Table Of ContentPli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy
Pli is edited and produced by members of the Graduate School of
the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick.
Volume 15. Lives of the Real: Bergsonian Perspectives
ISBN 1 897646 11 9
ISSN 1367-3769
© 2004 Pli, individual contributions © their authors, unless
otherwise stated.
Editorial board 2003/4:
Wahida Khandker Henry Somers-Hall
Scott Revers Michael Vaughan
Brian Smith
This issue edited by Wahida Khandker.
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Contents
Lives of the Real: Bergsonian Perspectives
Intuition and Sympathy in Bergson.
DAVID LAPOUJADE 1
Duration, Rhythm, Present.
MARIA LAKKA 18
The 'Zigzags of a Doctrine': Bergson, Deleuze, and the
Question of Experience.
SUZANNE GUERLAC 34
On Certain Transitory Themes That Allow the Passage
from Duration to the Intuition of Duration.
MARGARITA KARKAYANNI 54
An 'Applied Rationalism' of Time: A Reinvestigation of
the Relationship Between Bachelard and Bergson-Deleuze.
ANDREW AITKEN 76
Bergson, Kant, and the Evolution of Metaphysics.
WAHIDA KHANDKER 103
The Rule of Dichotomy: Bergson's Genetics of Matter.
JOHN MULLARKEY 125
Nature from the Perspective of Immanence.
ROBIN DURIE 144
Varia
Time, Space, Forced Movement, and the Death-Drive:
Reading Proust with Deleuze.
KEITH ANSELL PEARSON 159
Revulsion is not Without its Subject: Kant, Lacan, 2izek,
and the Symptom of Subjectivity.
ADRIAN JOHNSTON 199
Reviews
Architectural Philosophy.
JAMES WILLIAMS 229
Nietzsche's Philosophy.
KEITH ANSELL PEARSON 233
Acknowledgements
The paper by Andrew Aitken derives from a one-day workshop held at the
University of Warwick on 6'h June 2003, entitled ‘Bergson and
Contemporary Thought’, organized by Wahida Khandker.
The paper by John Mullarkey was originally presented at the Collegium
Phaenomenologicum, which took place in Citta di Castella, Umbria, Italy
on 271" July 1999.
The paper by Robin Durie derives from a one-day workshop held at the
University of Warwick on 30lh May 2003, entitled ‘Merleau-Ponty and the
Philosophy of Nature’, organized by Miguel Beistegui and the Centre for
Research in Philosophy and Literature.
We would like to thank Keith Ansell Pearson for generously contributing
his time and work to this volume.
Pli 15 (2004), 1-17
Intuition and Sympathy in Bergson.
DAVID LAPOUJADE
The philosopher neither obeys nor commands but strives to sympathize.
(Henri Bergson)
What is signified by the term ‘sympathy’ that Bergson raises on the
subject of intuition? It belongs to that group of general and undefined
terms which seem to obscure, rather than clarify, the Bergsonian method.
Commentators rarely draw upon it except to reduce its impact. The term
‘sympathy’ would merely be employed to illustrate the act or the ‘series of
intuitive acts’ that themselves establish a rigorous method. With this we
are quickly brought to the conclusion that intuition is only conceived
rigorously (as method) if it stops being conceived as sympathy, a vague
notion marred by psychology.1 Sympathy would only prove to be its
ground by virtue of pedagogy or psychology - in short, as a substitute for
intuition.
We know, however, that Bergson constantly returns to the point at
which intuition and sympathy seem to be confused with one another: ‘We
call intuition here the sympathy by which one is transported into the
interior of an object in order to coincide with what there is unique and
1 One could say that the most significant efforts of rereading Bergson over the past
decades have attempted to free him from a supposed psychologism masking a
fecundity. One can see there a reaction to the Sartrean and Marxist interpretations
which recognize in Bergson a philosophy burdened by psychologism and
spiritualism. This concerns the essential role played from then on by Matière et
mémoire [Matter and Memory, trans. N. M. Paul and W. S. Palmer, New York:
Zone Books, 1991; henceforth referred to as MM] and a relative silence on Les
Deux Sources [The Two Sources of Morality and Religion]. Examples of this
tendency are two texts of the 1960’s, Bento prado, Présence et champ
transcendental, OLMS; and Deleuze, Le bergsonisme, PUF.
2 Pli 15 (2004)
consequently inexpressible in it’.2 Similarly, aesthetic intuition is replaced
‘back within the object by a kind of sympathy’.3 What is more, intuition is
defined as a ‘spiritual sympathy’ with that which is ‘more internal’ to
reality.4 Here, sympathy seems to be more than an illustration of intuition
or a vague psychological correlate. Rather, it appears to be an
indispensable methodological complement. It is that which allows the
passage ‘to the interior’ of realities, to grasp them from ‘the inside’. Yet
what does it mean to ‘pass to the interior’, to grasp from ‘the inside’?
