Time Philosophy

Time goes by
photo by Peters nik

TIME, Henri Bergson, philosophy

We should add to the three well known dimensions as a fourth one: the TIME. We know, we can’t all reach that age of nearly 104 as mentioned by Nganguyen. Even if we would reach the age of 94, we should consider: “What will remain, telling a story about us, when we are dead and gone?” There’s a philosophy of time: One of the most important thinkers has been Henri Bergson (existentialism). I wrote about him for an amazon-review: Trying to understand the “life melody” of a human being, it is not sufficient, to emerge ridiculously only one or two notes. The entire “SPAN”, if possible from the birth to the end of a biography, – only such a span (the complete melody, not a single note) is able to illuminate the secret of a human personality to a sympathizing viewer. Only via this method you can discover the dynamics, movements, changing spirals, the will to carry through, the persistent believe at the own worth of a person… – We tried to work with such an aim, making a portrait of Joseph Winter – both with a photography (by my wife) and with added words (by me). Sometimes we MUST try, to ignore TIME…

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Image via Wikipedia

Den innersten Wert des Menschseins erlebe man nicht in einer fast bis zur Aussichtslosigkeit verkürzten punktuellen Zeitwahrnehmung, auch erschließe der Mensch in seiner Würde sich nicht aus den meisten von den Fachwissenschaften bereitgehaltenen Begriffschablonen. Um die Kraft spendende Lebensmelodie eines Menschen zu erfassen, genüge es nicht, ein oder zwei Noten lächerlich herauszuschälen – die gesamte “SPANNWEITE”, am besten von der Geburt bis zum Ende eines Lebens, – nur sie erhelle dem zur Empathie fähigen Betrachter erst das Geheimnis einer Persönlichkeit, ihre Dynamik, ihre Bewegung, ihre Veränderungsspiralen, ihren Durchhaltewillen, ihren beharrlichen Glauben an den eigenen Wert – auch wenn die jeweilige punktuelle soziale Umgebung einen solchen Horizont längst verloren habe.

Bergsons Vater war Musiklehrer und Komponist gewesen – auch von daher rührt die Metapher “Lebensmelodie” an. Die aufkommende Freudsche Schule inspirierte Bergson sicherlich: und bei allem Verirren in zu punktuelle Begriffe hat sich diese Fachwissenschaft – genauso wie die Romanschreiber – um jenen, dem Bergsonschen Denken inneliegenden Suchimpuls gekümmert: die Erforschung einer Lebensstrecke.

Erik H. Erikson mit seinem Bahn brechenden Buch “Identität und Lebenszyklus” ist einer der unzähligen Forscher, welche psychologisches Wissen in diese Richtung vorangetrieben haben. Bergson war auch für Marcel Prousts Suche nach der verlorenen Zeit zur Initialzündung geworden, ebenso für Nikos Kazantzakis’ Roman “Alexis Sorbas” – verfilmt mit Anthony Quinn als der puren Verkörperung des “Elan vital”, desjenigen Lebensmumms, der für Bergson der Kern philosophischen Identifizierens sein sollte. Natürlich war auch Sartre (programmatisch auch mit seinem Text über Flaubert) ein Bergson-Anwender.

Ein Zitat aus Bergsons 1911 gehaltener Vorlesung an der Universität Oxford: “Durch die Philosophie können wir uns daran gewöhnen, die Gegenwart niemals von der Vergangenheit zu isolieren. Durch sie gewinnen alle Dinge eine Tiefe, – noch mehr als Tiefe, etwas wie eine vierte Dimension, die es den früheren Wahrnehmungen erlaubt, mit den gegenwärtigen solidarisch zu bleiben.”

Man erfasse somit, dies ist Bergsons philosophischer Rat, möglichst die Gesamtheit einer Lebensmelodie, nicht nur einzelne Noten-Details irgendeines irrelevanten Partitur-Abschnitts; leider ist Bergson in Deutschland viel weniger bekannt als Sartre, Heidegger, Kierkegaard oder Jaspers – dies sollte unbedingt anders werden …

ERIK ERIKSON

Erik Erikson (1902-1994), famous German-American psychotherapist, was born in Frankfurt; his biological father was a Dane remained unnamed, his mother, Karla Abrahamsen, was a young Jewish woman, who married three years after Erik’s birth Dr. Theodor Homberger.
During the Nazi period the family immigrated to the USA, where Erik indicated the surname “Erikson” (chosen freely) for the immigration authority. Because his parents at first hid the biological identity from young Erik, at first he had felt as Erik Abrahamsen-Homberger; the modification into the well sounding “Erik Erikson” was (of course) connected with the search for his biological (unsolved, Danish) “Roots”.
His books about “identity crisis”, “life circles”, about “Childhood and Society” and so on: practice an analysis of both common and personal interest. His own curriculum vitae is an example of developing an identity as well as the subjects he tried to describe (Luther, Hitler, Gandhi …);
Not only, that in his childhood (in Nuremberg) his Jewish identity was hidden completely (favoured by a fair-haired outside) in the Nazi Germany; at first it was his aim in his student time of becoming an artist. He slept under bridges, walking through Europe. Later he always tended more towards the psychological knowledge area, could be trained to a Montessori teacher, influenced by his friend Peter Blos, then (in Vienna) he managed to get a psychoanalysis by the famous daughter of Sigmund Freud, Anna; after that (emigrated to the USA) he started with ethnological researches at the Dakota Indians: so his own identity changed gradually in the course of his life.
The geographical changes surely also caused a personality alteration: In Vienna he became acquainted with his later wife Joan Serson, a Canadian dance teacher; avoiding the Nazis, the family went to Copenhagen (searching for roots), then to Boston. He finally took lectureships for the University of Harvard, then Yale, then Berkeley.
In the fifties he developed disgust of the McCarthy era and let rest his teaching for several years.
His remark “Identity is the intersection point between what a person wants to be and what the world allows to be” is more than only illustrated by the changeable outside worlds in Erikson’s biography.
It is worthwhile to look at his additional publications (after his major work “Identity and the Life Cycle”), too:
he analyses Hitler, Gorki and the conditions of life of the Sioux Indian tribe “Oglala Dakota” (in “Childhood and Society”). For his book “Gandhi truth” he got the Pulitzer Price.
Focusing the interdependence of individual growth and historical change (Young Man Luther, A Study in Psychoanalysis and History) he was the important founder of multiple-method-search-procedures for integrated historical, psychological, social and political theories.
The question of the development of identity therefore is Erikson’s main topic, which is experienced at his own body
– essentially for everyone, who likes to analyse biographies…
from:
http://blogfrizz.wordpress.com/erikson-en/

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