergson in Being and Time is geared toward explaining why he fails in his attempts to think more radically about time. Despite this dismissal, a close look at Heidegger's early works dealing with temporality reveals a sustained engagement with Bergson's thought. In The Origin of Time, Heath Massey evaluates Heidegger's critique of Bergson and examines how Bergson's efforts to rethink time in terms of duration anticipate Heidegger's own interpretation of temporality. Massey demonstrates how Heidegger follows Bergson in seeking to uncover "primordial time" by disentangling temporality from spatiality, how he associates Bergson with the tradition of philosophy that covers up this phenomenon, and how he overlooks Bergson's ontological turn in Matter and Memory. Through close readings of early major works by both thinkers, Massey argues that Bergson is a much more radical thinker with respect to time than Heidegger allows.
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Thinking Through Time

1. Following Bergson’s Footsteps: Time in Heidegger’s Early Works

1. The Question of Time
2. The Structure of the Concept of Time
3. Life as a Primordial Phenomenon
4. To Understand Time in Terms of Time
5. The Time That We Ourselves Are
6. A More Original Concept of Time
7. On the Verge of Being and Time

2. Dispelling the Confusion: Pure Duration in Time and Free Will

1. Heidegger on the Concept of Duration
2. Thinking Spatially about Time
3. The Confusion of Quality with Quantity and Conscious States with Objects
4. The Confusion of Duration with Extensity and Time with Space
5. The Fundamental Self and the Superficial Self
6. Freedom: Getting Back into Duration
7. Reversing Kantianism
8. Anticipating Originary Temporality

3. Uncovering the Primordial Phenomenon: Originary Temporality in Being and Time

1. Bergson in Being and Time
2. Time and the Question of Being
3. From Being-in-the-World to Temporality
4. From Temporality to Time
5. The Ordinary Understanding of Time
6. The Origin of the Concept of Time
7. Temporality and Spatiality
8. Temporality and Selfhood
9. Heidegger’s Bergsonism

4. Reversing Bergsonism: Time and Temporality in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology

1. Thinking More Radically about Time
2. Destruction of the Traditional Concept of Time
3. A Glimpse of Temporality
4. Bergson’s Misunderstandings
5. De-spatializing Aristotle’s Thinking about Time
6. An Inverted History of Time

5. Challenging the Privilege of Presence: The Ontological Turn in Matter and Memory

1. From Duration to Memory
2. The Presence of Images
3. The Survival of the Past in the Present: Memory and Habit
4. The Survival of the Past in Itself
5. The Problem of Existence
6. The Movement of Memory
7. Rhythms of Duration
8. Ecstatic Duration

Conclusion: The Movement of Temporalization

1. The Swinging of Time
2. Rethinking Time

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Philosophie de l'esprit
• Philosophie générale
• Philosophy
• History of philosophy
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie
• Epistémologie

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 23 février 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438455334
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Origin of Time
SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy

