Durie - Wandering Among Shadows

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WANDERING AMONG SHADOWS:THE DISCORDANCE OF TIME IN

LEVINAS AND BERGSONsjp_39 371..392

R D

: One of the earliest examples of articulating the discordance of timeatheme that serves as a guiding thread woven throughout much of there-engagement with time that is characteristic of continental philosophycan befound in a series of essays written by Levinas in the aftermath of World War II.I show how these essays derive from a set of key texts by Bergson and howBergson already anticipated the distinctive ways of conceptualizing the movementof time that are advanced by Levinas in his early essays. Nevertheless, as I willshow, Levinas chooses not to acknowledge this Bergsonian anticipation of his

theory of time, despite his recognition, repeated throughout many texts and inter-views, of the influence of Bergson on the formation of his own thought. I concludeby reflecting on the complexity of the Bergsonian inheritance in Levinass philoso-phy of time.

A re-engagement with the problem of time lies at the heart of much of

continental philosophy. This is most obviously the case with Heidegger, of

course, but it is equally evident in the work of Bergson, Husserl, Bachelard,

Levinas, Ricoeur, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, Derrida, and Serres. Among the

most challenging of the themes to emerge from this work is Derridas demon-

stration (in his deconstruction of Husserls lectures on the consciousness oftime) that the full presence of the present is always deferred and that an

originary double movement of differentiation/deferral is constitutive of

time. A number of other writers, such as Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, had

already been reflecting on the notion of the cartas a means for expressing themovement of the temporalization of time. The earliest indications of these

attempts emerge in a series of texts published by Levinas in the immediate

Robin Durie is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Exeter. He has published anumber of articles on time and the phenomenology of temporality. He has a strong commit-ment to transdisciplinary research, underpinned by his work on complexity theory, in such areasas environmental sustainability, healthcare, community regeneration, and swarm robotics.

The Southern Journal of PhilosophyVolume 48, Issue 4

December 2010

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Volume 48, Issue 4 (2010), 37192.

ISSN 0038-4283, online ISSN 2041-6962. DOI: 10.1111/j.2041-6962.2010.00039.x

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aftermath of World War II. While the analyses of these texts are, for the most

part, located in the milieu of Husserlian phenomenology and Heideggerian

fundamental ontology, in what follows, I will show how Levinass first attempts

to make sense of the significance of the movement of time owe as much, if notmore, to the philosophy of Bergson as they do to phenomenology.1

1 Levinas himself frequently attests to Bergsons influence on the development of histhought, as when he says, for instance: I feel close to certain Bergsonian themes . . . it is to him,no doubt, that I owe my modest speculative initiatives (Levinas, Entre Nous: On Thinking of theOther, trans. M. B. Smith and B. Harshay [London: Athlone, 1998], 224); see also a lateinterview with Levinas, The Other, Utopia, and Justice in Is It Righteous To Be: Interviews withEmmanuel Levinas, ed. Jill Robbins (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 201. Levi-nass recently published prison notebooks (Levinas, Oeuvres compltes Tome 1: Carnets de captivit[Paris: Grasset, 2009]), which record the development of his thinking in the period leading upto the publication of the works with which we are primarily concerned, make Bergsonsimportance for Levinas abundantly clear. In his critical study of Bergson first published in 1931(reprinted as Vladimir Janklvitch, Henri Bergson [Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,1959]), Janklvitch argues that Bergson had failed in his project of thinking the radically new,and a significant thread running through Levinass own philosophical project can be understoodas consisting in the attempt to make good this failure. Richard Cohen draws attention to thisaspect of Bergsons thought in the editorial introduction and explanatory notes to his translationof Time and the Other (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1987). Despite the clearevidence of Bergsons influence in Levinass own writings, the majority of commentators whowrite from a Levinasian perspective tend to focus on the phenomenological context of Levinassthought, whether that be Hegelian, Husserlian, or Heideggerian. Thus, to cite just one example,in a recent article Levinas Philosophical Origins: Husserl, Heidegger, and Rosenzweig,Glenn Morrison states that the writings of Husserl, Heidegger and Rosenzweig have made up[Levinass] primary influences (Heythrop Journal46 [2005]: 41). This is perhaps indicative of themore general critical fate that befell Bergsonism as the twentieth century progressed and thatLevinas himself bemoans: Bergson is hardly quoted now. We have forgotten the majorphilosophical event he was for the French university, . . . and the role he played in the consti-tution of the problematic of modernity [Entre Nous, 223]. One exception to this tendency isJohn LlewelynsEmmanuel Levinas: The Genealogy of Ethics(London: Routledge, 1995), in which theinfluence of Bergson on Levinass thought remains a constant presence. Llewelyn highlights inparticular Levinass focus on the interruption of duration by the dead-time (temps mort), whichintimates the approach of absolute alterity. However, the Bergsonian context for the relationbetween radical novelty and the interruption to the continuity of duration has not receivedextended critical scrutiny from Levinasian commentators. The majority of texts written from aBergsonian perspective that reflect critically on the relation between Bergson and Levinas tendto respond to the ethical imperative of Levinass thought by turning to Bergsons Two Sources of

