Research Information System
BEYTULHIKME-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, vol.7, no.2, pp.105-122, 2017 (ESCI)
Bergson argues that we live for the society which is external to us more than we live for ourselves which is our inner existence. That is, our inner existence is, for the most part, under the influence of our outer, social life. This kind of life necessarily leads to conditions in which the self is far removed from freedom, or conditions in which the self rarely acts freely. Nevertheless, Bergson tells us that freedom is in principle possible for human selves. In order to gain access to freedom, what we need to do first is to break with what is external and spatial and then to regain the possession of our inner self by getting back into pure duration. The main theme of this paper, first, consists of the struggle to get back into real time, i.e., to our genuine self Then, how the genuine self-renders freedom possible will be demonstrated. In the course of this, the external resistance, which arises, will be investigated and how the genuine self-transcends this external resistance will be clarified.