Bergson, Kant, Succession

At first glance, Bergson's concept of Duration is Kantian, with a minor variation. For both, the structure of inner experience is successive, but, for Bergson, with the added refinement that the succession is fluid, not atomistic. However, Bergson's distinction constitutes more than a descriptive nuance. For Kant, the inner succession is inadequate as objective knowledge without the coordination of an Intellectual concept, without which an inner and an outer sequence cannot be distinguished. However, Bergson agrees with Schopenhauer that the Kantian construction of objective experience not only remains within the realm of appearances, which Kant himself acknowledges, but that it further remains only at the service of the pursuit of personal interests, and, hence, never transcends subjectivity. In contrast, Durational Consciousness, i. e. Intuition, alone gives, according to Bergson, direct access to the fluid in-itself, and, hence, is the true objective mental faculty, not Intellect. For Bergson, proof of the cognitive superiority of Intuition over Intellect is the adequacy of the former in contrast with an inadequacy of the latter that Kant himself recognizes, namely to biological phenomena.