Morality and Religion. Thus, Len Lawlor asks in the third chapter ofThe Challenge of Bergsonism(London: Continuum, 2003) whether Bergsonism can be interpreted as representing a challengeto ethics in the Levinasian sense (see also James McLachlans valuable review of Lawlors bookin Janus Head8 [2005]: 36166). While John Mullarkey, in Bergson and Philosophy (Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press, 1999), notes the affinity between Levinass ethics and the TwoSources, where the latter is understood as a work of proto-ethics, he goes further, indicating aseries of places throughout Bergsons work where affinities with Levinas can be detected,ranging from Pierre Trotignons claim that lan vital represents an attempt to think alterity,through to the unthinkability of the other deriving from their temporal separation from theknowers durationin other words, the alterity of the other is a consequence of the nature oftime (Mullarkey,Bergson and Philosophy, 10710). However, both of these works, in effect, explorethe relation between Bergson and Levinas retrospectively. My aim in this paper is to explore thedetails of the influence of certain texts and themes in Bergsons philosophy on the specificdevelopment of a decisive aspect of Levinass thought.

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In a late interview, Levinas would explain how, for him, Bergsons concep-

tion of duration effects a rupture with the tradition of thinking about time in

which the future functions simply as the what is yet-to-come (un -venir); how

duration itself would be access to novelty ; but also how it would benecessary . . . to insist on a novelty signifying by force of the concordance in

the very discordance of time.2 It is a focus on this discordance of time, rather

than on the concordance that emerges from it, that is shared by many of the

discourses on time in the continental tradition. As we shall see, inFrom Existenceto Existents(1947) and Reality and Its Shadow (1948), Levinass depiction ofwhat he will subsequently characterize as the discordance of time is framed in

a way that appears to be explicitly critical of Bergson. However, I will show how

the Bergsonian texts that provide Levinas with the resources from which he

develops the distinctive positions adopted in these essays already anticipate thetheses on time that Levinas advances by way of an apparent critique of

Bergsons position. This prompts the question of why Levinas does not

acknowledge the full extent of the convergence between his theories of time

and those of Bergson, and why instead he prefers to emphasize the way in

which his thinking marks a departure from the milieu of Bergsonism.

2 Levinas,Is It Righteous To Be, 26869. While Bergson has, for the most part, been acknowl-edged as having a role to play in the history of continental philosophy, it remains the case thatfew thinkers or commentators have explicitly engaged with his legacy. The exception to thisnorm is Deleuze, and it is striking that the phrase the concordance in the discordance of timeechoes two of the four poetic formulas by which Deleuze seeks to characterize the novelty ofKantian philosophy. The first of these formulas derives from Shakespeares famous phrase inHamlet, time is out of joint (the French translation of which also allows the sense of time beingunhinged, off its hinges [hors de ses gonds]). By this disjointure of time, Deleuze seeks to capturethe shift that occurs in Kants philosophy, whereby time is no longer subordinate to themovement by which it is counted or measured. (Of course, in Time and Free Will, Bergson alsoargues that, for science, and for common sense, time is subordinate to the spatiality by which itis able to be counted.) Deleuze draws attention to the Latin root of cardinal, namely, cardo,meaning hinge. A hinge is both that on which something such as a door turns but also thatwhich is fundamental to something else. When time is out of joint, it no longer hinges onmovement; and movement no longer provides the means by which time can be counted. In hisdiscussions of the phenomena of weariness and desire, respectively, in From Existence to Existents,Levinas writes that, in the former, being is out of joint with itself (dun tre qui ne se suit plus) andin the latter, time becomes unhinged (le temps sort de ses gonds) (Levinas,Existence and Existents,trans. A. Lingis [Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1988], 35, 45; De lexistence lexistant[Paris: J.Vrin, 1998], 50, 68). The fourth formula derives from Rimbaud and refers to the discussion ofthe sublime in the 3rd Critique, in which, Deleuze argues, the regulated concord of the facultiesis shown to derive from a prior discord of the faculties (Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical, trans.D. W. Smith and M. A. Greco [London: Verso, 1998], 2735). It appears as if Levinas is alsoclaiming that, in Bergsons philosophy of duration, time in its most basic form consists in adiscordance, within or from which a concordance can emerge, and that duration istime whenit is unhinged from movement. It would be possible to draw a further series of relations betweenthe force by which novelty signifies in and to experience and the theory of the encounter thatforces us to think that is developed by Deleuze in his theory of the faculties in chapter 3 of

Difference and Repetition.

