Time and Free Will

by Henri Bergson

Originally published as «Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience.» (French)

Bergson argues for free will by showing that the arguments against it come from a confusion of different conceptions of time. As opposed to physicists' idea of measurable time, in human experience life is perceived as a continuous and unmeasurable flow rather than as a succession of marked-off states of consciousness-something that can be measured not quantitatively, but only qualitatively. His conclusion is that free will is an observable fact.