Notes
Henri Bergson (1896), Matière et mémoire, éd. Camille Riquier, 2008, Paris, PUF, p. 165-166. I make use of the following English translation: Matter and Memory, translated by Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer, 1988, New York, Zone Books: « Either […] you must suppose that this universe dies and is born again miraculously at each moment of duration, or you must attribute to it […] continuity of existence […] and make of its past a reality which endures and is prolonged into its present ».
Henri Bergson (1889), Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, éd. Arnaud Bouaniche, 2007, Paris, PUF, p. 75. I make use of the following English translation: Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, translated by F. L. Pogson, 2001, New York, Dover Publications: « an interconnection and organization of elements, each one of which represents the whole, and cannot be distinguished or isolated from it except by abstract thinking » (translation modified).
Henri Bergson (1907), L’évolution créatrice, éd. Arnaud François, 2007, Paris, PUF, p. 344-346. I make use of the following English translation: Creative Evolution, edited by Keith Ansell Pearson, Michael Kolkman, and Michael Vaughan, translated by Arthur Mitchell, 2007, New York, Palgrave Macmillan.
As I will show, what Bergson takes to be Descartes’ hesitation is in fact his distinction between res extensa (which is subject to mechanism) and res cogitans (which possesses freedom).
In the Discourse on Method Descartes acknowledges the indebtedness of his theory of continued creation to the preceding theologians (e.g., Aquinas, Suarez, etc.): « [It] is an opinion commonly received by the theologians, that the action by which He now preserves the world is just the same as that by which He at first created it » (AT VI 45). The question whether Descartes’ theory of continued creation signifies a point of continuity with the theologians or a point of discontinuity, although it is fundamental, is, of course, beyond the scope of this article.
Descartes, AT VIII 13. I make use of the following Latin edition of Descartes: Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (eds.) (AT hereafter), Œuvres de Descartes, 1964-1976, Paris, Vrin/C.N.R.S., volumes I-XI: « Nihilque hujus demonstrationis evidentiam potest obscurare, modò attendamus ad temporis sive rerum durationis naturam; quae talis est, ut ejus partes à mutuò non pendeant, nec unquam simul existant; atque ideò ex hoc quòd jam simus, non sequitur nos in tempore proximè sequenti etiam futuros, nisi aliqua causa, nempe eadem illa quae nos primum produxit, continuò veluti reproducat, hoc est, conservet ». I make use of the following English translation: The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, edited and translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, 1984-1991, New York, Cambridge, volumes I-III.
Descartes, AT VIII 30: « Ut, quia substantia quaevis, si cesset durare, cessat etiam esse ».
See Harry Frankfurt (1999), « Continuous Creation, Ontological Inertia, and the Discontinuity of Time », in Necessity, Volition, Love, Cambridge, CUP, p. 66.
Essentially, this is what Descartes calls a real distinction (distinctio realis) (AT VIII 28-29).
See Descartes, AT VII 66.
Given that Descartes’ theory of continuous creation arises out of the question of duration, it is not at all surprising that another thinker of duration, namely, Bergson, was so attracted to it (even though he did not agree with it).
Descartes, AT VII 49: « Itaque debeo nunc interrogare me ipsum, an habeam aliquam vim per quam possim efficere ut ego ille, qui jam sum, paulo post etiam sim futurus: nam, cum nihil aliud sim quam res cogitans, vel saltem cum de ea tantum mei parte praecise nunc agam quae est res cogitans, si quae talis vis in me esset, ejus proculdubio conscius essem. Sed & nullam esse experior, & ex hoc ipso evidentissime cognosco me ab aliquo ente a me diverso pendere ».
For Bergson’s criticism of the idea of nothingness as a pseudo-idea, see Henri Bergson (2007), L’évolution créatrice, p. 272-298.
Descartes, AT VII 369: « sed sol est causa lucis ab ipso procedentis, & Deus est causa rerum creatarum, non modò secundum fieri, sed etiam secundum esse, ideoque debet semper eodem modo influere in effectum, ut eundem conservet ».
See Harry Frankfurt (1999), « Continuous Creation, Ontological Inertia, and the Discontinuity of Time », p. 63.
Concerning the question of God sustaining himself in existence, see Jean-Luc Marion (1991), Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes : analogie, création des vérités éternelles et fondement, Paris, PUF, p. 436.