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Reality and Its Shadow was originally published in Les Temps Modernesand addresses various themes in aesthetics and criticism. In contradistinction

to the existentialist paragon of the engaged artist that the editorial line ofLes

Temps Modernesespouses, Levinas begins Reality and Its Shadow by sug-gesting that art, and specifically the work of art, is more appropriately char-

acterized by disengagement. But this is not, Levinas argues, a disengagement

from our mundane world in favor of a more authentically real world of pure

subjectivity or of Platonic ideas. Rather, Levinas asks, can one not speak of

disengagement on the hither side [en de]of an interruption of time by amovement going on, on the hither side of time [en de du temps], in itsinterstices?3 Since Plato, and especially following the analogy of the Good

in the Republic, the realm of understanding has been aligned with light

and enlightenment. By way of contrast, Levinas proposes that the aestheticrealm is characterized by not understanding. If light is the element of

understanding, then obscurity is the element of not understanding.4

Levinas wants to claim that this element of obscurity is not simply the

negation of, nor the absence of, the element of light and understanding (i.e.,

it is not derivative of light and understanding)rather, he insists that it is a

totally independent ontological event. This event occurs in art: Art does not

know a particular type of reality; it contrasts with knowledge. It is the very art

of obscuring, a descent of the night, an invasion of shadow.5

In order to show why the phenomenon of disengagement that is character-istic of aesthetics follows from an interruption of time, Levinas begins by

developing a phenomenological description of the art event that occurs in this

element of obscurity. The nature of the relationship we have with real objects

is one of understandingwe grasp real objects by means of concepts. Levinas

claims that this relationship is determined by action, and in doing so, he is

following the arguments of Bergson inMatter and Memory(1896) as much as hemight be following those of Heidegger inBeing and Time(1927). But in art, weare not presented with an object, or a concept, but with an image, and this imageneutralizes the usual relation we have with objectsin other words, we do not

grasp the object as a means toward some imminent activity. Rather, an image

marks a hold over us rather than our initiative, a fundamental passivity [unepassivit foncire].6 But just as Levinas wanted to avoid conceiving the elementof obscurity as simply deriving, either as lack or negation, from the enlighten-

ment of understanding, so he does not simply want passivity to function here as

3 Levinas,Collected Philosophical Papers, trans. A. Lingis (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987),23; La ralit et son ombre,Les Temps Modernes38 (1948): 773.

4 Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 3; La ralit et son ombre, 773.5 Ibid.6 Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 3; La ralit et son ombre, 774.

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lack or negation of activity. Thus, by means of a phenomenological account of

the way that the artistic image marks a hold over us, he will seek to develop

an account of passivity as an independent ontological event.

As a clue to follow in making sense of how the image marks a hold over us,Levinas considers rhythm, which, as he points out, is a phenomenon that is

frequently invoked in art criticism yet is one that tends not to be given any kind

of rigorous definition or characterization. Levinas argues that rhythm is not an

explicit, identifiable element of the poem itself but, rather, consists in the way

the poetic order affects us.7 What rhythm does, in effect, is exercise a pull on

objects as we experience them in timefor instance, rhythm leads us to

experience the syllables of a verse as call[ing] for one another, just as the

words of a song to which we are listening do, or the movements of a dancer.8

The distinctive temporal quality of an experience affected by rhythm, wherebythe parts or phases of what is being experienced call for one another, is bound

up with the fact that both the object and we ourselves are disengaged from

the reality in which relations with objects are determined by imminent actions,

such that these partsfor instance, the syllables of the poemimpose themselveson us without our assuming them.9 Rather than our experience of an object beingordered and directed, more or less purposively, by an imminent action to be

performed (rather than the object presenting itself in the mode of being

ready-to-hand, as Heidegger would say), we are instead caught up and carried

away (saisi et emport) in the rhythmic presentation of the image.10 Captivatedby rhythm, we are neither simply conscioussince we are not actively grasping

an objectnor unconscioussince both the object and we ourselves remain,

7 Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 4; La ralit et son ombre, 774.8 Bergson frequently compares the continuous multiplicity of duration to a melody, thereby

seeking to illustrate how the parts of duration interrelate with one another. But, he writes, if weinterrupt the rhythm by dwelling longer than is right on one note of the tune, it is not itsexaggerated length, as length [i.e., as quantity] which will warn us of our mistake, but thequalitative change thereby caused in the whole of the musical phrase (Bergson, Time and FreeWill, trans. F. L. Pogson [London: Macmillan, 1910], 10001; uvres, ed. A. Robinet [Paris:Presses Universitaires de France, 1959], 68). From the Levinasian perspective, that would be tosay that dwelling longer than is right on a particular syllable of a poem would disrupt the callthat the syllables make for one another. Why does Bergson say that this dwelling causes aqualitative rather than a quantitative change? It is because the phases of duration coalesce toform an organic whole (in contrast to the parts of a discrete multiplicity, which form a divisibleaggregate). Rhythm is an effect of this organic wholeness, and it works to organize the partsprecisely as parts of an organic whole. It seems clear that Levinass phenomenological descrip-tion of rhythm, as exemplary of the way in which the artistic image marks a hold on us, adheresto this Bergsonian account, when he specifies that poetic order is able to affect us rhythmicallyto the extent that poems are wholes whose elements call for one another (Levinas, CollectedPhilosophical Papers, 4; La ralit et son ombre, 774).

9 Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 4; La ralit et son ombre, 774.10 Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 4; La ralit et son ombre, 775.



