The freedom to become: Henri Bergson’s recovery of the unquantified self

Abstract

This chapter argues that Henri Bergson—whose philosophy is in large part devoted to locating human freedom outside not only the laws of causality, but the mechanical modes of thinking and habitual modes of acting that define our usual conduct—should be considered a crucial figure in the tradition of modernist self-optimization and in the intellectual history of media theory. Although Bergson regards such freedom as a fundamental and originary characteristic of our being, he equally posits it as able to be realized only through an ongoing inner labor whereby we work to distinguish our true self from the repetition and similitude encrusted upon it. And whilst his account of freedom is often utilized today as an antidote to rampant quantification of ourselves and our experience, it is very much grounded in an ethos of heroic productivism and transgressive spontaneity reflective of and responsive to the industrial culture within which it was formulated.

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ORCID for Thomas Sutherland: orcid.org/0000-0003-1538-7044

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