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Trama e riassunto di Tempo e libero arbitrio: saggio sui dati immediati della coscienza
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About 4 h 50 min to read.A chi è rivolto
For readers who love questioning everyday words such as intensity, time and choice, and who are curious about free will and the inner life.
Che cos’è questo libro
Are you free, or is every choice fixed by what came before? Henri Bergson, a young teacher of philosophy, takes up that old quarrel in Time and Free Will, first published in Paris in 1889 as his doctoral thesis. His answer is unusual. He says the quarrel rests on a mistake about time and about how we describe our inner lives. We treat feelings as things to measure and time as a row of moments. Bergson says that picture comes from space, and it distorts what we live.
In questo riassunto
- 1Deep feelings change in kind, not amountFree
- 2Effort and attention are not measured sensations
- 3Measuring sensation confuses cause with effect
- 4Counting needs space, even in the mind
- 5Real time is lived, not laid out
- 6We live on the surface of ourselves
- 7Determinism borrows its picture from space
- 8A free act expresses the whole person
- 9How the book has been challenged and has lasted
Punto chiave 1 di 9
Deep feelings change in kind, not amount
Bergson begins with a habit of speech. We say a joy is greater, a sorrow deeper, a desire more intense. He argues that we borrow the idea of more and less from the outer world, where things can be measured, and apply it to inner states without checking that it fits.
Take a desire that grows. At first it is a faint hint among many thoughts. As it strengthens, it colours more of what you notice, until your whole outlook seems changed. This is not a larger amount of the same thing. At each stage it is a different state, richer than the one before.
If we treat the inner life as measurable amounts, we start to see it as a heap of separate things, like stones on a table. That view causes trouble later, when he comes to freedom.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Go deeper: the whole of Tempo e libero arbitrio: saggio sui dati immediati della coscienza
About 4 h 50 min to read.About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 75,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 5 h
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 13 other languages
Questions about Tempo e libero arbitrio: saggio sui dati immediati della coscienza
What is Time and Free Will about?
It is about how we experience time and choice from the inside. Bergson argues that inner life is a flowing duration, not a row of countable moments, and that this changes the old debate about whether we are free.
When was Time and Free Will written?
Bergson published it in French in 1889 as Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, based on his doctoral thesis. The English translation by F. L. Pogson, under the title Time and Free Will, appeared in 1910.
Is Time and Free Will hard to read?
No. The book is short, with just three chapters. Bergson also explains his ideas through everyday pictures, like a melody, a growing desire or a dancer's grace, so you can follow along from the start.
What is the main message of Time and Free Will?
The main message is that we confuse lived time with measured space, and that this confusion creates the problem of free will. A free act, Bergson says, flows from the whole self as it develops over time.
Cite this edition
Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/time-and-free-will-an-essay-on-the-immediate-data-of-consciousness.
Bergson, H. (2026). Time and free will: An essay on the immediate data of consciousness. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/time-and-free-will-an-essay-on-the-immediate-data-of-consciousness (Original work published 1889)
Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/time-and-free-will-an-essay-on-the-immediate-data-of-consciousness.
@book{bergson2026time,
author = {Bergson, Henri},
title = {Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/time-and-free-will-an-essay-on-the-immediate-data-of-consciousness},
note = {First published 1889}
}