Memory and Persistence: Past Time Immanent in the Individual, 1900-2025

Memory and Persistence: Past Time Immanent in the Individual, 1900-2025
For Bergson, "memory" is not merely the reproduction of past information, but is the core that constitutes the qualitative thickness of time itself. He viewed memory in two ways. One is "habitual memory," which is embodied memory, like repeated actions or language. The other is "pure memory," a phenomenon in which the past is preserved in its original form and appears immaterially in the present consciousness. For example, the sensations and scenes from childhood that suddenly come back to life can be said to be the result of pure memory.

This concept of memory is deeply connected to Bergson's idea of durée. Duration means that time is not divided like space, but flows in a qualitatively overlapping manner. The present in which we live is not a point of disconnection from the past, but rather the accumulated past is concentrated and condensed into the moment of "now. Memory is nothing but the thickness of that condensed time, and consciousness is dynamically constituted within this persistence.

This understanding also relates to the freedom of human creation and action. It is not a mechanical reaction, but a new choice or invention based on the past, which is possible because memory is not merely a record, but "a past woven into the present. For Bergson, consciousness was this place of persistence and memory, life itself living in time.