
What Does Time Feel Like? — Henri Bergson
A philosophy-community discussion explores Henri Bergson’s ideas about lived time, with an assigned reading from Time and Free Will.
AI summary · From the event listing
November 15, 2026 · 12 PM – 3 PM
Kapéj Coffee, 1447 N Sedgwick St, Chicago ·
Keep your plans in one place. Free account.
The group discusses Bergson’s account of lived time, using an abridged chapter of Time and Free Will as its reading.
AI · From the event listing
Organizer’s description
*And, with tiny footsteps, the clocks move* *separately from our authentic time.* — Rainer Maria Rilke, *The Sonnets to Orpheus* (Part One, No. XII) *...If you got it today, you don't wear it tomorrow, man. 'Cause you don't need it. 'Cause as a matter of fact, as we discovered on the train, tomorrow never happens, man. It's all the same f—ing day, man.* — Janis Joplin, in "Ball and Chain" --- Henri Bergson argues that the time we measure—seconds in a row, each one outside the next—isn't time at all, but a picture of it borrowed from space. If you attempt to measure a moment, the moment is gone. Lived, experienced time doesn't come in units: its moments bleed into one another and can't be counted. This substitution is so useful, and so deeply built into how we speak, that we've mistaken it for the real thing. So join us for a lively discussion—or, in other words, a good time. Reading: * Link to PDF – *Time and Free Will*, Chapter 2: "The Idea of Duration" by Henri Bergson (Abridged, 29 pages).
Old Town
Hosted by The Symposium: Philosophy Community of Chicago
More like this