Navigation – Plan du site

AccueilNuméros4RecherchesConceptual Thought: Differentiati...

Recherches

Conceptual Thought: Differentiating a Bergsonian Topic

Jan-Ivar Lindén

Résumés

Bergson tend à regarder les concepts comme des fonctions pragmatiques qui rendent possible notre orientation habile dans le monde. Cette perspective le conduit à chercher des alternatives philosophiques aux stratégies fondées sur la saisie conceptuelle. Dans ce contexte apparait l'intuition, plus tard tant célébrée dans différents courants philosophiques et littéraires. Pour comprendre le projet bergsonien, il est important de ne pas être induit en erreur par les connotations répandues du mot intuition, mais d´étudier comment Bergson développe ses thèmes dans un contexte métaphysique spécifique, impliquant les rapports entre vie, connaissance et conscience. La façon de décrire la conceptualité comme un équivalent de repères d'orientation stables et pragmatiques dans la perception vitale évoque pourtant des questions. Comment doit-on comprendre la pensée réflexive dans ce contexte? La perspective bergsonienne sur les concepts reste-t-elle ici trop marquée par l'interprétation instrumentaliste de l'intelligence? Une comparaison avec la tradition ancienne en général et avec Aristote en particulier permet de clarifier ces questions et suggère la possibilité de réhabiliter le stable dans un cadre proprement ontologique, évitant ainsi toute confusion avec la rigidité de la raison instrumentale. Ces remarques critiques peuvent aussi montrer comment la philosophie bergsonienne de la vie est apte à ajouter quelques modifications essentielles à la tradition métaphysique.

Haut de page

Texte intégral

The ancient background

  • 1 Concerning the kind of imagelike representations called phantasmata, Plato (as later Descartes) is (...)
  • 2 "car le mouvement est sans doute la réalité même" (Bergson 1994, 156).

1Platonic ideas were not only understood as real (paradigmatic) models for the sensual world, but also as contents and one ambition of the dialogues was to grasp and even define the paradeigmata on the level of contents. It is not easy to see how these two aspects are related, but somehow this concerns our possibility to know the stable substructures (or in Plato's case, rather suprastructures) of reality. Plato was quite confident about the possibility of conceptual contents to capture paradigmatic models with their high degree of own reality, but remained also aware of the socratic stress on insight in what one does not know and thus added an aporetic character to his analytical (dihairetic) conceptions. Ultimately Platonic concepts however strive to be not only intellectual tools, but functions of possible coincidence between intellect and being.1 I begin with this statement, not in order to defend the Platonic conception of ideality, but to give a perspective on the Bergsonian point of view, which is a kind of inverted Platonism, where reality is a continuous process and stability only a means of our intelligence to cope with this fluidity.2 Concepts are for Bergson precisely the tools intelligent beings use in order to orientate in different situations and in some cases even to directly manipulate things. He thereby supposes a close link between conceptual thought and the originally vital interests of more or less intelligent perception – und thus regards concepts as essentially pragmatic functions. This seems to be an all too narrow way or regarding conceptuality.

Instinct, intelligence, intuition

  • 3 Cf. Freud (2000, 222) on our technical surroundings as a prosthesis-world. Freud. Cf. also Türcke ( (...)

2Intelligence is for Bergson distinguished from another principal strain in the evolution of life – instinct – which is also characterized by interest but deals with the world in a more direct and specific way. Whereas instinctive conduct is formed to react to highly specific stimuli and uses no other means than organic tools, i.e., the organs of the living being, intelligence is by Bergson defined as a capacity to use less specific inorganic tools. Intelligent behaviour is present in several living beings, but especially obvious in the (human) homo faber, who not only uses and fabricates tools, but also fabricates tools in order to fabricate other tools and so on without any definite end. The world of the human being is like an infinite artificial series, which not only facilitates manipulation, but also creates new needs, which demand new tools, which create new needs, which demand new tools and so on (Bergson 1994, 142).3

  • 4 All translations from French in this article are mine.

