Henri Bergson vs The Cambridge Platonists: Bergsonian Durée and Morean Divine Space

In Bergson’s famous analysis of time, he critiqued what he saw as a spatialization of time and its transformation into divisible, measurable units. This, according to Bergson, was to impose our intellectual, quantitative thinking onto a fundamentally qualitative reality. Time, or what Bergson called duration (durée), is mobile and living rather than an aggregate of individual “moments.” Yet in this paper, we suggest that Bergson’s critique of spatialized time can equally and ironically be applied to his own concept of space and that Henry More, the Cambridge Platonist, offers a concept of space that escapes these objections. We further argue that Bergson’s account of durée cannot be understood from a purely immanent framework. Instead, it is most intelligible if one interprets it through a Platonic framework. Here, again, we suggest that More offers a historical corrective to Bergsonism and a path forward for studies in his philosophy.