An Introduction to the Philosophy of Henri Bergson

Duration, Memory and Élan vital

Last time we talked a little about the Philosopher Henri Bergson and his concept of a false problem, I feel it might be worth giving a short introduction to Bergsonism, both for its own sake and to illustrate how a grasp of his philosophy can provide the vital starting materials for projects such as the one I have begun here; for in Bergson we find the first truly modern attempt at a meta-physics for science, and the remains of a great battle for the soul of knowledge.

To know Bergson we must know his ideas, which Deleuze helpfully marks out as being: Duration, Memory & Élan vital. All flow from one another with each new idea being a natural continuation of the previous work, and so we must quite sensibly begin at the beginning, with his first work, ‘Time and Free Will’, and the concept of Duration.

Duration and multiplicities

To understand Duration it is helpful to begin by asking what problem Bergson was trying to solve, or in a sense create, by this concept. For Bergson, Duration was a response to the question of Time, which he saw as being improperly treated by both scientists and philosophers. We misunderstand Time, he says, by thinking of it in the mechanical way of Science, as a series of passing instants, with the present always arriving and the past always disappearing. Thus we fail to see the continual flow of time into and out of itself. For time accumulates, what we think of as the past is not gone, but always here, and it is from the past that the present is born.

Now this is a difficult concept to get ones head around, certainly Bertrand Russell never managed to understand it. To grasp it, it is helpful to understand the two kinds of multiplicities through which we experience elements of reality. For this purpose Bergson invites us to compare numbers and Music:

Picture a number in your mind, any number, odds are you’re picturing it as a physical entity; that is, you’re probably imagining something like a big three dimensional 1 as an object in space. For if I told you to picture another number as well, say 4, you would likely see both as separate - in other words you are thinking of numbers spatially. We place number spatially even in our heads, with the one and the four being separate from each other, almost physical things like a pair of neighbours. They live next to each other but are obviously separate.

Continuing on then, Bergson remarks that even though we place numbers spatially, we forget that every number, seemingly a whole is actually itself divisible into an infinite amount of other numbers, and divisible without fundamentally changing what it is, ie number. For those numbers we imagined earlier which seemed separate and whole, were themselves divisible into infinite other numbers and could be added to create other numbers. This may seem like an odd thing to get hung up on, but this is what Bergson calls a ‘quantitative multiplicity’, which is quote:

“quantitative multiplicity enumerates things or states of consciousness by means of externalizing one from another in a homogeneous space. (Time and Free Will, p. 122).”

This just means that for something like number we examine it by separating it out in space without losing any of what we’re examining. This is to be contrasted with say, Music, which cannot be placed spatially without losing what it is. A particular note or cord can be separated from the whole of course, but if done one is not left with a piece of the original music, but rather a disconnected note with none of the power of the original. One has not then captured part of the original; by separating it, you have killed it.

This for Bergson, is a qualitative multiplicity, and this is what Time is.

For Time is also not divisible into neat, separate chunks. To try to do so may be possible, but it leads one to completely mistake what time really is - accumulation; Being itself. The totality of Being which is always in the process of becoming. For the present, every passing present, contains all the past that ever was, and together all of us, are charging into the future.

Bergson is big on analogies and examples, and the best I can add to it is the example of the Japanese video game Katamari Damacy, in which one gathers up as many objects as possible, accumulating more and more mass as one rolls along. Time is similar to this for Bergson, with each new accumulation and change giving birth to a new katamari, which fittingly becomes a star. For the future is not the past itself, for the new accumulation always adds and thus makes it a little different, with completely unpredictable results.

This idea of Time in brief is what Bergson calls Duration, the past endures and accumulates and is not divisible the way science would like. But how does this duration endure? Where is it stored? This question brings us to Bergsons second and perhaps most brilliant and difficult work – Matter and Memory (1896) and another key idea – Memory.

Matter and Memory

Bergson’s honing in on memory is one of his more brilliant moves, for this often overlooked aspect of the human may hold the key to how we actually live – with almost everything we do being connected with memory. For Bergson, memory is the answer to the question of how we access Duration, that is Time and Bring. For it is Memory that allows us to access the past, but not just our own, but the past in general. In short, memory gives us access to capital B Being; it gives us access to virtual planes in which the past in general is stored, complete and whole. We have difficulty in accessing these plains in the detail we would sometimes like, for it is like trying to find some spot in a vast country, (remember time is quality not quantity) but none the less it is there and makes itself felt always.

This may seem strange, after all isn’t memory just neurons in the brain? Bergson spends a great deal of effort arguing that consciousness cannot simply be reduced to mere signals in the brain, or indeed the brain alone – this we will skip over the details of. For this short introduction to Bergson it is enough to list several key arguments in brief:

- He argues that while the brain is necessary for memory, it is not the same thing; rather, as the ground is vital for a river to flow, it is also not the same thing as the water that actually flows – so too is the Brain to Memory.

