THE RECOGNITION OF TIME AND ITS MEANING IN THE THOUGHTS OF BERGSON AND NĀGĀRJUNA

HOYOUNG AHN

ABSTRACT

This paper is an attempt to investigate the thoughts of both Bergson and Nāgārjuna
through the motion impossibility of Zeno. The concepts of both the duration (durée) of
Bergson and the sunya (空, Śūnyatā) of Nāgārjuna cause both the controversy and the
misunderstanding in studies, and in these days this situation is still unchanged. Since the
studies for the reasons why this misunderstanding happens and why this should happens
are not satisfactory, we would shed new light on the understanding for the duration and
the sunya by the revealing of origin of these reasons through the investigation of the time
and the limit of thought. Even though both Bergson and Nāgārjuna show one aspect
for the limit of thought, there is still unnoticed limit in their thoughts. To attain this
limit, firstly we should ask ourselves “why do we think ‘something is’ rather ‘anything is
not’?” From Zeno’s paradoxes, we could start investigation for this question. By means
of Bergson and Nāgārjuna’s thoughts, we point out the misunderstanding of time as
everything comes out illusion by thought of the reflection of time. We confront the
instant which approaches to the limit of thought via Zeno’s paradoxes. We would name
that instant as the new time ‘Now’. We interrogate the new time ‘Now’ with the limit of
thought through Zeno’s paradoxes and Bergson and Nāgārjuna’s thoughts.