ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the French and Belgian sources of the account of time as duration that Bergson advanced in his 1889 Time and Free Will. The chapter aims to offer the most comprehensive treatment of these roots available in English, and it develops previous studies by showing how Bergson responds to the ideas of Albert Lemoine, who, in his posthumous 1875 L’habitude et l’instinct, reflected on time as ‘flowing duration’. The chapter argues that the resemblances of Bergson’s ideas to those of Lemoine are too close to be accidental, and that in this light revision is required in the idea of Bergson as developing a narrowly-defined spiritualist tradition in French philosophy that moves from Maine de Biran, through Félix Ravaisson, followed by Jules Lachelier and Emile Boutroux. The article shows that the most direct source of Bergson’s account of duration lies outside of this lineage.