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as Levinas writes, in a dark light [une obscure clart],present. We participate inthe phenomenon of rhythm; indeed, we become absorbed in it, as if we are

in a waking dream (rve veill).11

When we have a relation with an object that is geared toward imminentactivity, we can be said to have an interest in this object. But if indeed this

relation with the object is neutralized to the extent that, in art, we have a

relation with an image rather than an object, then we might characterize

the relation we have with the image as one of disinterestedness; and, of

course, disinterest has been held, since at least KantsCritique of Judgment, tobe a determining feature of the aesthetic way of being. However, Levinas

wants to resist this movein fact he claims that it would be more appro-

priate to talk of interest than of disinterestedness with respect to images.12

When we experience the object as an image, when the object is stripped of allpossible utility, then we can say that the image is interesting in the literal

sense of that wordit is, as Levinas says, involving. The Latin root of

interesting is inter + esse, literally, to be among. The involvement charac-teristic of the experience of an image thus entails a being-among images.

When we are absorbed in and by rhythm, we become involved in the

rhythmwe become wrapped up in and by the rhythmand it is this

involvement that marks our passivity, the pathos of the imaginary world ofthe waking dream. It is passive because our experience of the object is not

prolonged into an action that we perform with or on the object; instead, weparticipate in and among the image.13

Levinas now tries to make phenomenologicalontological sense of this

pathosof participation that characterizes our mode of being when an imagetakes hold of us. Experience without conceptual understanding, without

being prolonged into action, is closest to what psychology has introduced as

a limit case, namely, pure sensation not yet converted into perception

(what, in the phenomenology of theIdeas, Husserl would characterize as purehyleuninformed by animatingmorphe). And he continues:

It is as though sensation, free from all conception, that famous sensation that eludes

introspection, appeared with images. Sensation is not a residue of perception, but

11 Ibid.12 Ibid.13 Levinas,Collected Philosophical Papers, 4; La ralit et son ombre, 77576. Clearly, Levinas is

here pushing at the limits of both concepts and language in order to describe the experience hehas in mind. However, the point he is making is perhaps not so strange when we try to makesense of it from the perspective of aestheticsthus, when we watch a play or a film, we wouldnot experience any emotions if we were absolutely disinterested; equally, if we were performingreal actions along with those whom we are in fact watching, then we would suffer real bodilyaffections; however, what actually happens is that we sense emotions without these real bodilyaffectionsjust as we do in a dream.

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has a function of its ownthe hold [lemprise] that an image has over us, a function

of rhythm. What today is called being-in-the-world is an existence with concepts.

Sensibility takes place as a distinct ontological event, but is accomplished only by the

imagination. If art consists in substituting an image for being, the aesthetic element,

as its etymology indicates, is sensation.14

But is it possible to go further in making phenomenological sense of the

nature of the aesthetic hold that images have over us in sensibility? In a

parallel analysis of aesthetics inFrom Existence to Existents, Levinas offers thefollowing beautiful description. The movement of art consists in leaving the

level of perception so as to reinstate sensation, in detaching the quality from

this object of reference. Instead of arriving at the object, the intention gets lost

[sgare] in the sensation itself, and it is this wandering about [garement]15 in

sensation, in aisthesis, that produces the aesthetic effect.16

In Totality andInfinity, Levinas will rename this wandering about as errance.17

How might this detaching of the image from the object of reference be

possible? What is it that enables the interruption of the otherwise systematic

process by which consciousness takes up and grasps sensation? And why has

Levinas at this precise moment chosen to characterize the quality of being-

among as wandering, as errance?That Levinass discussion stems from a reflection on Bergsonism is sug-

gested by an introductory comment to the section in which this passage on

wandering in sensation is located. We have seen that, for Levinas, art consistsin the substitution of images for objects with which we might otherwise have

a relation of utility, or, as he writes in From Existence to Existents, that theelementary function of art . . . is to furnish an image of an object in place of

the object itself. Levinas proceeds to specify that this image is what Bergson

called a view of the object, an abstraction. However, he distances himself

from Bergsons position, claiming that Bergson considered the image to be

something less than the object, whereas he himself argues that one should

see in the image the more of what is aesthetic.18

Bergsons theory of images is worked out in detail inMatter and Memory. Theoriginal edition of that book begins by seeking to bracket any knowledge we

might have of epistemological and metaphysical debates. In so doing,

Bergson claims, we would find ourselves in the presence of images, in the

vaguest sense of the word, images perceived when my senses are open to

14 Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 5; La ralit et son ombre, 776.15 As well as the sense of wandering, or going astray, sgar can mean unhinged, as in the

phrase son esprit sgarehis mind is becoming unhinged.16 Levinas,Existence and Existents, 53; De lexistence lexistant, 85.17 Levinas,Totality and Infinity, trans. A. Lingis (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press,

1969), 172;Totalit et Infini (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980), 147.18 Levinas,Existence and Existents, 52; De lexistence lexistant, 8384.