3This at the same time means that the world in intelligent approaches is less particular and tends to favorize quite homogeneous objects, more depending on the applicability of the tools than on the specificity of the things (Bergson 1994, 157). Bergson connects this homogeneity not only with the inorganic character of the means, but also with the objects as such, which appear as inorganic solids. “Our intelligence, as it emerges out of the hands of nature, has as its main object the inorganic solid” (Bergson 1994, 154).4

4There is in intelligence also a variability of signs used, which contrasts with the extremely specific “adherent” signs of instinct, directly connected to certain stimuli which provoke behavior (Bergson 1994, 139, 159). Compared to instinct, the world of intelligence has a quite general character.

  • 5 Cf. Heidegger (2004, §§ 58-60) on captivation (Benommenheit).

5However, when Bergson relates the solidity of separate inert objects to the distinction between separate concepts, i.e., supposes a similarity between objective identity and conceptual identity, this raises some questions. Can conceptual identity really be understood as the logical equivalent to inert solidity (Bergson 1994, 155)? Bergson suggests that the solid or, rather, the solidified objects of intelligence as well as our concepts are characterized by their discontinuity, which is precisely the difference offering a definite stable character. “The concepts […] have the same stability as the objects, according to which they have been created” (Bergson 1994, 161). Compared to elementary solidifying experience, intelligent conceptuality is characterized by a formalization which allows an infinite variability of applications. This also distinguishes intelligent beings with their virtual space of instrumental possibilities from instinctive beings, which, as already mentioned, are guided by highly specific ways of reacting to stimuli. The mobile (non-adherent) signs which open up the logical space of concepts allow a variety of predicative applications which can be used in very different contexts. It is as if intelligent conduct through its conceptual tools becomes more and more hypothetical, distant through the scheme if ... then (Bergson 1994, 150).5 This variability offers an almost limitless usefulness, profiting from the play with possibilities, but on another level, it also disconnects the logical space from the reality behind its possible use.

  • 6 Cf. also "A form, precisely because it is empty, can from time to time at will be filled by an inde (...)
  • 7 Thought is intuitive when it participates in experience without instrumental ambitions. Bergson in (...)

6In this indirect character of conceptual thinking there is, however, also a kind of surplus (“a surplus of power to emit”) (Bergson 1994, 159-60).6 which can emancipate intelligence from the limits imposed by action and in general from the instrumental obsession of the homo faber. Intuition is a way of profiting from this disinterested potential.7 This less instrumental kind of thinking is also described as speculation by Bergson, whereby the speculative importance of intuition is to shed light on those aspects of the life process which intelligence cannot grasp. (Concerning the concept of speculation, today often used in a quite imprecise way, one should not forget that speculation is a kind of mirroring, speculum meaning precisely mirror.)

7Intuition stands for the capacity of intelligence to transgress itself in finding a connection to instinct and regain a more direct relation to nature (life). Intuition offers us an access to the life process in reintroducing affectivity into thought – sympathy in the Bergsonian sense of direct recognition of the affective state of another being. (When instinct is here described in the terms of sympathy, the word does not carry the today current positive connotations, but only designates the fact that there is direct access, including the ways the parasitoid wasp instinctively “knows” how to paralyze its victims – not so “sympathetic” in the ordinary sense of the word.)

Reflection

8Bergson sometimes also speaks of reflection, and it is not completely clear how reflective thought should be understood in relation to speculation and intuition. For reflection it is characteristic to dwell on own presuppositions. In relation to the conceptual world of intelligence this would mean that reflection does not so much concern the same life processes that appear in a certain way for intelligence and in another way for instinct: reflection is instead about the process of intelligent dealings as such – admittedly marked by the natural life of human beings, but at the same time with a profoundly historical dimension. Instrumental reason is itself not genuinely motivated by reflection and neither has it any special interest in the bygone or in historicity, but it rather aims at explaining different objects and relations with future relevance. Similarly, it would of course be difficult to claim that instinct offers an alternative access to the historical world. If the speculative function of intuition is reflective, it is thus not sufficient to interpret intuition as a sort of rediscovery of instinct. If we want to adopt a reflective reading of Bergsonian speculation it could however be suggested that intuition would be a way of letting slumbering instincts somehow clarify our intelligent world in reducing the distance which is typical for intelligent approaches. What is not possible for intelligence on its own and not for instinct on its own, would in this way be brought together: “There are things that our intelligence alone is capable of searching, but which it would never find on its own. These things only the instinct could find, but it would never search for them” (Bergson 1994, 152).

