hussein malakooti

At the beginning of Being and Time, Bergson's name comes alongside Aristotle’s name when Heidegger tried to distinguish the concept of temporality from traditional time. Now, the question is why after Aristotle, the name of Bergson comes? If he meant to name the last philosopher, why didn’t he mention Husserl, who was Heidegger’s professor and was supposed to have a lecture about Time-consciousness? Why not Hegel, whose interpretation of the concept of time is the subject of the penultimate chapter in Being and Time? Why not Dilthey, whose thoughts are the focus of Heidegger’s most critical early investigations of time? However, in the footnote near the end of Being and Time, Heidegger admits that he only wanted to distinguish his thoughts from Bergson about the concept of time. But our investigations show something different. It shows that Heidegger used Bergson’s concept of time to build his theory in Being and Time. Although, recently, researchers gave a great interest to Bergson's work and his influences on Gilles Deleuze's philosophy, but the questions about Bergson's influence on phenomenology and Heidegger's philosophy had been unanswered. The increasing attention of scholars toward these questions is promising, but not enough. This article tries to answer some of these questions.

Phenomenology is one of the most important nowadays’ philosophical movements. Although Husserl is the founder, you can find its roots in philosophers’ works like Descartes, Kant, and Bergson. Heidegger Learned phenomenology from his professor and used it as a way to understand Being. Phenomenology for Heidegger transformed from Husserlian simple form to a way to understand the truth. Part of this transformation is because of Bergson's influence on Heidegger. In Heidegger’s opinion, Bergson, with bolding the importance of consciousness for understanding life, had a part in establishing Husserl’s phenomenology. By translating Bergson’s works into German, Max Scheler played a crucial role in gathering attention to Bergson's philosophy. This effort led to Husserl’s important work, the investigations of internal time consciousness, which are partly published in Husserl’s later works. Furthermore, Bergson, by making a difference between common time and real-time or ‘duration’ in understanding life, showed philosophy a new way of understanding truth. For Heidegger, phenomenology without understanding the concept of time, and centralization of Dasein as temporality, is not conceivable. The phenomenology is one of the most complex topics in the philosophy of the 20th century, and the simplest way to understand it is to pay attention to the formation of its roots. Considering that not enough research has been done on the influence of Bergson's philosophy on the phenomenological movement, this article tries to cover as much of this need as possible.

This article follows Heidegger’s criticism and analysis of Bergson’s philosophy of life. Heidegger’s interest is because Bergson is looking for a way to understand life as it is. In his research, Heidegger considers some of Bergson’s opinions promising, such as paying attention to the concept of time as a key to grasping the truth. Still, he criticizes some of Bergson’s theories, such as the inadequacy of language in understanding life. In general, the results of this research are divided into three parts; In the first part, the concept of time in Bergson’s philosophy is given as a key to understanding life, where Heidegger introduces Bergson as one of the pioneers of modern philosophy. The second part of the article is devoted to the issue of language and the inadequacy of the concept in Bergson’s philosophy. In the third and final part, Heidegger criticizes Bergson’s theories about language and tries to find a way to understand the truth through the concept of time. Attention to consciousness and its connection with life through Bergson’s time or duration is another topic of great importance to Heidegger. Despite all of Heidegger’s criticisms of the philosophy of life, he still considers Bergson’s work as the most promising research and effort to reach the truth.