Bergson vs Einstein on Time
"The time of the philosophers does not exist"
Venue: Société française de philosophie, Paris.
A face-to-face encounter that arguably ended Bergson's reputation among physicists.
On 6 April 1922, Einstein attended a meeting of the Société française de philosophie at which Henri Bergson — then the most famous philosopher in the world — delivered a paper arguing that the physicist's time is an abstraction from the real, lived duration he had been theorising for thirty years. Einstein's reply was brief and devastating: "Le temps des philosophes n'existe pas" — the time of the philosophers does not exist. There is the time of the physicist (objective, frame-dependent, measurable) and the subjective time of the psychologist; a third, distinct "philosophical time" is not in physics. Bergson's 1922 book *Durée et Simultanéité* attempted to show that relativity could be reconciled with his philosophy of duration, but its technical missteps badly damaged his standing among physicists. Whether Einstein won the substantive philosophical point or merely the cultural one is still debated.
Historical Context
Bergson was at the peak of his celebrity; Einstein had become globally famous after the 1919 eclipse confirmation of general relativity. The Paris meeting was anticipated for months as a cultural event; the philosophical-cultural fallout shaped the analytic-continental split for the rest of the century. Bergson received the 1927 Nobel Prize for Literature; Einstein the 1921 Physics Nobel (announced in 1922 — partly for his work on the photoelectric effect rather than relativity, as the committee feared philosophical objection).
Parties
The physicist's time is a mathematical abstraction from the lived duration that is the deeper reality. Relativity's "time" is the time of measurement, derived from a more primary qualitative time of experience.
Key arguments
- Duration is the actually-experienced time of consciousness; physical time is its spatialised abstraction.
- Multiple frame-dependent times in relativity reflect different measurement procedures, not different fundamental temporalities.
- The philosopher's task is to recover the lived duration that physics necessarily abstracts away.
- *Durée et Simultanéité* (1922) attempts a more technical reconciliation: there is one duration, and the relativistic time-differences are imaginary "fictive times."
Allied schools
There are two kinds of time: the time of the physicist (objective, measurable, frame-dependent) and the time of the psychologist (subjective, experiential). A third "philosophical time" distinct from both does not exist.
Key arguments
- Relativity's time is a precisely-defined feature of the spacetime metric, with operational measurement procedures.
- Psychological time is a real phenomenon but not the same as physical time and not a rival to it.
- Bergson's "duration" either reduces to psychological time (in which case it is no challenge to physics) or claims more than psychology can support (in which case it has no clear referent).
- Bergson's technical attempts to reconcile his philosophy with relativity (twin paradox, fictive times) misread the physics.
Allied schools
Dimensions Engaged
Time
Time · Ontological Status: is the physicist's time the only objective time, or is it derived from a more primary lived duration?
Observer
Observer · Knowledge Extent: what does the experiencing subject contribute to the structure of time?
Verdict in retrospect
Physics moved decisively past Bergson. *Durée et Simultanéité*'s technical errors (especially on the twin paradox) damaged Bergson's scientific reputation; the book was effectively withdrawn from his later collected works. In philosophy, the question of whether experienced duration is a genuine philosophical topic distinct from psychological time remains live — phenomenologists (Husserl on time-consciousness, Heidegger on Dasein's temporality) reopened it on different terms.
Related Debates
Sharing parties or aligned schools.
Related Experiments
Experiments that share dimensions and/or aligned schools with this debate.
Other Personas Aligned With This Debate
Ranked by declared-influence weight in the schools either party is allied with. The named parties themselves are excluded — they're already listed above.
Works Most Aligned With This Debate
Ranked by declared-influence weight in the schools either party is allied with.
Related Films
Films engaging the same dimensions as this debate.
Related Contemporary Dilemmas
Dilemmas that engage the same dimensions as this debate.
Further reading
- Canales, *The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time* (2015)
- Bergson, *Durée et Simultanéité* (1922; tr. Jacobson, 1965)