References
- I would like to thank the Critique of Judgment reading group we had at the University of Dundee during the fall semester 2004. In particular, James Williams’ and Rachel Jones’ invaluable comments and insights helped me think through a lot of the ideas developed in what follows. Of course, any mistake is my own. Also, I was given the opportunity to present the first version of this paper at the 2004 BSP conference in Oxford. James Williams’ and Frédéric Worms’ insightful comments were particularly helpful to me to revise it.
- See Bergson's introduction to Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer, New York: Zone Books 1991, p. 1/9; Matière et Mémoire, Paris: PUF 1997; hereafter referred to in the text as MM.
- See Bergson's “Leçons sur la Critique de la raison pure“ in Cours III, Henri Hude ed. Paris: PUF 1995, p. 39.
- In their excellent introduction to Bergson, Key Writings (hereafter BKW), Keith Ansell-Pearson and John Mullarkey explain that William James compared the effects of Matter and Memory to a Copernican revolution on a par with Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Bergson, Key Writings, Keith Ansell-Pearson and John Mullarkey, ed., New York and London: Continuum 2002, p. 12; hereafter BKW. See also William James’ letter to Bergson dated December 14th, 1902 in Mélanges, Paris: PUF 1972, p. 567).
- Bergson, “Introduction à la métaphysique“ in La pensée et le mouvant, Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan 1934, p. 255. “Introduction to Metaphysics” in The Creative Mind, trans. Mabelle L. Andison, Totowa: Littlefield, Adams and Co 1975, p. 200.
- Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, Paris: PUF 2001; Time and Free Will, trans. F. L. Pogson, New York: Harper and Row 1960; hereafter referred to as TFW.
- L'Évolution créatrice, Paris: PUF 1998; Creative Evolution, trans. A. Mitchell, New York: Random House 1944; hereafter referred to as CE.
- For a full elaboration of this claim, see Bergson's 1930 “Le Possible et le Réel” in La Pensée et le Mouvant, pp. 91–134; “The Possible and the Real” in The Creative Mind, pp. 91–107. For example, Bergson writes, “If we leave aside the closed systems, subjected to purely mathematical laws, isolable because duration does not act upon them, if we consider the totality of concrete reality or simply the world of life, and still more that of consciousness, we find there is more and not less in the possibility of each successive state than in their reality. For the possible is only the real with the addition of an act of mind which throws its image back into the past, once it has been enacted. But that is what our intellectual habits prevent us from seeing” (126–127/99–100).
- Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar, Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company 1987, Part I, Book 2, § 26, p.112, my emphases; from now on referred to as CJ.
- In their introduction to Bergson, Key Writings, Ansell-Pearson and Mullarkey note that although the use of the term multiplicity refers to Riemannian geometry, Bergson wants to show that time—that is, life or change—is psychical in essence; as such, it is not of a mathematical or logical order. In fact, Bergson transforms the nature of the Riemannian distinction, thereby challenging Russell's thinking of time as well (pp. 7f).
- We will come back to this point below, as I argue that it is the core of the divergence between Bergson and Kant.
- See Leonard Lawlor and Valentine Moulard's Bergson entry in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson).
- See also, “The Introduction to Metaphysics”. There, Bergson writes, “[Metaphysics] is strictly itself only when it goes beyond the concept, or at least when it frees itself of the inflexible and ready-made concepts and creates others very different from those we usually handle, I mean flexible, mobile, almost fluid representations, always ready to mould themselves on the fleeting forms of intuition” (The Creative Mind, 213/168).
- As both James Williams and Frédéric Worms astutely pointed out in response to this paper, it would seem that my criticism of Kant fails to take into account the exceptional case of genius. Kant defines it as follows: “Genius is the mental predisposition (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art” (CJ Part I, Book II, § 46). Thus, Kant continues, “genius is the talent for producing something for which no determinate rule can be given…hence the foremost property of genius must be originality“ (ibid). Here, it does seem as if Kant were allowing for a case in which determination does not come from an already posited form, rule, or schema. Still, I contend, this does not lead to a reconciliation between transcendental idealism and virtual materialism. Some essential differences remain between Kant's account of genius and Bergson's account of the intellectual effort. Firstly, genius for Kant can neither be taught, nor can it be copied: it must be innate (CJ Part I, Book II, par. 47). This suggests that for Kant, no effort, however intent, can ever yield a situation in which a new rule is created. Not so for Bergson. Although in his view, it is certainly not the case that anyone can be called a genius, he does show that through effort, we can all, to some extent, create new forms and new rules. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, I firmly believe that, even if Kant does allow for the increased creativity of the imagination in the case of genius, he does not go as far as allowing for the elasticity of the schema—which, for Bergson, necessarily entails the mutual determination of form and matter. Rather, Kant writes, “Genius can only provide rich material for products of fine art; processing this material and giving it form requires a talent that is academically trained, so that it may be used in a way that can stand the test of the power of judgment” (ibid, my emphasis). In other words, the creativity involved in genius must still, in the end, be submitted to the understanding. And the understanding, we have shown, is itself always already determined and negatively limited by the transcendental forms. Ultimately, then, I want to maintain that Bergson's insistence on the mutual determination of form and matter displayed in the intellectual effort and captured in his elaboration of the Virtual constitutes an innovation in relation to—and indeed, a progress over—the Kantian transcendental.
- Letter from Bergson to William James dated 27th June 1907. Mélanges, 726–7. Trans. Melissa McMahon, BKW, 362.
- See Bergson's powerful critique of the Kantian categorical imperative in the first chapter of his 1932 The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, trans. R. Ashley Audra and Cloudesley Brereton, Garden City: Doubleday & Company 1935. For example, “In a word, an absolutely categorical imperative is somnambulistic, enacted as such in a normal state, represented as such if reflection is roused long enough to take form, not long enough to seek for reasons. But then, is it not evident that, in a reasonable being, an imperative will tend to become categorical in proportion as the activity brought into play, although intelligent, will tend to become instinctive? But an activity which, starting as intelligent, progresses towards an imitation of instinct is exactly what we call, in a man, a habit” (20/26)?