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Ways Leading to Bergson's Notion of “Perpetual Present”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
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In his philosophy of life, Bergson's aim is very clear: to determine, beyond mechanism and finalism, the essence of change and of evolution according to the order of duration in opposition to the order of space or juxtaposition. His intention is to penetrate the specificity of the order of duration. Regarding time, the analyses of the previous philosophers are proved to be deceiving, since all of them, according to him, ended up in reducing time to a succession of simultaneities. Founded on the order of magnitude, mechanism lines up succession as a series of numbers, finalism adds to succession the law of the better: in both cases all is already given and time is reduced to a mere appearance. Nowhere do we find a process in depth; as time is conceived as the realization of a programme previously arranged, everything is simply spread out in space.
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- Copyright © 1990 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, p. 808. New York, The Macmil lan Company.
2 Henry Bergson, The Creative mind, p. 96. New York, Philosophical Library.
3 Heraclitus, The Cosmic Fragments, p. 245. Cambridge University Press, 1962.
4 Heraclitus, op. cit., p. 307.
5 Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, p. 340. New York, Greenwood Press.
6 See Maurice Merleau-Ponty, L'union de l'âme et du corps chez Malebranche, Biran et Bergson, p. 85. Vrin, 1968.
7 G.W.F. Hegel, Hegel's Logic, Being Part 1 of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, translated by William Wallance, pp. 125-126. Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1975.
8 Bergson, Creative Evolution, op. cit., p. 109.
9 Bergson, The Creative Mind, op. cit., p. 218.
10 Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, op. cit., p. 244.
11 Bergson, Creative Evolution, op. cit., p. 149.
12 Hegel, Hegel's Logic, op. cit., p. 126.
13 Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique of Dialectical Reason, p. 47. NLB.
14 Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, op. cit., p. 81.
15 Hegel, op. cit., pp. 81-82.
16 Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, p. 286. New York, Henry Holt and Company.
17 In this study we deal exclusively with Hegelian dialectics. The dialectics of Marx obviously present a different texture. We only need to observe that this critique against Hegel was already made by Marx to measure the distance separating him from Hegel. Indeed, Marx, following Feuerbach, has criticized the manner peculiar to Hegel of "positing, negating and re-establishing" (Early Writings, p. 393. The Pelican Marx Library). The method preserves what it meant to negate. Thus, con cerning the Hegelian negation of religion, Marx writes: "If I know religion as alienat ed human self-consciousness, then what I know in it as religion is not my self-consciousness but my alienated self-consciousness confirmed in it. Thus I know that the self-consciousness which belongs to the essence of my own self is confirmed not in religion but in the destruction and supersession of religion." (Early Writ ings, p. 393).
18 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond good and evil, p. 134. London, Penguin Classics.
19 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols. The Anti-Christ, p. 91. London, Pen guin Classics.
20 Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Will to Power", p. 253. New York, Vintage Books.
21 Nietzsche, op. cit., p. 547.
22 Nietzsche, op. cit., p. 548.
23 Nietzsche, op. cit., p. 546.
24 Nietzsche, op. cit., p. 550.
25 Bergson, Creative Evolution, op. cit., p. 277.
26 Bergson, The Creative Mind, op. cit., p. 180.
27 Nietzsche, The Will to Power, op. cit., p. 549.
28 Nietzsche, op. cit., p. 355.
29 Friedrich Nietzsche, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", London, Penguin Classics.
30 Nietzsche, op. cit., p. 42.
31 Bergson, "Creative Evolution", op. cit., p. 290.
32 Bergson, op. cit., p. 289.
33 Bergson, op. cit., p. 268.
34 Bergson, op. cit., p. 272.
35 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, op. cit., p. 31.
36 Bergson, "The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, op. cit., p. 257.
37 This conclusion gives us the opportunity to compare the position of Bergson with that of Lévi-Strauss who stated that it is "not only fallacious but contradicto ry to conceive of the historical process of a continuous development." (The Savage Mind, p. 260. Weidenfeld and Nicolson). In many ways the debate we have opened between Hegel and Bergson recalls the confrontation that Lévi-Strauss had with Sartre. When Structuralism refuses the cumulative process of history, which is said to go always in the same direction, and replaces it by the notion of history as a discontinuous process, as composed of different slices that do not form a series, it is obvious that it is repeating in different words the description given by Bergson of creative evolution. Bergsonism and Structuralism do not exactly coincide, but it is amazing to observe that the Structuralists, being content with the superficial reading of Bergson as philosopher of continuity, failed to see in him their eminent precursor.
38 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs, p. 188. Ill., Northwestern University Press, 1964. The book contains an article, entitled "Bergson in the making", which ex hibits a dilemma. On the one hand Merleau-Ponty states that Bergson "does not seem to have impregnated himself with history as he had with life (p. 188), on the other, Bergson being philosopher of duration, Merleau-Ponty finds it hard to un derstand why he "did not think about history from within" (p. 187). He tries to explain this apparent contradiction by the emphasis that Bergson is making on the arrested nature of social life. According to Merleau-Ponty, this emphasis resulted in a pessimistic view of social life. However, it must be clear by now that the dilem ma springs from a reductionist reading of Bergson. Owing to the nature of Bergso nian duration, there cannot be a simple, continuous, all-embracing historical process. It is not due to a pessimistic inclination but to the very nature of the spirit of his philosophy that Bergson, as pointed out by Merleau-Ponty himself, has refused to follow Peguy on the question of history.
39 Nietzsche, The Will to Power, op. cit., p. 216.