- Bergson claims that memory is not of matter, but spirit, and it is from this that consciousness arises.

- He affirms the reality of both matter and of spirit, effectively ending the argument between idealism and realism, with the book in general being both a response to Kant and to modern science.

- He separates out perception, granting to matter that it is what it appears to be, but only what is interesting to us is perceived – granting to science that matter is largely what they says it is. However once we arrive at consciousness, at ourselves, this we understand only through Sprit, which again Bergson links squarely with Memory.

- Memory for Bergson is not just an individuals memory, but memory in general, that is to say, we have access not just to our past, but the Past in general. For Bergson then, the past is Being, with everything that that word entails.

Bergsonian memory then is a unique and fascinating scientific and philosophical idea, using memory and time to account both for Being, and how we have access to it.

To recap then, duration is how we experience time, an accumulation that is quality and not quantity. We have access to this duration through memory and spirit, which makes up our consciousness.

From Duration and memory then it is a natural enough jump to extend these concepts from simply the human to all life. Could not, Bergson asks, all life in the universe be explained by Duration and Spirit – change and becoming. This brings us to the third of Bergson’s great ideas – Elan vital; This is the theme of Creative Evolution, considered by some to be his masterpiece.

Creative Evolution and Elan Vital

The traditional theory of evolution views life as a series of accidental mutations that nature rewards with continued existence. Bergson challenges this idea in much the same way he challenged both the scientific view of Time, and then the materialistic understanding of the brain and consciousness. He follows his now tried and true method of granting the Science, but denying it the right to define life as just mechanistic forces. For rather than accident, he offers creativity as the driving force of life.

Life for Bergson is a force, an attacking force at war with the stagnate but inescapable gravity of matter, which like the devil is always at work to bring down life. Yet life is always one step ahead, forever leaping like a horse over collapsing ground, it survives through creativity; through creation and birth. Always when matter breaks down the walls of one citadel it finds it abandoned, life having leaped to another creature, taking with it all its past, gathered through duration. This creative force Bergson calls Elan Vital – a force that is life itself, charging into the future, armed with all the past and finding its highest form in the human, who is itself consciously creative – life made manifest, the divine species..

Bergeron stresses though that Life has no teleology, but rather a kind of consciousness, an intelligence not outside it, but inside it. Evolution then is to be infused with a vitalism, the transformation of life to be more than just a series of fortunate accidents – instead creative action.

Bergson again extends a great detail of effort stating various pieces of scientific, logical and philosophical evidence to back up his claim. He is extremely well read in the science of his time and explains how difficult it is to imagine the massive coincidences necessary for complex systems to evolve without something internal which is, for lack of a better word, intelligent. Random change cannot make an eye without also making 50 other half finished or otherwise incomplete ‘accidents’. Life may be brutal, but is it so brutal as to punish all such mutations immediately? How then could anything be built when something only becomes useful when it is fully complete? Either nature is so cruel that any non-useful mutations are punished immediately or it is soft enough to allow life to develop like a pre-schooler art project. Randomness then is not enough, says Bergson, there must be something in life that is aware of what it is doing, something that is within all life and that perhaps is life, working like an artist carefully building up the layers until – Abracadabra.

Conclusions

What are we to make of Bergsonism? How accurate is it? How useful is it? If he was so smart, how come he is almost totally forgotten? The answer to all these questions is really one – For Bergsonism at its best was never meant to be a closed system, some all encompassing world-view to be learned and repeated, it was meant to be picked up and expanded. Yet this did not happen, Bergson was unable to create a true following despite his mass following. He was extremely popular in his time yet was unable to bring philosophy and science together in a time when such a thing was still thinkable. His clash with Einstein, over what as far as I can tell was simply a misunderstanding, only further damaged this cause.

Bergsonism to be successful needed to show how limited mechanistic thinking was, and how important to the study life the use of philosophic and intuitive methods is. This was a task beyond any single man and yet he very nearly succeeded, and if the historical period had not shifted so rapidly towards American pragmatism and soviet materialism he might never have been forgotten. As it was the necessities of atomic bombs and space travel meant science was never going to accept a partnership with philosophy which limited its power or scope, not while it could rule alone.

Yet Bergson’s come back is on, I am convinced that not a single problem of the early 20th century was ever really confronted, rather it was paved over with American gold and soviet steel. Now they’re bursting like rivets in a sinking submarine and we must pick up where he left off.

For it is in Bergson that we see the beginning of a meta-physics for modern science, it is in him that we find a path to seeing life as beautiful again; it is he who offers us a rigorous way to understand time and experience without losing what they really are. If we are to begin creating a new future beyond the present, then we need men like Bergson. Even if not everything he says has turned out to be as scientifically true as he would have liked, (and who from that time has!) he had a true adventurous spirit, making a truly grand attempt at understanding life on its own terms.

If there is hope for the future, it begins with picking up projects like those of Bergson, and this time allowing them to continue their own duration and eternal becoming.