ABSTRACT
In Being and Time, Martin Heidegger presents a critique of Bergson’s attempt to think about time in a more radical way through the concept of duration. Looking back over Heidegger’s essays and lecture courses in the 1920s, I show how he develops this critique over the course of his own search for authentic, primordial time. Heidegger criticizes Bergson for failing to overcome the traditional concept of time and merely reversing Aristotle’s definition. Because he conceives of duration as a qualitative succession and confuses the ordinary concept of time with space, Bergson does not succeed in revealing the phenomenon of ecstatic temporality, according to Heidegger. However, in his attempts to distance himself from Bergson, Heidegger ultimately succeeds in revealing their proximity. Heidegger’s debt to Bergson is evident in his distinction between an original and a derived time, his attempts to resolve philosophical problems by thinking in terms of time, his treatment of the world as a domain of action prior to knowledge, and his challenge to the ontological primacy of the “now.”
