An Untimely Intuition: Adding a Bergsonian Dimension to Experience and Education

This essay explores Henri Bergson's intuition as a philosophical and methodological concept, specifically considering how it might be useful in thinking about education. The main argument is that the repetition‐succession model of time — or time as measure — that became established in modernity, and to which we are habituated, edits out of consciousness an organic, qualitative, nonhomogeneous aspect of time that is more true to our being‐in‐the world, resulting in an unfortunate thinning of our lives. An understanding of this different dimension of time, called duration here, awakens the intuition, making us less dependent on mechanical time, which is finitude, and more open to the nonmeasurable, qualitative aspects of phenomena. Pedagogically, this essay offers a praxis that aims toward a liberatory awakening to the conditions of our experience.