In his ‘Time and Free Will’, Bergson states that the general conception of time is that of a medium in which impressions are arranged in the same kind of order as is found in space: one impression directly follows another. With the exception of one or two innovating concepts, Bergson is basically conventional in his theories about time. His greatest contribution to the contemporary writer was to free him from the artificial distinctions of clock time by suggesting a sense of time which is meaningful in terms of man’s innermost experiences.
To Bergson, the difference between a time patterned upon space and time patterned upon duration. He based his whole philosophy on the idea that chronological or clock time is unreal and that reality can be found only in man’s inner sense of duration duree. Duree is a state of constant flow existing within the mind in which the present, past, future are not separate. All states of time flow together, ignoring the unnatural succession which clock time attempts to impose. Internal time is pure duration, which may, in a single moment, contain the experience that gives significance to a lifetime.
Marcel Proust was strongly influenced by Bergson in his youth; Bergson was then more popular than any other French philosopher before or since his time. Proust agreed with Bergson that real time is not that which is imposed upon man by space, but that which lives within his mind.
Proust’s writing puts emphasis on instants of recall, the central theme of all his novels; the past is rediscovered by interrupting Bergson’s duree. Thus, in Proust’s novels can be found a restatement of Bergson’s theory of duration as well as Bergson’s theory of the unity of the self achieved through the act of memory. Proust has been called a novelist of multiple time, dwelling on involuntary memory, which gives past persons and scenes a symbolic depth they never had before. A section from Remembrance of Things Past shows Proust’s emphasis on memory as a method of interrupting time flux.
By the way, Heidegger concentrates on existential or historical time: time as the span of my life, rather than the indefinitely stretching medium measurable by clocks or planetary motions. The span of an individual’s life follows a personal time; he is aware of the end of his time, time death and also its beginning. A great responsibility is implied because the individual is made aware of his potentialities during his allotment of time.