What does one gain in precision and rigour? More importantly, if Bergson
identifies these terms with one another why does he return specifically to
sympathy? In what way does sympathy stand out from ‘intuitive acts’,
properly speaking? Does it have a distinct methodological status?
Bergson begins with rather vague indications: intuition is an effort, a
prolonged effort that calls for an assiduous fréquentation with the object:
For one does not obtain from reality an intuition, that is to say, a
spiritual sympathy with its innermost quality if one has not
gained its confidence by a long comradeship with its superficial
manifestations. And it is not a question simply of assimilating
the outstanding facts; it is necessary to accumulate and fuse
such an enormous mass of them that one may be assured, in this
fusion, of neutralizing by one another all the preconceived and
premature ideas observers may have deposited unknowingly in
their observations.5
2 La Pensée et le mouvant [henceforth referred to as PM], PUF, p. 181 [The
Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Mabelle L. Andison, New
York: Citadel Press, 1992, p. 161].
3 L'Evolution créatrice, PUF, p. 178 [Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell,
New York: Dover, 1998, p. 177], On the relation between sympathy and the
aesthetic one could equally consult Essai sur les données immédiates de la
conscience, PUF, pp.10-14 [77'me and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data
of Consciousness, trans. F. L. Pogson, New York: Dover, 2001, pp. 11-19],
4 PM, p. 226 [The Creative Mind, p. 200],
5 Ibid. This extract alludes to the long period separating the composition of each of
Bergson’s texts. It is a period establishing this ‘sympathetic’ relation. There needs
to be a memory of the object equally carrying all of the hypotheses, directions of
work, errors, paths that have covered the object in such a way that it becomes a
kind of palimpsest of our efforts to constitute it intuitively. The term ‘long
comradeship’ in relation to sympathy appears from the Essai onwards.
DAVID LAPOUJADE 3
Certainly, one can suppose that this only applies in the case of the
preparatory conditions that remain empirical. But what is essential is
already at play at this level. Reality is constituted as a continuous whole
that possesses an internal unity (‘fusion’ of the ‘mass’). Now, the whole
only owes it nature to a certain memory that assures the internal continuity
of which it is made. In other words, this long fréquentation permits the
proper ‘leap’ to the intuitive act that Bergson specifies as neither synthesis
nor recollection. In what, then, does this leap consist? It is not only the
mind, by its own efforts, installing itself ‘at once’ in the element of
duration, but equally in that of meaning,6 The duration of this reality is not
without memory nor without a type of ‘consciousness’ characterized as
‘intention’ or ‘direction’ constitutive of its meaning. Thus at the
conclusion of this preparatory work, this reality becomes real duration
and, at the same time, expresses an ‘intention’, a ‘direction’ that
constitutes it as virtual consciousness. That which belongs specifically to
the work of intuition is the grasping of this reality in terms of duration, but
that which belongs exclusively to sympathy is the grasping of an intention
internal to this duration. It may even be that the conception of duration as
memory can only be understood through the intermediary of this act of
sympathy, and it is this to which we now turn.
Intuition is concentrated exclusively upon totalities: the vital, the
material, the social, the personal, etc. This amounts to saying that intuition
circulates across the whole universe (monism) and through its different
levels (pluralism). Bergson meanwhile affirms that intuition is the ‘direct
vision of the mind by the mind’, that it concentrates exclusively ‘upon
mind’.7 Bergson insists on this point: never is intuition anything other than
a ‘reflection’ of mind upon itself.8 In other words, there is no intuition of
6 We know that Bergson often resorts to this term to indicate the difference of
nature that goes beyond intuition through its ‘leap’. Thus the intuitive access to
matter: ‘Our eyes are closed to the primordial and fundamental act of perception -
the act, constituting pure perception, whereby we place ourselves in the very heart
of things’, MM, p. 70 [Matter and Memory, p. 67]. The same applies to the
accessing of memory, pp.149-150 [p. 135]: ‘But the truth is that we shall never
reach the past unless we frankly place ourselves within it’. It is again the case for
the universe of meaning or of ideas, p.129 [p. 116]: ‘So [...] the hearer places
himself at once in the midst of the corresponding ideas...’ We will return to this
text later. Cf. equally, PM, p. 210 [p. 187],
7 PM, p. 42 [p. 42],
8 ‘Intuition is what attains the spirit, duration, pure change’, PM, p. 29 [p. 33], Cf.
equally, p. 40 [p. 41]: ‘Quite different is the metaphysics that we place side by side
4 Pli 15 (2004)
the material, of the vital, of the social as such. How then can intuition
open itself up to different levels of reality and reach such an extension? It
is here that sympathy intervenes. Again, in a somewhat abstract manner,
one can define sympathy as a movement through which each of these
realities becomes ‘mind’. Yet how can such a transformation be possible?