9Nevertheless, as much of Bergson's analysis of concepts remains focused on the useful notions of our intelligent capacity, it is not quite clear how Bergson regards the role of concepts in intuitive speculation and in reflection. There are some hints, but they seem to create a considerable tension between two strains in Bergson's thought: one linked to speculation and the other to the role of the élan vital in thought.

10Perhaps one could here make a distinction between consciousness and understanding and relate intuition to the former. Through intuition there is a “sympathetic” participation in the stream of life, which can plausibly be seen as a sort of consciousness (even if quite different from the Cartesian or Kantian consciousness). Understanding would, however, be something quite different compared to the processual flow of intuitive awareness, as we understand through somehow resting contents which are reflected in consciousness. The reflective consciousness of understanding seems to have some similarity with the pure recollection (souvenir pur) of Matière et mémoire, even if this work is rather focused on the presence of a personal past (Bergson 1990).

  • 8 This does not of course mean that the questions of morality, politics and religion in this work wou (...)
  • 9 For Trotignon reflexivity is an essential aspect of the Bergsonian project: "a reflection of intell (...)

11It is in this context astonishing that Bergson, so profoundly interested in memory, has little to say about the ontological significance of historicity. History of course figures in Les Deux sources de la morale et de la religion (Bergson 1997),8 but then not in the ontological setting which is so important in L'Évolution créatrice. This relative absence of the ontological dimension of history is certainly one reason for the at first sight limited place reflection occupies in the philosophy of Bergson. As Pierre Trotignon has shown, this does not however exclude possibilities to develop this topic in accordance with some Bergsonian insights.9

  • 10 Compared to creative evolution (the creatio continua of Bergson), the instrumental world of tools d (...)
  • 11 "Understanding backwards, it must be confessed, a very frequent weakness of philosophers..." (James (...)

12I will try to add some remarks, which briefly combine Bergson's idea of intuition with his theory of recollective memory in the light of the less Bergsonian topic of reflection and historicity. Reflection in the literal sense of a backward turned act (re-flexio), seems to complicate those tendencies in Bergson which are related to a certain primacy of the future, something the French philosopher shares with the author of Being and Time (Heidegger 1986). In Bergson this stress on the future is linked to his idea of the élan vital and the creative evolution, novelty being something particularly important (Bergson 1994, 164).10 Both Heidegger (especially in the twenties and the early thirties) and Bergson have a certain problem with the philosophical tradition of reflective thought, without however dismissing it totally. This was quite common in the beginning of the 20th century. William James has in this respect a similar critique of an all too “backwards” turned (reflective) philosophy.11 In the present article, I will take a different stance.

13Understanding needs contents, but also time to digest them. New contents are not understood, but perceived. Only appropriated contents can be understood – and understanding thus depends on a reflective component. I would thus like to defend Kierkegaard against William James’ dismissal and instead approve the dictum “We live forwards, but understand backwards.”

14Sometimes the passages on intuition suggest that Bergson somehow confounds consciousness with understanding. Consciousness can certainly be seen as a particular, personal presence in what is occurring, but this act as such does not necessarily imply any greater number of specific contents and can thus not be regarded as an act of understanding. Understanding undoubtedly presupposes consciousness, but consciousness alone does not imply understanding.

15Could it be that understanding is precisely to be seen as the interaction between participative life forces and the recollective capacity to retain past contents? Through the possibility to speak about recurrent topics in a participatory and not instrumental way, this interaction seems to acquire a special status. Concepts would in this setting not be useful tools, but predicative functions of reflection. Through the collective character of language, the concepts would also offer more than only personal recollections – and manifest the social interaction and historicity so intimately linked to our understanding.

  • 12 La représentation est bouchée par l'action. La preuve en est que, si l'accomplissement de l'acte es (...)