Dennis J. Schmidt, editor
The Origin of Time
Heidegger and Bergson
Heath Massey
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2015 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production, Diane Ganeles Marketing, Kate R. Seburyamo
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Massey, Heath, author.
The origin of time : Heidegger and Bergson / Heath Massey.
pages cm. — (SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5531-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5533-4 (ebook)
1. Time. 2. Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976. 3. Bergson, Henri, 1859–1941. 4. Phenomenology. I. Title. BD638.M364 2015 115—dc23 2014013136
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my parents.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Thinking Through Time
Chapter 1
Following Bergson’s Footsteps: Time in Heidegger’s Early Works
1. The Question of Time
2. The Structure of the Concept of Time
3. Life as a Primordial Phenomenon
4. To Understand Time in Terms of Time
5. The Time That We Ourselves Are
6. A More Original Concept of Time
7. On the Verge of Being and Time
Chapter 2
Dispelling the Confusion: Pure Duration in Time and Free Will
1. Heidegger on the Concept of Duration
2. Thinking Spatially about Time
3. The Confusion of Quality with Quantity and Conscious States with Objects
4. The Confusion of Duration with Extensity and Time with Space
5. The Fundamental Self and the Superficial Self
6. Freedom: Getting Back into Duration
7. Reversing Kantianism
8. Anticipating Originary Temporality
Chapter 3
Uncovering the Primordial Phenomenon: Originary Temporality in Being and Time
1. Bergson in Being and Time
2. Time and the Question of Being
3. From Being-in-the-World to Temporality
4. From Temporality to Time
5. The Ordinary Understanding of Time
6. The Origin of the Concept of Time
7. Temporality and Spatiality
8. Temporality and Selfhood
9. Heidegger’s Bergsonism
Chapter 4
Reversing Bergsonism: Time and Temporality in The Basic Problems of Phenomenology
1. Thinking More Radically about Time
2. Destruction of the Traditional Concept of Time
3. A Glimpse of Temporality
4. Bergson’s Misunderstandings
5. De-spatializing Aristotle’s Thinking about Time
6. An Inverted History of Time
Chapter 5
Challenging the Privilege of Presence: The Ontological Turn in Matter and Memory
1. From Duration to Memory
2. The Presence of Images
3. The Survival of the Past in the Present: Memory and Habit
4. The Survival of the Past in Itself
5. The Problem of Existence
6. The Movement of Memory
7. Rhythms of Duration
8. Ecstatic Duration
Conclusion: The Movement of Temporalization
1. The Swinging of Time
2. Rethinking Time
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
My heartfelt thanks to my colleagues in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Beloit College: Phil Shields, Matt Tedesco, Robin Zebrowski, Debra Majeed, and Natalie Gummer. I am grateful to those who generously gave their time to read parts or all of the manuscript: Karin Fry, Topper Scott, Len Lawlor, David Morris, Alia Al-Saji, and Michael Kelly. Thanks also to Scott Lyngaas and Nataša Bašić for their feedback on an earlier draft of Chapter 2. I owe a great debt to all my professors at the University of Memphis, and in particular to Tina Chanter, Tom Nenon, Robert Bernasconi, and especially Len Lawlor for guidance on this project in its early stages. I benefited tremendously from the community of graduate students at Memphis, including Amit Sen, Chris Fox, Josh Glasgow, Valentine Moulard-Leonard, Rob Wade, and my dear friend Steve Tammelleo. I appreciate the participants of the 2003 Collegium Phaenomenologicum for helping to shape my thinking about Bergson and his relationship to phenomenology. Special thanks to John Sallis for sharing a photocopy of Heidegger’s personal copy of Bergson’s Essai . Many thanks to Dennis Schmidt for supporting this project; to two anonymous reviewers for providing valuable feedback on the manuscript; and to Andrew Kenyon, Diane Ganeles, Laura Tendler, and Kate Seburyamo at SUNY Press for turning it into a book. For assistance and support at the final stages, my thanks to Becky Moffett, Barb Uebelacker, and Ann Davies. I could not have finished this project without the generosity of Kathryn Boone and Elva Tyson. For their friendship and moral support, I deeply appreciate Charles and Christa Westerberg and John and Ellen Morgan. Many thanks to Ted Ammon, Michael Mitias, and Steve Smith for their mentorship and inspiration, and to David Hiley for his guidance. I am more grateful than I can say to my parents, David and Karen, and my brother, Seth, for their constant encouragement and support. Finally, words cannot express the depth of my gratitude to my son, Theo, and my wife, Elizabeth, for all their love, patience, and understanding.
A version of Chapter 1 appeared as “On the Verge of Being and Time : Before Heidegger’s Dismissal of Bergson,” Philosophy Today 54 (2010): 138–152.
Abbreviations BPPa Basic Problems of Phenomenology (GA 58), Martin Heidegger BPPb The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (GA 24), Martin Heidegger BT Being and Time (GA 2), Martin Heidegger CT The Concept of Time (GA 64), Martin Heidegger CE Creative Evolution , Henri Bergson CM The Creative Mind , Henri Bergson HCT History of the Concept of Time (GA 20), Martin Heidegger LQT Logic: The Question of Truth (GA 21), Martin Heidegger MM Matter and Memory , Henri Bergson MFL The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic (GA 26), Martin Heidegger P Pathmarks (GA 9), Martin Heidegger PIE Phenomenology of Intuition and Expression (GA 59), Martin Heidegger S Supplements (GA 1, GA 80), Martin Heidegger TDP Toward the Definition of Philosophy (GA 56/57), Martin Heidegger TFW Time and Free Will , Henri Bergson
In all citations, the page number of the English translation is followed by that of the original French or German.
Introduction

Thinking Through Time
T he figure of Martin Heidegger looms large over philosophy today, and a tremendous amount of attention is devoted to his work. The same is not true of Henri Bergson, whose fortunes have been mixed since his philosophy flourished for much of the first half of the twentieth century and then fell so far out of fashion as to be virtually forgotten. Given the amount of influence Bergson had on philosophy and culture during his lifetime, it is surprising how far and how fast his star fell. In France, at least, many of the thinkers who were in the best position to keep Bergson at the center of philosophical discussion were more interested in Heidegger and his teacher Edmund Husserl. Instead of Bergsonism, the philosophies that grew out of the soil that Bergson prepared called themselves existential phenomenology, deconstruction, or philosophy of difference. Bergsonism became associated with the philosophical establishment and old-fashioned metaphysics. Duration, élan vital , and intuition—unless preceded by “Husserlian”—became philosophical four-letter words.
Recently, though, there has been a significant renewal of interest in Bergsonism and a greater recognition of his influence on twentieth-century philosophy. 1 Much of the contemporary interest in Bergson is due to his influence on Gilles Deleuze, but there has also been an increase in scholarly attention devoted to Bergson’s relationship to phenomenology. The question of Heidegger’s debt to Bergson was raised long ago, but it has remained largely unanswered.
In Cinema I , Deleuze writes, “The only resemblance between Bergson and Heidegger—and it is a considerable one—lies here: both base the specificity of time on a conception of the open.” 2 Without attributing a direct influence, Maurice Merleau-Ponty nevertheless described Bergsonian duration as having a “ ‘singular nature’ … which makes it at once my manner of being and a universal dimension for other beings.” 3 Emmanuel Levinas, when asked once what he thought was Bergson’s principal contribution to philosophy, responded:

The theory of duration. The destruction of the primacy of clock time; the idea that the time of physics is merely derived. Without this affirmation of the somehow “ontological” and not merely psychological priority of the duration irreducible to linear and homogeneous time, Heidegger would not have been able to venture his conception of Dasein’s finite temporalization, despite the radical difference which separates, of course, the Bergsonian conception of time from the Heideggerian conception. The credit goes back to Bergson for having liberated philosophy from the prestigious model of scientific time. 4
Jacques Derrida also suggests, in light of the various references to Bergson in Heidegger’s early lecture courses, that “we know now that Heidegger read him more than his texts would lead one to think.” 5 While these French thinkers recognized Bergson’s influence decades ago, the publication of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe has made it possible to develop a clearer picture of both the resemblances—which, contrary to Deleuze’s provocative claim, are many—and the genuine differences in their thinking.
The relationship between Heidegger’s thought and Bergson’s is a difficult question for several reasons. One is that Heidegger evokes Bergson early in Being and Time