Philip Y. Kao PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

y taking up oneself in real duration. Bergson argues that measuring time using the
intellect, and therefore not grasping it by entering into the reality of time in time via
intuition, is responsible for many philosophical blunderings. Carr also sympathises with
Bergson’s philosophy when he says, “It is this unreal time that we have in mind when we
speak of our fleeting existence and think of the things that outlast us; it gives meaning to
such expressions as eternal youth. Life seems made up of definite states […] which we
pass through, and which we imagine have a period of stability and then change. But the
change is continuous throughout each state, and the states are a merely external view of
life. It is our body that enables us to take this view. Our body is an object in space, and
we consequently regard it in this external way” (Carr 1914, 18). Furthermore, Carr
emphasises that for Bergson, “Our life is true duration. It is a time flow that is not
measured by some standard in relation to which it may be faster of slower. It is itself
absolute, a flowing that never ceases, never repeats itself, an always present, changing,
becoming, now” (Carr 1914, 19).
If we take Bergson with a pinch of salt, we come to realise that life framed in this
philosophical and metaphysical way does not lend itself to scientific analysis. Yet where
science fails and philosophy perseveres, there may still be something to rescue for our
anthropological purposes; that is the idea that some human realities may not be
penetrated by ethnography (alone), no matter how reflexive our methods. In the
language anthropologists are more accustomed to persons are historical subjects. We do
not inhabit time, but rather, time inhabits us. This is more than just a snapshot or ethnotheory
of personhood; what we are dealing with is a conception of time that is fleeting,
continuous and singular in its occurrence, so much so that persons are much more than
just the sum of their histories. This is not to say that there is nothing but some fuzzy and
abstract philosophical notion of time that inheres in the world, but that when we try to
analyse and study ageing as a social and temporal process, we must be aware of the
spatial presumptions of reality that occur in contexts like Tacoma Pastures. Further to
this point is the idea that when we set old age and ageing within the framework of a life
course, we are dealing in abstractions and symbolisations that are not just culturally
variable. Hence, analysing life in this way may blind us to seeing how a life is lived,
making irrelevant such dichotomies as inside/outside, self/other, and mind/body. This
is probably Bergson’s contribution to an anthropology of time, in that rather than being
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