Descartes, AT VII 48-49: « Quoniam enim omne tempus vitae in partes innumeras dividi potest, quarum singulae a reliquis nullo modo dependent, ex eo quòd paulo ante fuerim, non sequitur me nunc debere esse ».
Descartes, AT VII 49: « nisi aliqua causa me quasi rursus creet ad hoc momentum, hoc est me conservet ». See also AT VII 53.
See Descartes, AT VIII 64.
On Descartes’ elimination of the notions of matter and potentiality, see Jean Wahl (1920), Du rôle de l’idée de l’instant dans la philosophie de Descartes, éd. Frédéric Worms, 1994, Paris, Descartes & Cie, p. 62-63 and p. 77-78. Frédéric Worms (1994) suggests that Wahl’s treatise on the role of instant in Descartes’ philosophy cannot be understood without reference to Bergson (to whom the treatise is dedicated): « De l’instant à l’autre : Descartes, Bergson, Jean Wahl et nous » in Frédéric Worms (éd.), Du rôle de l’idée de l’instant dans la philosophie de Descartes, Paris, Descartes & Cie, p. 22.
Bergson (2017) suggests that there are two fundamental cosmogonic possibilities, that of creation and that of uncreated, eternal matter: L’évolution du problème de la liberté: Cours au Collège de France 1904-1905, éd. Arnaud François, Paris, PUF, p. 241.
Henri Bergson (2017), L’évolution du problème de la liberté, p. 204: « [The] idea of creation is altogether absent […] in Greek philosophy: when the Greek divinity intervenes in the world, it does so by arranging it rather than creating, while in Jewish theology God creates the world ». This and all other quotations are my translations.
Descartes, AT VII 49: « Perspicuum enim est attendenti ad temporis naturam, eâdem plane vi & actione opus esse ad rem quam libet singulis momentis quibus durat conservandam, quâ opus esset ad eandem de novo creandam, si nondum existeret ».
Given that for Descartes time is indefinitely divisible, Frankfurt (1999) goes as far as to conclude that « there can be no existing thing whose duration is so short that it does not require continuous creation », such that « all creation entails continuous creation » and « God cannot create anything without conserving it for some period of time by continuous creative activity »: « Continuous Creation, Ontological Inertia, and the Discontinuity of Time », p. 62.
Descartes takes time to be indefinitely rather infinitely divisible. On the difference between the indefinite and the infinite, see Descartes, AT VIII 15, as well as Étienne Gilson (1913), La liberté chez Descartes et la théologie, Paris, Félix Alcan, p. 114.
See Henri Bergson (2007), L’évolution créatrice, p. 304-306.
Harry Frankfurt (1999), « Continuous Creation, Ontological Inertia, and the Discontinuity of Time », p. 65.
Henri Bergson (2007), Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, p. 156: « [The] successive moments of real time are not bound up with one another, and no effort of logic will succeed in proving that what has been will be or will continue to be […] Descartes understood this so well that he attributed the regularity of the physical world and the continuation of the same effects to the constantly renewed grace of Providence ».
Henri Bergson (2017), L’évolution du problème de la liberté, p. 214: « Without the unceasing renewal of the creative act of God the world would not subsist even for a single instant; it is necessary that God restarts the act of creation at every moment of duration »
See Henri Bergson (2007), L’évolution créatrice, p. 3.
Henri Bergson (2007), L’évolution créatrice, p. 344-345: « The oscillation is visible in Cartesianism. On the one hand, Descartes affirms universal mechanism: from this point of view, movement would be relative, and, as time has just as much reality as movement, it would follow that past, present, and future are given from all eternity. But, on the other hand (and that is why the philosopher has not gone to these extreme consequences), Descartes believes in the free will of man. He superposes on the determinism of physical phenomena the indeterminism of human actions, and, consequently, on time-length a time in which there is creation, invention, true succession. This duration he supports on a God who is unceasingly renewing the creative act, and who, being thus tangent to time and becoming, sustains them, communicates to them necessarily something of his absolute reality. When he places himself at this second point of view, Descartes speaks of movement, even spatial, as of an absolute. He therefore entered both roads one after the other, having resolved to follow neither of them to the end. The first would have led him to the denial of free will in man and of real will in God. It was the suppression of all efficient duration, the likening of the universe to a thing given, which a superhuman intelligence would embrace at once in a moment or in eternity. In following the second, on the contrary, he would have been led to all the consequences which the intuition of true duration implies. Creation would have appeared not simply as continued, but also as continuous. The universe, regarded as a whole, would really evolve. The future would no longer be determinable by the present ». For a brief discussion of this passage, see Camille Riquier (2009), Archéologie de Bergson : temps et métaphysique, Paris, PUF, p. 261-269.