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them, unperceived when they are closed. All these images act and react upon

one another.19 Between the original publication ofMatter and Memoryin 1896and the publication of the second edition in 1910, it is apparent that Bergson

had become aware that his use of the word image needed clarification.Thus, in the preface to the second edition, he writes: By image we mean a

certain existence which is more than that which the idealist calls a representa-tion, but less than that which the realist calls a thingan existence placedhalfway between the thing and the representation.20 The position adopted

in Matter and Memory, the position adumbrated in the opening lines of thebooks first edition, is that matter exists just as it is perceived; and, since it is

perceived as an image, the mind would make of it, in itself, an image.21 So

when Levinas characterizes Bergsons theory of the image as a view of the

object, it is this definition that he has in mind, namely, that an image is theobject as it is perceived. And when Levinas claims that Bergsons position is

that the image is something less than the object, he is referring to Bergsons

clarification that the image is less than that which the realist calls athing.22

Bergsons account of perception in chapter 1 ofMatter and Memory beginsfrom a thesis about matter: I call matterthe aggregate [ensemble] of images, and

perception of matter these same images referred to the eventual action of oneparticular image, my body.23 The role of perception is to display [des-sine] . . . the eventual or possible actions of my body.24 Dessine has the sense

of outlining, delineating, or sketching, and so it is by means of perception thatthe brain prepare[s], while beginning it, the reaction of my body to the action

of external objects.25 In this way, perceptual images foreshadow [esquissent] ateach moment its [i.e., my bodys] virtual steps [dmarches virtuelles] . . . the brainprolongs [movements received] into reactions which are merely nascent.26A

merely nascent reaction is then a possible action that has been delineated or

foreshadowed by perception. In order that immediate reactions be delayed,

19 Bergson,Matter and Memory, trans. N. M. Paul and W. S. Palmer (New York: Zone Books,1988), 17;uvres, 169.

20 Bergson,Matter and Memory, 9;uvres, 161.21 Bergson,Matter and Memory, 10;uvres, 162.22 Levinass presentation of Bergsons position appears to be critical, to the extent that he

writes that, instead of the image being seen as less than the object, it should be seen as theaestheticmoreof the object. However, it should be borne in mind that Bergson is setting out histheory of images by way of explicit contrast with metaphysical theories of representationalismand realism, whereas, of course, Levinas is contrasting the aesthetic image with the object as itis grasped by consciousness toward an end of utility. In fact, as we shall see, it is just this relationof the image to a subsequent action, and indeed the separability of the image from such anaction, that forms the hinge of Bergsons account.

23 Bergson,Matter and Memory, 22;uvres, 173.24 Ibid.25 Bergson,Matter and Memory, 23;uvres, 175.26 Bergson,Matter and Memory, 2324; uvres, 175.

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and in order that the prolongation of movements into merely nascent

reaction movements is made possible, it is necessary that there be, in effect, an

expansion of the instant of experience, and Bergson goes on to show how this

expansion is achieved by the work of contraction memory: However brief wesuppose any perception to be, it always occupies a certain duration [dure], andinvolves, consequently, an effort of memory which prolongs, one into another,

a plurality of moments.27 Through this work of contraction, memory prolongs

into one another multiple external moments, giving otherwise instantaneous

moments a duration. The instantaneous passing of moments is thereby

delayed, and as a consequence the immediate and inevitable consequentialism

of reaction following action: By allowing us to grasp in a single intuition

multiple moments of duration, it [i.e., memory] frees us from the movement of

the flow of things, that is to say, from the rhythm of necessity.28 Thus freedfrom the rhythm of necessity, the brain is able to select from movements that

are delineated in the form of virtual nascent actions.

We shall return both to the temporal dimension of the duration of

moments prolonged into one another by contraction memory and to the role

played by the notion of virtuality when we consider how time underpins

Levinass discussions in From Existence to Existents and Reality and ItsShadow. Before doing so, however, we need to consider why it is that the

theory of images as it is developed by Bergson inMatter and Memorymight have

given rise to Levinass characterization of the quality of being-amongimages as wandering, aserrance. In order to do this, we need to turn to a seriesof essays that Bergson wrote in the decade following the publication ofMatterand Memorythat take up themes from his book. In these essays, Bergson seeksto provide accounts of a series of mental phenomenasuch as dreams,

intellectual effort, and false recognitionbased on the theories of perception

and memory developed in Matter and Memory.We recall that Levinas argues that the experience of images neutralizes our

usual relation with objects, to the extent that we do not grasp objects as the

means toward some imminent action; he describes the relation we have with

images as a form of passivity, precisely because the experience is not pro-

longed into an action that will be performed in relation to the object; and,

finally, he characterizes this pathos of the imaginary world as a kind of

waking dream.29 Taking this evocation of the waking dream as a clue, let

us consider Bergsons essay Dreams (1901). In this essay, Bergson seeks to

account for why it is that we experience images when we dream, why I

27 Bergson,Matter and Memory, 34;uvres, 184.28 Bergson,Matter and Memory, 228;uvres, 359.29 Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 4; La ralit et son ombre, 775.



