Great question—Henri Bergson’s concepts of élan vital and duration (la durée) are foundational to his philosophy of life, time, and creativity. They challenge mechanistic and static views of reality and offer a fluid, dynamic, and intuitive vision of existence.
1. Élan Vital (Vital Force or Life Impulse)
Élan vital is Bergson’s term for the creative, evolutionary force that drives life forward.
What It Is:
• A non-mechanical, non-deterministic force that propels life toward ever greater complexity, diversity, and novelty.
• Unlike Darwin’s natural selection (which Bergson respects but finds insufficient), élan vital is not merely adaptive—it is creative.
• It’s not a substance or a measurable energy, but a metaphysical principle: a push from within life itself, generating new forms, directions, and possibilities.
Key Qualities:
• Spontaneous and unpredictable—not fully explainable by physics or biology.
• Creative evolution: Life is not just adapting to conditions but inventing new ways of being.
• Present in organisms, in consciousness, and in artistic or philosophical creation.
Why It Matters:
• Bergson wanted to reintroduce creativity, agency, and freedom into the philosophy of life.
• Élan vital is the affirmation of life as process, not as mechanism.
2. Duration (La Durée)
Duration is Bergson’s radical rethinking of time—not as a measurable, linear sequence (like clock time), but as lived, inner time.
What It Is:
• La durée is qualitative, not quantitative.
• It is the flow of consciousness, where past and present interpenetrate continuously.
• Think of it like music: each note carries with it the resonance of the notes before it. Time, in this sense, is not divisible into identical units—it is fluid, thick, and alive.
Contrast with Mechanistic Time:
• Modern science and classical physics treat time as a homogeneous line: t₁, t₂, t₃… like ticks on a clock.
• Bergson argues that this isn’t how we actually experience time.
• Real time is felt as becoming, as intensity, as movement—not as discrete, countable parts.
Why It Matters:
• Duration is key to intuition, freedom, and authentic creativity.
• When we think in terms of durée, we escape deterministic models and rediscover life as movement, emergence, and surprise.
How the Two Relate:
• Élan vital is the force of life moving through duration.
• Life’s creativity unfolds in duration, not in clock time.
• Together, they affirm a non-mechanical metaphysics where freedom, change, and becoming are central.
Poetic Summary:
• Élan vital is the river’s urge to flow,
• Duration is the flow itself, thick with memory and becoming.
Would you like to explore how Bergson’s durée and élan vital relate to wu wei, or to Deleuze’s philosophy of time and desire?