16According to Bergson, recollection is made possible by a certain postponement of action in what he calls a zone of indeterminacy (zone d'indétermination) (Bergson 1990, especially the first chapter). This seems to be something else than the fluid participation in the life process, but it is related to comments Bergson also in L'Évolution créatrice makes about the annulment of consciousness in action (la conscience annulée), also described as the absence of any “representation of the act”: “Representation is blocked by action. This is proved by the fact that consciousness can emerge when the execution of the act is stopped or hindered by an obstacle.”12

17If we transpose this idea of recollective postponement or interruption to conceptual thought, one could suppose that we also have linguistic habits, linked to the role of action in intelligence and conducting us to speak in a quite unreflective way. Speculative language would be a countercurrent to this tendency and its concepts would not be useful tools, linked to instrumentally relevant objectives, but instead a means to arrive at a more reflective attitude which blocks automatisms of thought. Such a point of view would have the advantage of bringing Bergson's theory of recollection in Matière et mémoire closer to the treatment of instinct, intelligence, and intuition in L'Évolution créatrice.

  • 13 However, this is not as Augustinian as it sounds because of the naturalist orientation of Bergson.

18Emphasizing reflection in this way also enables an interpretation of speculation which somehow shifts the accent. The focus would be on the life of intelligence itself – a life which includes the history of intelligence. And indeed, Bergson often points out the incapacity of intelligence to understand its own life (Bergson 1994, 166). The philosophical challenge is to overcome this incapacity: “Intelligence, which looked outwards, will thus have a whole interior world opening up for its gaze, the spectacle of its own operations” (Bergson 1994, 160).13 If this perspective is to be something else than only an inward turn in the Augustinian sense of the “in te ipsum redi” (return back into yourself) (Augustine 2007, 39.72), it must retain its relation to knowledge and experience. There must be a historical and epistemic mediation of personal immediacy (Bergson 1993, 131-132). This mediation depends on the existence of contents in the life force carrying our intelligent behavior. Accepting this would rectify those views on intuition, which suggest that the activity as such is what counts and instead stress the importance of understanding precisely how the artificial series of the homo faber expresses instrumental life – a hermeneutic project which needs another kind of concepts than those which Bergson describes as instrumental tools.

Stabilities

19Such a speculative language, in the original sense of the word, brings us back to topics of German idealism, but concerning immobility, also to the Greek tradition and especially to Aristotle, whose philosophical project could be seen as a continuous effort to overcome the alternative between immobility and movement. Aristotle remains indebted to Plato in his view on the necessity of stability both in the cosmos in general and in human and animal experience in particular. As central notions like striving (orexis) and goalrealisation (entelecheia) show, this stability is, however, not conceived in opposition to movement and change. Movement (kinêsis) as either spatial movement (phora) or change (alloiosis) is an undeniable fact, but remains linked to something which does not move. This stable instance can figure in several ways, from an unmoved mover in the cosmos to an elbow which does not move when the rest of the arm is moved or like a principle for growth in a plant which remains the same throughout the growth. What is regarded as stable depends on which phenomena we are studying, but every movement needs something stable in order to be real. Stability is in Aristotle certainly not the solidified expression of human instrumental reason, but something ontologically given which we also in our actions need. Reality is here not seen as a domain of possible intervention, but as a given constellation which determines what appears and what can be done. Our instrumental world is only one expression of given ontological structures. Compared to this, the inverted Platonism of Bergson sometimes seems quite Heraclitean in its stress on continuous fluidity. Is Bergson perhaps in his almost scholastic reading of Aristotle neglecting aspects which would have been important in order to understand the specificity of reflective thought?

20The passages about Greek tradition and modern science in L'Évolution créatrice are interesting. They suggest an interpretation, reminiscent of similar topics in Nietzsche and other philosophers of life, but also of Heideggerian and later French deconstruction of Western metaphysics. Bergson sees a continuity between the role of ideal stability in ancient tradition and the conceptual and mathematical search for determinate laws of nature in the modern tradition. However, he also notices one fundamental difference insofar as the ancients did not have the same conception of an epistemic subject, attributing determinate character to reality. According to the Greek conception of ideality “science is not a human construction. It precedes our intelligence, is independent of it, in fact it is something generating things” (Bergson 1994, 320).