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perceive persons and things when nobody and nothing is there.30 Bergsons

answer is that during sleep we are affected by external and internal bodily

stimuli, and these stimuli are fabricated into dream-images.31 What the

mind is doing during the dream is seek[ing] to give a meaning to theheterogeneous assemblage of meaningless fragments that result from

the stimuli endured while sleeping.32 The means by which the mind is able to

accomplish this meaning-giving activity is memoryand Bergson proceeds

to offer a brief overview of how memory functions, summarizing the more

detailed investigations ofMatter and Memory. Bergson argues in this text thatmemory has two basic functions: on the one hand, as we have already noted,

there is the effort of memory to contract a plurality of potentially separate

instants into an enduring moment; on the other hand, memory covers imme-

diate perceptions with a cloak of recollections.33

This position raises the issue of how memories are formed, to which we

shall return below. It also raises the issue of how it is that only certain

memories, at any given moment, interweave with present perception images.

Bergsons answer parallels his account of perception: just as, in perception,

the brain selects possible reactions on the basis of objects that might act on the

body, or upon which the body might act, so memories are filtered on the basis

of which memory-images are most closely connected with our situation and

action.34 Memory is thus able to perform the function of recalling, in each

circumstance, the advantageous or injurious consequences which have fol-lowed under analogous conditions, and to teach it [i.e., the animal, or person]

what it ought to do.35 As with perception, so it is with memoryeverything

is geared toward imminent action. Indeed, it is clear that perceptions ability

to delineate possible outcomes of actions on, or by, the body is facilitated by

memory, to the extent that it provides more or less general recollections of

consequences that occurred under analogous conditions. This proclivity

within the body, whereby it adapts itself to its present circumstance such that

memories are selected according to its need for action, is termed by Bergson

attention to life.36 When the tendency of memories to force themselves into

present consciousness is enabled by attention to life, that is, when selected

memories cloak or come to insert themselves in (viennent sinsrer dans)

30 Bergson,Mind-Energy, trans. H. Wildon Carr (London: Macmillan, 1920), 104; uvres,879.

31 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 113;uvres, 884.32 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 115;uvres, 885.33 Bergson,Matter and Memory, 34;uvres, 184.34 Bergson,Matter and Memory, 115;uvres, 885.35 Bergson,Matter and Memory, 116;uvres, 886.36 Bergson,Matter and Memory, 173;uvres, 312.

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present perceptions, they profit by the vitality of the perceptions and, in this

way, return to life.37

But this tension, this concentration of memory on perception in attention

to life, requires effort.38

In sleep, however, we lose our interest in life, webecome detached [dtach] from life.39 In sleep, our perception extends itsfield of operation. It loses in tension what it gains in extension.40 That is to

say, as we sleep, we sense all of the minor bodily stimuli that are ignored when

we are focused on action. In order that some sense be made of the chaos of

small bodily stimuli, it is only necessary that there be a general overlapping of

memory images with the perception images of these stimuli, and this provides

us with the content of our dream. Where attention to life necessitates tension,

dreaming entails de-tension. The dream does not adjust the sensation with

precision to the memory, but rather, it allow[s] some play [jeu] betweenthem.41 With this relaxationthis de-tension that follows from inattention to

life when our experience of perceptions is no longer geared toward action

there is a play among the images that anticipates the wandering about, the

errance, in sensibility with which Levinas characterizesaisthesis. One wanders,just as one plays, when one is not focused on, or directed toward, some

specific end.42

We find an even stronger indication that the analyses of Reality and Its

Shadow owe their provenance to Bergson when we consider Bergsons

remarkable essay Memory of the Present and False Recognition (1908).43

Just as he had explained the process and content of dreaming on the basis of

inattention to life, so in this essay Bergson seeks to show how the phenomenon

37 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 122;uvres, 890.38 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 12425;uvres, 89192.39 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 125;uvres, 892.40 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 112;uvres, 884.41 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 128;uvres, 894.42 There are a number of further textual hints that are suggestive of the proximity between

the position being worked out by Levinas and the way Bergson develops the theory of imageswithin this context of inattention to life. For instance, in From Existence to Existents, Levinas offersa brief account of play, and the detachment of play from reality, which evokes themes from thisaccount of the play of dream images in Bergson and the account of the errance in aisthesisadvanced in Reality and Its Shadow more or less equally (Levinas, Existence and Existents, 26;La ralit et son ombre, 34). Similarly, in the essay Intellectual Effort, published a year afterDreams, Bergson characterizes the consequence of inattention to life, in the particular casewhen the mind does not interpret words as part of their whole context immediately but movesfrom word to idea on a word-by-word basis, as the mind wandering (errante) (Bergson,

Mind-Energy, 208;uvres, 945).43 Although published in the year followingCreative Evolution, False Recognition represents

the culmination of the profound conceptual labors undertaken for Matter and Memoryand bearseloquent testimony to Bergsons commitment to critical reflection on his own most basic ideas.In this essay, we find a compelling development of the theme of the formation of memoryinterwoven with some of Bergsons most audacious attempts to capture the movement of timeat its most fundamental level.



