Henri Bergson

French philosopher — Nobel Prize in Literature (1927) — author of Time and Free Will, Matter and Memory, and Creative Evolution — who argued that reality is fundamentally temporal, that intuition is superior to intellect for grasping duration, and that life is animated by an élan vital.

Creates the philosophy of duration — Bergson's distinction between clock time (spatialized, measurable) and lived duration (flowing, qualitative, the basis of consciousness and freedom) is the foundational philosophical treatment of time as experience and influenced Einstein, Proust, and phenomenology.