For “création continuée”, see Henri Bergson (2007), L’évolution créatrice, p. 22, 179. For “création continue”, see Henri Bergson (2007), L’évolution créatrice, p. 11, 30, 224.
Henri Bergson (2007), L’évolution créatrice, p. 30: « a continuous creation of an unforeseeable form ».
For a similar point concerning Descartes’ distinction between res cogitans and res extensa, see Jean-Marie Beyssade (1979), La philosophie première de Descartes : le temps et la cohérence de la métaphysique, Paris, Flammarion, p. 174.
Descartes, AT VIII 14: « per unicam, semperque eandem & simplicissimam actionem ».
For Descartes’ account of the laws of nature, see AT VIII 61-66. See also Chapter VII of Descartes’ Le Monde (AT XI 36-37).
Descartes, AT VIII 66: « Sicque hae ipsa creaturarum continua mutatio immutabilitatis Dei est argumentum ».
See Descartes, AT VIII 61.
Henri Bergson (2017), L’évolution du problème de la liberté, p. 234: « God has created a determinate quantity of motion. This quantity could only be changed if God willed to either subtract or add something, but this would be contrary to the regular stability and constancy of God. That is why there is always the same quantity of motion in the universe ».
Jean Wahl (1994), Du rôle de l’idée de l’instant dans la philosophie de Descartes, p. 84. This and all other quotations are my translations.
Henri Bergson (2017), L’évolution du problème de la liberté, p. 236: « A superhuman intelligence that would know the position, speed and direction of all the particles of matter at a given moment could foresee, foretell, if it were endowed with an infinite mathematical aptitude, everything that would happen »
On this question, see Henri Bergson (2017), L’évolution du problème de la liberté, p. 234.
See Descartes, AT VIII 59-60 ; Etienne Gilson (1913), La liberté chez Descartes et la théologie, p. 116-117.
Descartes, AT VIII 59: « atque ita reliquis omnibus in locis motus celeritas angustiam loci compenset. Hoc enim pacto, in quovis determinato tempore, tantundem materiae per unam istius circuli partem, quam per alteram transibit ».
Jean Wahl (1994), Du rôle de l’idée de l’instant dans la philosophie de Descartes, p. 79.
Henri Bergson (2017), L’évolution du problème de la liberté, p. 236: « If one accepts the law of conservation of motion in full force, the result, it seems, would be that everything in the universe is calculable ». See also Descartes, AT VIII 78-79.
Henri Bergson (2007), L’évolution créatrice, p. 22: « The systems science works with are, in fact, in an instantaneous present that is always being renewed […] When the mathematician calculates the future state of a system at the end of a time t, there is nothing to prevent him from supposing that the universe vanishes from this moment till that, and suddenly reappears […] In short, the world the mathematician deals with is a world that dies and is reborn at every instant—the world which Descartes was thinking of when he spoke of continued creation ».
Descartes, AT VII 60: « cum enim voluntas in unâ tantùm re, & tanquam in indivisibili consistat, non videtur ferre ejus natura ut quicquam ab illâ demi possit ».
In Bergson’s (2017) words, human will constitutes « le point de contact [point of contact] » with God: L’évolution du problème de la liberté, p. 222.
Descartes, AT VII 57: « Sola est voluntas, sive arbitrii libertas, quam tantam in me experior, ut nullius majoris ideam apprehendam; adeo ut illa praecipue sit, ratione cujus imaginem quandam & similitudinem Dei me referre intelligo ».
Descartes, AT VIII 65: « ex eo quòd differentia fit inter motum in se spectatum & ipsius determinationem versus certam partem, quâ fit ut ista determinatio possit mutari, motu integro remanente ».
Henri Bergson (2017), L’évolution du problème de la liberté, p. 236: « Descartes believes that the quantity of motion in the universe is constant. But from this it does not follow that the direction of every motion is necessarily determined; given that the quantity of motion subsists, it is not necessary for the direction to be considered as determined ».
Descartes, AT VIII 64: « an enim, & qualem, mentes humanae vel Angelicae vim habeant corpora movendi, non jam inquirimus ».