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of false recognition (what is referred to in English, as it were, as dj vu) alsostems from inattention to life. Bergson sums up the aim of the essay, therefore,

as being to determine the peculiar form which inattention to life takes in this

case, [and to] explain why its effect is to mistake the present for a repetitionof the past.44

In order to address this aim, Bergson focuses on the question of how

memory is formed, to which we drew attention previously. The thesis that

Bergson advances is thatthe formation of memory is never posterior to the formation ofperception; it is contemporaneous with it. Step by step, as perception is created, thememory of it is projected beside it, as the shadow falls beside the body.45 The

key point with regard to false recognition, however, is that in the normal

course of experience determined by attention to life there is no conscious-

ness of the memory that is created simultaneously with the perception. Thisis because perception is, as we have seen, always already prolonged into

nascent action and, as such, is geared toward utility, whereas memory in and

of itself does not have this link to action. It is on just this basis that memory

is, as Bergson consistently argues, virtual rather than actual. Since it is not

actual, in the sense of being prolonged into nascent action, and since, in

contrast to the normal interweaving of memory with perception, it adds

nothing to present perception, Bergson is led to conclude that there is nothing

more useless [inutile] for our present action than memory of the present

. . . memory of the present has nothing to teach us, being only the double ofperception.46 However, when there is inattention to life, the view of con-

sciousness can wander from the perception image to the memory image that

doubles it. But in what might this inattention consist? Bergson argues that

immediate consciousness feels, at any given moment, its movement into the

future, it senses the present in the future into which it encroaches [empite],rather than in itself.47 If ever this movement into the future is enfeebled

(faiblit), the effect is that the present experience becomes detached from thenascent action that had been the future into which it was moving. But the

virtuality of the memory image that is formed simultaneously with the per-

ception image is determined by the fact that it has no future nascent action

into which it is prolonged and by which it would be actualized, and so, when

the movement of consciousness itself becomes detached from its future, con-

sciousness experiences the present moment as the virtual memory image

rather than the actual perception image. The key, then, for understanding

how and why the phenomenon of false recognition occurs, is

44 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 150;uvres, 908.45 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 157;uvres, 913.46 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 177;uvres, 925.47 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 180;uvres, 927.

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to look for . . . a momentary stop in thelanof consciousness, a stop which, no doubt,

does not change anything in the materiality of our present, but detaches [dtach] it

from the future to which it cleaves and from the action which would be its normal

conclusion, so giving it the aspect of a mere tableau, of a play [dun spectacle] which is

being presented to oneself.48

Not only does this characterization of the experience of false recognition

directly echo the notions of play anderrancethat we have seen at work acrossthe texts of Bergson and Levinas,49 we also find that the interwoven notions of

the memory image as a simultaneous double of present perception and the

temporal phenomenon of a momentary stop, a detachment of the present

from its future, are both at work in the philosophical position Levinas is

adumbrating in Reality and Its Shadow and From Existence to Existents.

Bergson argues that the memory image is created simultaneously with thecreation of the perception image that it doubles and that this doubling

represents the projection of a virtual image alongside the actual image of

perception. As Bergson writes, our actual existence, whilst it unfolds in time

[se droule dans le temps], doubles itself with a virtual existence, like a mirrorimage.50 Despite this, we persist in assuming that the creation of memory

images succeeds perception because, in attending to life, our experience is

turned exclusively to perception and to the nascent action for which it is

preparing. In attending to life, consciousness has no need of the virtual double

of this perception, since it adds nothing to perception, it has no utility orvalue. In the normal course of experience, therefore, we simply do not notice

the virtual memory image; it is as if it is not there at all. But if indeed the

memory image is created simultaneously with the perception image, then we

must conclude that the present is twofold [ddouble] at every moment.Bergson depicts the present as having a dynamically bifid nature, its ongoing

movement consisting in an up-rush [jaillissement] [of ] two jets exactly sym-metrical, one of which falls back [retombe] towards the past whilst the othersprings forward [slance] towards the future.51 In other words, it is not just

that the memory image differs from the perception image in being virtual asopposed to actualit is not just, as Bergson says, that each moment of our

life presents two aspects, actual and virtual; it differs in its dynamic ten-

48 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 18182;uvres, 928.49 A further resonance in Bergsons text can be found with the notion of rhythm that Levinas

argues takes hold of the sensibility ofaisthesiswhen, due to inattention to life, consciousnessturns away from the perception image to its memorial double, the utility that determinesperception is replaced by mere pleasure; and when utility no longer determines the course ofperception, then the play of images is governed by a law of attraction (Bergson, Mind-Energy,175; uvres, 924).

50 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 165;uvres, 917.51 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 160;uvres, 913.