21What is certainly true for both Plato and Aristotle is that they share a common Greek confidence in reality and in language, even if one would hesitate to say that this was also in Plato a “confidence in nature” (confiance dans la nature) (Bergson 1994, 313). There is here a difference between Plato and Aristotle. The sensual and corporeal world of nature has certainly not the same importance in the former as in the latter. It is somewhat astonishing, when Bergson indiscriminately ascribes the following view to both thinkers (and in fact to all Greek thinkers): “Rather than attributing falsity to the attitude of thought and language in front of things happening, they preferred to attribute falsity to the things happening” (Bergson 1994, 313). This can perhaps be true of the eleatics and with some reservation perhaps of Plato, but to claim such a neglect of experience in the case of Aristotle seems odd, taking into account the major role that empeiria plays in his philosophy. Bergson seems to notice the problem and concerning this idealistic conclusion he thus adds: “it was formulated by Plato, and in vain Aristotle tried to evince it” (Bergson 1994, 321). The empirical efforts of Aristotle would thus only represent a motive of his philosophy, but without succeeding in the emancipation from Platonic idealism.

  • 14 Even if there is in the early modern tradition an echo of Platonic topics, especially in the Cartes (...)

22Ascribing reality to patterns – which can be understood as organization – is today quite common. At the same time the notion of objectivity tends to make our epistemic access to reality dependent on ideal contents. These are perhaps not conceived as inner representations with all the subjectivistic problems of such a view, but there is also a certain reluctance to regard epistemic ideality as real models (paradeigmata) in the Platonic sense.14 Still there is a Platonic bent where objective contents and reality are linked in the notion of objective reality. Physical laws are, in a similar sense as the ideal, stable behind the processes of the sensual world (Cf. Natorp 1994). Biology, however, brings other perspectives, where change figures in a central position. Already in the Greek context there was a certain tension between Plato and Aristotle, which concerned precisely the role of life in natural reality. Through his strong stress on goal oriented processes, desire and striving, Aristotle reintroduces the temporal dimension in this context and tries to reconciliate the atemporal with the temporal. Aristotle's conception of organizing principles and causes, and on another level, of dispositions, mark the beginning of a long tradition, stressing the importance of real patterns for temporal processes. And indeed, it seems evident: we live in patterns, formed through history and natural history, but at the same time we find our way in life through stable points which in the present experience appear as contents, not as patterns. However, we still have a problem to understand precisely how patterns and contents are related and – probably because of a single comment in Aristotle's Poetics – it has seldom been undertaken to use the Aristotelian setting for elaborating the philosophical aspects of history and the contribution of history to patterns.

23There would be a lot to say about the Bergsonian interpretation of Plato, especially if one takes into account the aporetic tendency in several dialogues, something which seems to imply an ineffable dimension behind ideal differentiation which does not suggest the kind of epistemic hybris Bergson implies. It seems that Bergson is here somehow aware of the limitations of his severe interpretation of Platonism, even if this appears only in a small remark about Plotinus. In Neoplatonism the ineffable (in the figure of “the One”) became especially important and Bergson has an interesting footnote about this. He speaks of “the admirable, even if somehow elusive intuitions” (intuitions admirables, mais un peu fuyantes) of Plotinus (Bergson 1994, Footnote 1, 325).

  • 15 Concerning the relationship to Ravaisson and the Aristotelian background, it is also worth noticing (...)

24Especially important is however the relation to Aristotle. Taking into account that the young Bergson had a close relation to Félix Ravaisson – the thinker who more than others reintroduced Aristotle in France from 1830 onward – it is astonishing that Bergson seems to have forgotten the quite strong opposition of Plato and Aristotle that one finds in Ravaisson's Essay on the Metaphysics of Aristotle (Ravaisson 1996).15 The Ravaissonian interpretation of Aristotle is an interesting combination of both naturalistic and spiritualist tendencies, in which our natural incarnation offers the key to several ontological issues. Compared to Bergson's remarks about the solidifying tendency of Greek thought, Aristotle's included, Ravaisson rather stresses the activity of energeia and entelecheia, i.e., not the stable contents, but the role such stability plays in living nature with all the sensual and mobile aspects it comports. The act is crucial, also in the case of the famous noêsis noêseôs which in Ravaisson's interpretation is not – as Bergson suggests – an almost Platonic idea of ideas.

