How is it that when we think of time, we hardly think of the role affect plays in granting us access to time: the sense of waiting, regret, mourning, melancholy? In Powers of Time, David Lapoujade returns to two central themes that continuously converge throughout the writings of the French philosopher Henri Bergson: dur e (duration) and intuition. If duration is synonymous with memory, how are we then capable of thinking an authentic sense of the future? Does this mean that freedom is nothing more than a reprisal of our past?
Lapoujade uncovers multiple versions of Bergson: a philosopher of sympathy, a melancholic philosopher, a perspectivist Bergson, a spiritualist Bergson. Leading us beyond simplistic anthropomorphic conceptions of temporality and intuition, Lapoujade's multiple Bergsons guide us to encounter a rapport with time, memory, and duration that places us in direct contact with the nonhuman flows and movements of the universe.