Abstract

Bergson's earlier works, especially Time and Free Will and Matter and Memory offer a theory of space which entails a novel theory of time. If these theories are examined apart from the works of earlier philosophers who have contributed to the study of time and space, many points of his theories may appear unjustified, or to depend wholly upon certain pecularities of the biological and psychological sciences of Bergson's era. Yet his frequent references to Kant and his thorough treatment of Aristotle's theory of place should indicate that he was not merely trying to build his theories upon scientific claims which have since been repudiated. I have attempted to defend some of Bergson's insights without appealing to nineteenth-century biology or psychology, but by showing them to be justifiable developments of Kant's criticisms of substantial and relational theories of time and space. ;Similarly, Kant's own theory of the "ideality" of time and space has been criticized as depending upon the certainty of scientific theories which have since been supplanted by more adequate, or alternative, ones. In Kant's defense I have supported his arguments which are independent of the status of Newtonian mechanics and Euclidian geometry. The independence of these arguments from these physical and mathematical theories is more obvious in Kant's Dissertation of 1770 than in the Critique of Pure Reason; thus my treatment focuses on the presentation of the Dissertation. ;In this way insights of Bergson and Kant for the problems of the philosophy of time and space might be shown to be independent of other, more controversial aspects of Bergson's vitalism and Kant's transcendental idealism. I have suggested an integration of these insights into a coherent alternative to the traditions of substantival and relational theories. My study of time and space as forms of experience would not have achieved such coherence without additional consideration of the nature of experience, and some of Hegel's conceptions have enabled me to suggest a non-representational theory of experience encompassing Bergsonian and Kantian contributions