Among philosophies qualified as great, Bergsonism is probably the philosophy that shows the least settled fate. After enjoying wide national and international popularity at the turn of the twentieth century, its influence reaching, beyond the philosophical field, to scientists, artists, and theologians, it became the target of sustained criticisms from different philosophical circles. The criticisms emanated from such various sources as phenomenologist and existential thinkers, neo-Marxist, positivist, and neo-Kantian schools, as well as Catholic scholars. These criticisms were all the more amplified as they drew on the authority of prominent and popular thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre, Bertrand Russel, Jacques Maritain, Gaston Bachelard, Georges Politzer, and others, who wrote targeted essays denouncing Bergsonism. These writings exposed the irrational inspiration of the philosophy and tied it to the other alleged defaults of Bergsonism, such as social conservatism, anti-science stand, mystic ramblings, vitalist credo, etc. The criticisms were so ferocious that they precipitated the whole philosophy into what one author does not hesitate to depict as āphilosophical obsolescence.ā 1 Most remarkable, though, is that the decline of the philosophy is progressively coming to an end, as evidenced by the recent āincreasing interest in Bergsonian philosophyā and āthe rising tide of essays, books, courses and conferencesā devoted to it. 2 The scholars who are instrumental in this resurgence all suggest that Henri Bergsonās eclipse was caused by readings that failed to pay attention to the originality of the work, perhaps because he resented the use of an esoteric lexicon. The proof is that Gilles Deleuze, the philosopher who contributed most to the revival of Bergsonism, did nothing else but disclose how Bergsonās thinking imparts to traditional concepts new and groundbreaking directions. To the impact of misreading, one must add the provocative side of Bergsonism. Indeed, the philosophy touches on subjects that usually are taboos for philosophers because they categorize them as manifestations of irrationality, such as intuitive knowledge, mysticism, and psychical research. As a result, everything looks as though irrationality, far from being an allegation, is defiantly claimed by Bergson himself.
This study hopes to contribute to Bergsonās revival by providing a perspective that gives an insight into the originality and strength of his work. It rests on the central thesis that Bergsonās notion of time, that is, time as duration, is the other name for a conception of being as self-overcoming. The provided perspective does not adhere to the order of invention by following the sequence of publication of Bergsonās books. Rather, it demonstrates the centrality of the notion of self-overcoming by using the method of logical derivation. It thus shows that all Bergsonās basic concepts, such as intuitive knowledge, creation, the virtual and the actual, the vital Ć©lan, the closed and the open society, are all instances of self-overcoming, and that the famous Bergsonian oppositions (quantity/quality, space/time, matter/memory, freedom/determinism, etc.) are not contradictory because they are analytic, objectified views on the indivisible dynamics governing the overstepping of limitations. 3 In other words, my contention is that most of the criticisms addressed to the notion of duration originate from the difficulty in understanding time in terms other than chronology, despite Bergsonās insistence that it is being in the making and, as such, one that equally excludes the no more and the not yet. To think in duration is to think being without holes and latencies, that is, without negativity. Being is means being is becoming, not in a passing time, but āin a present which is thick, and furthermore, elastic, which we can stretch indefinitely backward by pushing the screen which masks us from ourselves farther and farther away.ā 4 If we can stretch it indefinitely, it is because it rolls up on itself so that it is made rather than being undone or filling gaps.
To have a good idea of the groundbreaking impact of Bergsonās notion of duration, no better way exists than to show how the notion fuses crucial attributes of reality that philosophers often considered as incompatible. I have in mind the problem that philosophy faced since its inception, namely, the relation of being with movement and change. Though the relation is undeniable, philosophers found it difficult to apprehend without transgressing the principle of non-contradiction. Indeed, the condition for that which is to cease to be and for that which is not to come into being is the granting of some kind of reality to non-being. But nothing is nothing or, as Parmenides puts it, ānever shall it be proven that not-being is.ā 5 Accordingly, there is no possible transition from being to not being or from not being to being. Once the ontological impasse was admitted, two alternatives remained to avoid the extreme solution of the rejection of movement and change. The one alternative was to insert some emptiness or lack into being, thereby conceiving of change as realization, development, be it through the actualization of potentialities or the dialectical resolution of inner contradictions. The other possibility was to exchange content for form so that what is no more and what is not yet reveal how we represent being, not how being is in itself. Taken up by many modern schools of thought, including phenomenology, this last Kantian solution by way of subjectification had one major unintended impact. More than the proposed solution, its critical dimension convinced Bergson that the friction between being and time stems from the use of a representational notion of time. The no more, the not yet, and the ephemeral present characteristic of time as chronology are all negative notions denoting absence and evanescence. Hardly could there be a notion as antithetical to the concept of being as this passing time.
It springs to mind that the conception of time that is more in line with the idea of being is duration. In opposition to the idea of dissolving time, duration turns time into a continuity that builds up or creates. What else does enduring mean but creation because its moments, instead of juxtaposing in a successive line, prolong into one another, thereby forming a rolling process? Since this idea of time does not puncture being with holes and latencies, it expels nothingness. Moreover, the fusion of moments initiates a self-generating process that can take two forms: (1) extension when the prolongation of moments is relaxed to the point of displaying contents, without thereby reaching the point of separation; and (2) condensation when the moments of time are gathered, yielding an indivisible qualitative heterogeneity. Since the two directions are two sides of the same reality, the procedure realizes self-creation through the compressed gathering of what is obtained through relaxation. The obvious conclusion is that Bergsonās notion of creation is exactly a process of self-overcoming.
This book demonstrates the centrality of the concept of self-overcoming by using it as a lens not only to highlight the major Bergsonian theses but also to correct misinterpretations that are often responsible for most of the unfair criticisms. Thus, Chapter 2 elucidates Bergsonās notion of intuitive knowledge, the reason for dealing with this issue fir...