25The relation between acts and contents is crucial not only on the prelinguistic level, which was of uttermost importance for Aristotle, but also when it comes to the role of concepts in thought processes. The position of Bergson is Heraclitan: duration is “the fundamental reality” (la realité fondamentale) and the forms “which mind isolates and takes up in concepts, are nothing but views of the changing reality” (Bergson 1994, 316). According to Bergson, Aristotle, like Plato and others, in this way follow “the natural metaphysics of human intelligence” (la métaphysique naturelle de l'intelligence humaine) and this is also "the essential operation of language" (l’opération essentielle du langage) (Bergson 1994, 325-326).

Act, concept and content

26When Bergson says that “there is more in the transition than only a series of states, i.e., possible breaks, more in movement than only a series of positions, i.e., possible stops” (Bergson 1994, 313), the stress is on the processual act. However, when it comes to our thought about this processuality, contents seem to be implied, either deforming ones or then another kind of contents, more apt to capture the processual world. What remains unclear is why the intelligent act could not be durational in its perception of non-durational contents.

27One of the differences between Bergson and phenomenology concerns precisely the distinction between act and content (phenomenologically speaking: noesis and noema). Strangely enough for a philosopher of duration, Bergson seems to overlook the processuality of intelligence in describing “the cinematographic mechanism” of thought from a noematic perspective which tends to neglect the durational act (noesis) of intelligence itself. Such an approach is not well suited to clarify the complementarity between durational act and non-durational content.

  • 16 Cf. how Bergson himself in the same passage can use the expression "At this point, let us stop for (...)

28There is also a certain tension or even contradiction between Bergson's remarks about cinematographically deforming breaks and stops on the one hand and his critique of pragmatic habits of thoughts on the other hand. As processes or acts, the latter seem to be quite fluid and durational even if the contents they show are determinate states and positions without this durational dimension. If so, one could expect that a certain kind of breaks (coupes) and stops (arrêts) of these “intelligent” habits of thought would be philosophically important.16 In Matière et mémoire Bergson himself has stressed that the mind as pure recollection (souvenir pur) is precisely related to states where the pragmatic pure perception (perception pure) does not advance in an unhindered manner. This allows pauses in experience which let recollections appear in the indeterminate space which Bergson calls a zone d'indétermination. This seems to suggest philosophically valuable breaks which concern the process or act – but precisely in deepening experience without shattering reality into unconnected, potentially useful contents.

29If there is a linguistic equivalent of this capacity to hold back striving and instead dwell on and rest in experience, then conceptual identity could have a completely different meaning than the one suggested by the cinematographic principle – something more like the reflective notions (Reflexionsbegriffe), so important in the tradition of German idealism. In fact, Bergson seems to use such concepts quite a lot even if he does not offer any theory about them. This is regrettable as it could have clarified the relationship between the continuous fluidity of the élan vital on the one hand and mind or spirit (esprit) on the other hand – and in relation to the present interpretation, between “the use of the cinematographic mechanism of the intelligence in the analysis of reality” and its philosophical alternative, speculation (Bergson 1994, 314-315).

30In the last analysis this concerns the ontological question about the inclusion of the being which understands reality in this same reality. If this inclusion is necessary, the challenge is to understand the determinate contents figuring in the epistemic history of intelligence itself. Thus, reflecting on contents with all the means conceptual language offers does not necessarily imply any cinematographic deformation of the reality that we are, and we study at the same time. Conceptual thought in the reflective sense aims at grasping essential characteristics of a reality which includes human action, but is not based on it. It is thus not a pragmatic function in the Bergsonian sense, enabling our skillful orientation in the world. There is here no primacy of a thinking and willing subject (or “intersubject”) which creates its relation to the world through acting on it or otherwise determining it.

  • 17 Even if his logical writings are known under the title Organon, which means tool. As logos the conc (...)

31The ancients would have said that the initiative is in reality, not in subjectivity. For Aristotle – who attributes an important role to concepts in the contemplation of what is real – it would have been difficult to understand the Bergsonian claim that concepts are mainly instrumental tools.17 A topic which seems to be absent in Aristotle is however – even if the term is Greek – the sympathetic access Bergson ascribes not only to instinct, but also to the philosophically for him so important intuition. Pathos is certainly a major element of experience in Aristotle, but does not seem to have the same intuitive or speculative role for him.

