Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-l4ctd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-06T12:23:19.747Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Aporetic Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

F. C. T. Moore
Affiliation:
The University of Hong Kong
Get access

Summary

The view of philosophy as a practice of being worried by problems or difficulties (by an aporia or bewilderment), and trying to resolve or dissolve them (through thought, discussion, writing or other practice), is ancient and widespread. Although Bergson's work is not overtly aporetic in style or character, he is sensible to any philosophy which constitutes itself as a set of problems, and, as we have seen, has a diagnosis of how such problems sometimes arise. It is a peculiarity of this book to draw out from Bergson's writings, in the spirit of this diagnosis, some approaches to such problems, even when he does not himself address them, or offer solutions to them, or dissolutions of them.

While I recognise that there is some artificiality in this, in the sense that I thereby give a certain privilege to problems which Bergson did not consider real, there are nonetheless two good reasons for this approach. First, Bergson himself often took up and responded to problems arising outside his own central areas of work. And secondly, there is a value in showing how problems which seem deep from one philosophical perspective disappear, or become trivial from another.

In what follows, I shall try to develop further the results so far obtained from our reading and reconstruction of aspects of Bergson's work by applying them further to the problems of the weakness of the will, Buridan's Ass, and the Sorites problem for vague observational predicates.

Type
Chapter
Information
Bergson
Thinking Backwards
, pp. 97 - 104
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Aporetic Philosophy
  • F. C. T. Moore, The University of Hong Kong
  • Book: Bergson
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139172509.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Aporetic Philosophy
  • F. C. T. Moore, The University of Hong Kong
  • Book: Bergson
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139172509.008
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Aporetic Philosophy
  • F. C. T. Moore, The University of Hong Kong
  • Book: Bergson
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139172509.008
Available formats
×