One wonders how mind can enter ‘into sympathy’ with itself or with
another mind. Bergson frequently invokes a type of psychological
endosmosis, the reciprocal penetration of minds. He provides an example
in La Pensée et le mouvant where he attempts to draw out the
fundamental intuition of Berkeley, beyond the theses effectively laid down
in language. He returns to a primordial intention of which the work will
consequently be the indirect expression. At this level, sympathy is
presented as the movement by which we take it upon ourselves to return to
a purely spiritual intention, immanent to the whole (here, the work of
Berkeley), as its integral.
This movement checks itself with each change of level. Is this not
indeed the same movement that is produced when we descend to the vital
level? One endeavours to take hold of the primordial intention of life,
beyond the varieties of living forms for such is the sense of the concept of
the ‘élan'. The ‘élan' is not merely destined to describe life as ‘the
outpouring of unforeseeable novelty’; it is firstly that which enables the
grasping of the continuous whole of the vital as mind or consciousness. In
other words, the vital stops being external to the sphere of mind, which
explains that intuition can then take it for its ‘object’, in accordance with
its definition since we are dealing with the relation between the mind and
one of its levels. Or rather, thanks to sympathy, life becomes ‘subject’ for
the metaphysical (in terms of mind or consciousness), whilst it remains
‘object’ for science (in terms of physico-chemical material). Here,
sympathy plays an essential role: it singles out the spiritual ‘intention’ of
the vital thereby permitting it to be constituted in the tendency-subject
inside of metaphysics, rendering intuition accessible in the same stroke.
Yet if one can attribute an intention to life, to single out the spiritual
‘élan’ that animates it, can one proceed in the same way with matter?
How is the spiritual element of matter to be extracted which, by definition,
with science. Granting to science the power of explaining matter by the mere force
of intelligence, it reserves mind for itself. Moreover, Bergson says that it is an
‘intimate knowledge of the mind by the mind’, PM, 216, n2 [notes to text not
included in the English translation] or a ‘reflection of the mind on the mind’, PM,
p. 226 [p. 199],
DAVID LAPOUJADE 5
is without spirituality? Here, again, the concept of intuition by itself would
not allow us to understand this extension, unless a ‘sympathy’ with matter
was established. What does it consist of at this level? It is defined by the
institution of a community of movements. The spiritual element of matter
is movement in terms of an indivisible reality. Mind ‘sympathizes’ with
matter in as much as it grasps it, not as a thing or mass, but as pure
movement; from that moment on, the continuum of matter becomes mind
or consciousness (in terms of ‘pure perception’). This is the central theme
of the first chapter of Matière et mémoire: a matter reduced to movement
but raised, at the same time, to the status of consciousness*. In this sense
we can say that the ‘’élan’ is to the vital universe what the ‘image’ or ‘pure
perception’ is to the material universe: the mark of our sympathy.
But the answer remains incomplete, for strictly speaking is there
anything properly spiritual within movement? Is it the image? Pure
perception? Nothing will be of benefit here as these tenns presuppose
what is in question: the image certainly defines itself as pure perception or
as a present of movement, but how is such a definition possible? It is here
that intuition needs to be reintroduced in its ‘fundamental’ sense: ‘to think
intuitively is to think in duration’. 190 That which constitutes the ‘mind’ of
matter is its duration. ‘...We place consciousness at the heart of things for
the very reason that we credit them with a time that endures’.11 Duration is
the spiritual element of the material (and because of this, of the vital and
the social also). This is why science can get to movement yet without
being able to extract the essence (mobility), for it does not think ‘in
duration’. Now duration initially signifies conservation. There is duration
as soon as there is an instant, and yet brief though it is, which retain what
is transferred from the previous instant (even if only for an immediate
retransmission); so that what could be theoretically thought as a ‘memory’
should instead be thought effectively as a forgetting that ‘enables’ material
movement to continue without end (communication).
We can bestow upon this memory just what is needed to make
the connection; it will be, if we like, this veiy connection, a
mere continuing of the before into the immediate after with a
9 ‘No doubt also the material universe itself, defined as the totality of images, is a
kind of consciousness...’, MM, p. 264 [p. 235]. Cf. equally, pp. 35-36 [pp. 37-39],
10 PM, p. 30 [p. 34],
11 Durée et simultanéité, PUF, p. 62 [Duration and Simultaneity, trans. Leon
Jacobson, ed. Robin Durie, London: Clinamen, 1999, p. 33. Henceforth DS].