32The Aristotelian conception of first and second order dispositions can indicate some further differences. The notion of a second, i.e., habitual, flexible nature is in Aristotle coined as an ethically relevant dimension, which contrasts with the determinate character of first nature. Bergson's notion of instinct has some similarities with the first nature of Aristotle insofar as it means a spontaneously determining function without the virtual dimension of variability. However, habit seems in Bergson to be closely connected with instinct and is thus not a second nature, related to freedom as it is in Aristotle (whereas first nature in the Aristotelian conception is precisely distinguished from habit through its absence of flexibility).

33In his idea of a creative evolution Bergson seems to dismiss the essentialist assumption of a necessary dimension of natural order beneath all change and variability. Bergson stresses that dispositions are exposed to influence and in need of the creative élan vital, which continuously integrates novelty in the life process. There is in Aristotle and generally in ancient philosophy no similar stress on novelty, something which can open a space for complementary modern views. Bergson is certainly a philosopher which still in a decisive way can contribute to this discussion.

Haut de page

Bibliographie

Aristotle. 1997-8. Organon I-III, Hamburg: Meiner.

Augustine. 2007. De vera religione, Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh.

Bergson, Henri. 1993. Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience. Paris: PUF.

Bergson, Henri. 1993. La Pensée et le mouvant. Paris: PUF.

Bergson, Henri. 1997. Les Deux sources de la morale et de la religion. Paris: PUF

Bergson, Henri. 1994. L'Évolution créatrice. Paris: PUF.

Bergson, Henri. 1990. Matière et mémoire. Paris: PUF.

Bergson, Henri. 1972. Mélanges. Textes publiés et annotés par André Robinet. Paris: PUF.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1968. Différence et repétition. Paris: PUF.

Freud, Sigmund. 2000. “Das Unbehagen in der Kultur.” In Studienausgabe IX, Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer.

Türcke, Christoph. 2021. “When Memory becomes a Prosthesis.” In To Understand What is Happening. Essays on Historicity, 128-135, edited by J-I Lindén. Leiden & Boston: Brill.

Heidegger, Martin. 2004. Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Welt, Endlichkeit, Einsamkeit. Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann.

Heidegger, Martin. 1986. Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

James, William. 1996. Essays in Radical Empiricism. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press.

Natorp, Paul. 1994. Platos Ideenlehre: Eine Einführung in den Idealismus. Hamburg: Meiner.

Ravaisson, Félix. 1996. Essai sur la métaphysique d'Aristote I-II. Hildesheim - Zürich - New York: Georg Olms Verlag.

Trotignon, Pierre. 1968. L'idée de vie chez Bergson et la critique de la métaphysique. Paris: PUF.

Worms, Frédéric. 2004. Bergson ou les deux sens de la vie. Paris: PUF.

Haut de page

Notes

1 Concerning the kind of imagelike representations called phantasmata, Plato (as later Descartes) is to the contrary quite severe and his attitude is here different than the position of Aristotle, who in his theory of thought, perception and memory attributes an important role to the phantasmata. As these imagelike representations can also be seen as ideas (Descartes calls them "ideas of reception"), there are besides the models (paradeigmata) and the ideal contents also sensual contents – what makes it necessary to be quite precise in speaking of ideas.

2 "car le mouvement est sans doute la réalité même" (Bergson 1994, 156).

3 Cf. Freud (2000, 222) on our technical surroundings as a prosthesis-world. Freud. Cf. also Türcke (2021).

4 All translations from French in this article are mine.

5 Cf. Heidegger (2004, §§ 58-60) on captivation (Benommenheit).

6 Cf. also "A form, precisely because it is empty, can from time to time at will be filled by an indefinite number of things, even such things which have no utility. In this way, formal knowledge is not limited to what is of practical utility, even if it is in relation to such utility that it originally has appeared in the world. An intelligent being has in itself something which enables this being to transcend itself" (Bergson 1994, 152).

