Tempo e vida em Bergson

Abstract

Bergson says that every philosopher establishes a direction in thought, which may demand the construction of several concepts in order to reach the simplicity of the raised problem. Bergson's problem is time, developed by three fundamental concepts: duration, memory and élan vital. Time does not only get its a utonomy from space and from the subject (having withdrawed its supposed measuring task), but it is also discovered as being the very substance from which everything is made, the nature of every difference, essentially virtual. Life reveals itself as an expression of time, an as pect of time that inevitably tends to be actualized. The relation between pure time and life implicates compositions among diverse, even extreme, manners of duration, such as matter and spirit in other terms, determination and the freedom that penetrates into it. Multiple evolution series coexist and are developed distinctively, without following a succession or a hierarchy that goes from the worst to the best, nor from the most simple to the most complex. The élan vital, responsible for leading the process of differentiation from virtual to actual, never stops its qualitative movement and expresses itself necessarily throwing varieties int o the world. Biological evolution is precisely that: it has as a main trace its creative potency, which affirms radically unpredictable novelties.