Note sur la liberté comme expression dans lʼEssai sur les données immédiates de la conscience

This article examines Bergson's notion of freedom as an expression of the self in his doctoral thesis Essay on the immediate data of consciousness . Even though Bergson does not use the verb “to express” in a technical sense consistently throughout the text, this article shows that it is nonetheless significant that the term appears in all significant formulations of the idea of ​​freedom. This term serves to distinguish the Bergsonian notion of freedom from deterministic notions of causality and from libertarian notions of the availability of intellectual alternatives in action. This article shows how Bergson's use of the notion of expression echoes Kant's analysis of genius as a principle of the production of art, although the Essay does not yet make explicit the link that Bergson will later make between freedom and art.