7 Thought is intuitive when it participates in experience without instrumental ambitions. Bergson in this context uses the description "disinterested" (désintéressé), but he at the same time stresses the role of the élan vital in intuition, an effort which does not seem to be so disinterested in character (Bergson 1993, 132).

8 This does not of course mean that the questions of morality, politics and religion in this work would be a completely separate area in Bergson's philosophy. Concerning the recurrent Bergsonian topics in this late work, see Worms (2004, especially 278ff).

9 For Trotignon reflexivity is an essential aspect of the Bergsonian project: "a reflection of intelligence concerning itself and its own history, out of which is born an awareness of the genealogy of intelligence" (une réflexion de l'intelligence sur soi et sur son histoire, dont sort une prise de conscience de la généalogie de l'intelligence). The particularity of this reflexivity lies in its finitude, which excludes an absolute system in the sense of classical metaphysics (Trotignon 1968, 15).

10 Compared to creative evolution (the creatio continua of Bergson), the instrumental world of tools depend on automatisms which repeat similar schemes. Deleuze has later on develoed this topic in his well known book Différence et repétition (Deleuze 1968).

11 "Understanding backwards, it must be confessed, a very frequent weakness of philosophers..." (James 1996, 238).

12 La représentation est bouchée par l'action. La preuve en est que, si l'accomplissement de l'acte est arrêté ou entravé par un obstacle, la conscience peut surgir (Bergson 1994, 144-145). The parallels to Heidegger’s concept Störung der Verweisung are obvious (Heidegger 1986, § 16). Heidegger seems to be a lot more influenced by Bergson than he is willing to admit.

13 However, this is not as Augustinian as it sounds because of the naturalist orientation of Bergson.

14 Even if there is in the early modern tradition an echo of Platonic topics, especially in the Cartesian notion of innate ideas.

15 Concerning the relationship to Ravaisson and the Aristotelian background, it is also worth noticing the topic of Bergson's latin dissertation Quid Aristoteles de loco senserit from 1889. A French version "L'idée de lieu chez Aristote" has appeared in Mélanges (Bergson 1972). Bergson worked on the latin dissertation in the early period, when he also prepared his Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (1889) (Bergson 1993).

16 Cf. how Bergson himself in the same passage can use the expression "At this point, let us stop for a while." (Arrêtons-nous sur ce point) (Bergson 1994, 314). In this context, he seems to emphasize the philosophical importance of breaks, but now in the reflective sense, which does not imply any breaking up of reality in unconnected parts.

17 Even if his logical writings are known under the title Organon, which means tool. As logos the concept is something else, even if also related to language and speaking (legein). Concerning logic as a reflexive means, the Organon still has insights to offer (Aristotle 1997-8).

Haut de page

Pour citer cet article

Référence électronique

Jan-Ivar Lindén, « Conceptual Thought: Differentiating a Bergsonian Topic »Bergsoniana [En ligne], 4 | 2024, mis en ligne le 01 novembre 2023, consulté le 15 mars 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/bergsoniana/1623 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/bergsoniana.1623

Haut de page

Auteur

Jan-Ivar Lindén

Senior researcher Jan-Ivar Lindén is director of the Centre for Historical Ontology and has for many years been teaching philosophy at the universities of Heidelberg and Helsinki. Originally working on the ontology of habituation (Philosophie der Gewohnheit. Über die störbare Welt der Muster, Alber 1997), he is currently working on the Swedish edition of Aristotle's Metaphysics, project funded by the academy Societas Scientiarum Fennica. Recent publications: Prolegomena zur historischen Ontologie (Winter 2019), Aristotle on Logic and Nature (Peeters 2019), Aristoteles - antike Kontexte, gegenwärtige Perspektiven (Winter 2020, together with P. König) and To Understand What is Happening. Essays on Historicity (Brill 2021). In Swedish there are the books Modernitet och paradis (SFV 2020) and Sinnliga frågor (Eithe 2011). In French there is an anthology on animality: Animalité. Six interprétations humaines (L’Harmattan 2011).

Articles du même auteur

Haut de page

Droits d’auteur

CC-BY-4.0

Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont susceptibles d’être soumis à des autorisations d’usage spécifiques.

Haut de page
Rechercher dans OpenEdition Search

Vous allez être redirigé vers OpenEdition Search