Henri Bergson (2017), L’évolution du problème de la liberté, p. 237: « It is possible that in Descartes’ thinking human freedom is compatible with the mechanism of nature, since […] it is conceivable that certain motions are indeterminate, and it is of this indeterminacy that human liberty avails itself ».
Bergson (2017) himself expresses his hesitation regarding this interpretation of Descartes’ Principia II, 41: L’évolution du problème de la liberté, p. 237.
Descartes, AT VII 24: « Suppono igitur omnia quae video falsa esse : credo nihil unquam existisse eorum quae mendax memoria repraesentat ; nullos plane habeo sensus ; corpus, figura, extensio, motus, locusque sunt chimerae. Quid igitur erit verum ? Fortassis hoc unum, nihil esse certi ».
Descartes, AT VII 21: « Deu […] qui potest omnia ».
Descartes, AT VII 22: « genium aliquem malignum, eundemque summe potentem ». On the relationship between Descartes’ omnipotent God and malicious demon, see Jean-Luc Marion (1991), Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes, p. 340-342. See also Harry Frankfurt (1999), « Descartes on the Creation of Eternal Truths », in Necessity, Volition, Love, Cambridge, CUP, p. 30.
Descartes, AT VII 21.
Descartes, AT I 145: « Que les verités mathematiques, lesquelles vous nommés eternelles, ont esté establies de Dieu & en dependent entieremant, aussy bien que tout le reste des creatures. C’est en effait parler de Dieu comme d’un Iupitter ou Saturne, & l’assuiettir aus Stix & aus destinees, que de dire que ces verités sont independantes de luy ».
Descartes, AT I 152: « il a esté aussi libre de faire qu’il ne fust pas vray que toutes les lignes tirées du centre à la circonference fussent égales, comme de ne pas creer le monde ».
Descartes, AT I 146: « ce seroit temerité de penser que nostre imagination a autant d’estendue que sa puissance ».
See Descartes, AT VII 21, 35-36, and 77, and AT VIII 6.
Descartes, AT I 150: « la premiere & la plus eternelles de toutes les veritez qui peuvent estre, & la seule d’où procedent toutes les autres ». On this point, see Jean-Luc Marion (1991), Sur la théologie blanche de Descartes, p. 301.
Descartes, AT VII 25: « Sed mihi persuasi nihil plane esse in mundo, nullum coelum, nullum terram, nullas mentes, nulla corpora ; nonne igitur etiam me non esse ? Imo certe ego eram, si quid mihi persuasi. Sed est deceptor nescio quis, summe potens, summe callidus, qui de industriâ me semper fallit ; & fallat quantum potest, nunquam tamen efficiet, ut nihil sim quamdiu me aliquid esse cogitabo. Adeo ut, omnibus satis superque pensitatis, denique statuendum fit hoc pronuntiatum, Ego sum, ego existo, quoties a me profertur, vel mente concipitur, necessario esse verum ».
See Descartes, AT VIII 7.
Henri Bergson (2017), L’évolution du problème de la liberté, p. 201: « the human being finds before himself nature and truth that have already been created ».
See Descartes, AT VII 68.
See Descartes, AT VII 22, 24.
Descartes, AT VII 27: « Hic invenio : cogitation est ; haec sola a me divelli nequit. Ego sum, ego existo ; certum est. Quandiu autem ? Nempe quandiu cogito; nam forte etiam fieri posset, si cessarem ab omni cogitatione ».
Wahl (1994) goes as far as to say that « it is by an instantaneous act of thinking that the mind can deliver itself from doubt. But doubt is but an instantaneous act [un acte instantané] »: Du rôle de l’idée de l’instant dans la philosophie de Descartes, p. 49. For a critique of such reading, see Jean-Marie Beyssade (1979), La philosophie première de Descartes, p. VI-VII, 18, and 135. See also Harry Frankfurt (1999), « Continuous Creation, Ontological Inertia, and the Discontinuity of Time », p. 60-62.
Descartes, AT VII 49.
Descartes, AT VIII 13.
Descartes, AT V 193: « atqui prespicue intelligimus fieri posse ut existam hoc momento, quo unum quid cogito, & tamen ut non existam momento proxime sequenti ».
Jean Wahl (1994), Du rôle de l’idée de l’instant dans la philosophie de Descartes, p. 52.
Frédéric Worms (1994), « De l’instant à l’autre: Descartes, Bergson, Jean Wahl et nous », p. 42. This and all other quotations are my translations. Therefore, I agree with Worms’ (1994) conclusion regarding Wahl’s reading of Descartes: « The key to the idea of an instant is found in our condition […] Thus, it is through forgetting and death, possible at every instant or, as an event, capable of arriving from one moment to another, that Descartes first came across “the idea of the independence of moments of time,” which leads him into doubt in search of an instant in which truth and certitude would be combined »: « De l’instant à l’autre : Descartes, Bergson, Jean Wahl et nous », p. 42.
Descartes, AT VII 45-46: « nam contra manifeste intelligo plus realitatis esse in substantiâ infinitâ quam in finitâ, ac proinde priorem quadammodo in me esse perceptionem infiniti quam finiti, hoc est Dei quam mei ipsius. Quâ enim ratione intelligerem me dubitare, me cupere, hoc est, aliquid mihi deesse, & me non esse omnino perfectum, si nulla idea entis perfectioris in me esset, ex cujus comparatione defectus meos agnoscerem ? ».
Descartes, AT VII 47: « gradatim augeri, certissimum est imperfectionis argumentum ».
Descartes, AT VII 46: « Nec obstat quod non comprehendam infinitum […] est enim de de ratione infiniti, ut a me, qui sum finitus, non comprehendatur ».
Descartes, AT VII 52: « Ex quibus fatis satis patet illum fallacem esse non posse ; omnem enim fraudem & deceptionem a defectu aliquo pendere, lumine naturali manifestum est ».
Descartes, AT VII 89: « quae praesentia cum praecedentibus connectit ».
Descartes, AT VII 90: « earumque perceptionem absque ullâ interruptione cum totâ reliquâ vitâ connecto ».
Descartes, AT VII 89: « in eo quòd nunquam insomnia cum reliquis omnibus actionibus vitae a memoriâ conjungantur, ut ea quae vigilanti occurrunt ».
Descartes, AT VII 89-90: « nam sane, si quis, dum vigilo, mihi derepente appareret, statimque postea dispareret, […] ita scilicet ut nec unde venisset, nec quo abiret ».
Descartes, AT VII 90: « unde, ubi, & quando mihi adveniant ».
On this point, see Camille Riquier (2009), Archéologie de Bergson, p. 265.
Descartes, AT VII 55: « non enim absque temeritate me puto posse investigare fines Dei ». On the role of Descartes’ elimination of the distinction between God’s understanding and God’s will in his critique of finalism, see Étienne Gilson (1913), La liberté chez Descartes et la théologie, p. 76-96.
Hans Blumenberg (1966), The Legitimacy of Modern Age, translated by Robert M. Wallace, 1983, Cambridge, MIT, p. 206.
Descartes, AT VIII 20: « Sed quia jam Deum agnoscentes, tam immensam in eo potestatem esse percipimus, ut nesas esse putemus existimare, aliquid unquam à nobis fieri posse, quod non antè ab ipso fuerit praeordinatum : facilè possumus nos ipsos magnis difficultatibus intricare, si hanc Dei praeordinationem cum arbitrii nostri libertate conciliare, atque utramque simul comprehendere conemur ».
Descartes, AT VIII 20: « Illis verò nos expediemus, si recordemur mentem nostram esse finitam; Dei autem potentiam, per quam non tantùm omnia, quae sunt aut esse possunt, ab aeterno praescivit, sed etiam voluit ac praeordinavit, esse infinitam; […] libertatus autem & indifferentiae, quae in nobis est, nos ita conscios esse, ut nihil fit quod evidentiùs & perfectiùs comprehendamus. Absurdum enim esset, propterea quòd non comprehendimus unam rem, quam scimus ex naturâ suâ nobis esse debere incomprehensibilem, de aliâ dubitare, quam intimè comprehendimus, atque apud nosmet ipsos experimur ».
At this point, we can roughly distinguish between three domains of analysis in Descartes: first, the domain of res extensa which is subject to mechanism; second, the domain of res cogitans to which free will is ascribed; third, the domain of divine preordination in which the previous two domains are somehow albeit in a way that is incomprehensible to us.
Frédéric Worms (1994), « De l’instant à l’autre : Descartes, Bergson, Jean Wahl et nous », p. 42.
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