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dency.52 The movement of perception is one with the overall movement of

consciousness and life, the thrust, the lan, of the present into the future,whereas the tendency of the virtual memory image is to move in a counter

direction, falling backward into a past that it thereby continually (re-)creates.How is it that each present moment of consciousness comes to have this

dynamically bifid nature? Bergson claims that each moment is not simply

given in consciousness as double, as actual and virtual, but rather that the

doubling of each moment is itself a consequence: Each moment of life splits

itself [se scinde] as and when it is posited; or rather, it consists in this splitting[scission].53 The doubling of consciousness into two dynamic tendencies, oneactual and pushing forward into the future, the other virtual and falling back

into the past, is an effect of this movement of splitting. Similarly, it is due to

this splitting that, as each present moment moves forward into its future, it isable to function as a fleeting limit between the immediate past which is now

no more and the immediate future which is not yet.54

How then should we understand the cause of the phenomenon of false

recognition if we regard it from the perspective of this fundamental move-

ment of splitting? The event of false recognition stems from a certain enfee-

bling of consciousness, a brief inattention to life, that results in a momentary

stop in thelanof consciousness that detaches the present from the future towhich it cleaves. We wish to suggest that this detaching has its condition of

possibility, so to speak, in the fundamental movement of splitting and that themomentary stop in thelanof consciousness has its condition of possibility inthe movement of splitting. Furthermore, to the extent that the momentary

stop and the detaching are consequences of a certain enfeebling, it appears as

if the continuity of the movement of consciousness is not simply given but,

rather, requires an effort of contraction or of tension.

At the conclusion of our initial discussion of Levinas, we asked how the

detachment of an image from its object of reference might be possible. In

working through what we wish to suggest is the Bergsonian provenance of

Levinass position, we have seen that there is a temporal root for this detach-

ment, that the turn of consciousness from attention in actual present percep-

tion to life, to a certain play, or wandering, among the virtual memory of the

present consists in a detachment (or disengagement) of the present from the

future into which it would otherwise have been moving. The connection of

Levinass position to the Bergsonian line of thought we have been explicating

becomes more evident when we pay heed to his own theory of doubling in

Reality and Its Shadow and to the theory of time on which it is based.

52 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 165;uvres, 917.53 Ibid.54 Ibid.

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Levinas concludes that if art consists in substituting an image for being, the

aesthetic element, as its etymology indicates, is sensation.55 An image refers

to its object in a way that is distinct from the modes of reference of signs,

symbols, and wordsthe image resembles its object. Does that mean,Levinas asks, that we must take the image as an independent reality which

resembles the original?56 We avoid this necessity when we come to under-

stand that resemblance is not a way of comparing already given realities but,

rather, a process that doubles reality within itself: Reality would not only be

what it is, what it is disclosed [dvouile] to be in truth, but would be also itsdouble, its shadow, its image.57 Levinas is, in effect, giving a strong onto-

logical interpretation of Bergsons claim that each moment of conscious life is

doubleat once both actual and virtual. Thus, Levinas writes: There is a

duality in this person, this thing, a duality in its being . . . and there is arelationship between these two moments . . . the thing is itself and is its image,

[and the] relationship between the thing and its image is resemblance.58

But Bergson goes further: it is not enough merely to posit this doubling of

each moment; an account also needs to be given of the reason why conscious-

ness turns away from its normal attention to actual perception and experi-

ences the virtual image. In the same way, Levinas also seeks to account (in

ontological terms) for why it is that, in aesthetic sensibility, the image rather

than the object gives itself. We saw that Levinas, having initially gestured

toward a hither side of time, went on to claim that the hither side withinwhich art functions consists in a certain obscurity, by way of contrast to the

light in which objects are comprehended by consciousness. In understanding,

the object reveals itself to consciousness in the light of presence. But when the

object gives itself as its double, when it is the image that is given, it appears as

if it is a still life (nature morte). Rather than the object coinciding with theface it presents to the world, the face by which it shows itself, it is as though

it were at a distance from itself, as though it were withdrawing itself, as though

something in a being delayed behind being.59 It is because we are conscious

of a certain absence of the object, which consists in the withdrawal of the

object into obscurity, that we see the image preciselyasan image. Rather thanbringing the object to presence, the image indicates the absence of the object.

55 Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 5; La ralit et son ombre, 776.56 Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 6 ; La ralit et son ombre, 778. Levinas is here

referring to the different ontological realms of Platonic metaphysics.57 Ibid. We recall that in his characterization of the formation of memory, Bergson had

written that, simultaneously with the creation of perception, the memory of [the perception] isprojected beside it, as the shadow falls beside the body (Bergson, Mind-Energy, 157; uvres,913).




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It is as if, just like in a still life, the object itself has in some way passed away.

Thus, we are not taken to the object itself, as we are in understanding (or, as

Bergson argues, as we are in perception when we attend to life); nor are we

taken to a different ontological realm; rather, we are led toward the objectsabsence, toward its withdrawal.

The notion that the withdrawal is like a being delayed behind beingprovides us with a clue as to how this withdrawal of the object is possible. The

simultaneity of object and image is disturbed by this delay, just as when, for

Bergson, there is an inattention to life, the forward thrust of the present into

the future is delayed, constituting a momentary halt in the movement of

consciousness, a detachment of the present from its future. And so it is in this

way that we come back to the idea within this text of Levinas with which we

began, namely, of an interruption of time by a movement going on, on thehither side of time, in its interstices.60 This movement is the withdrawal that

consists in a certain delay that breaks up the simultaneity of object and image,

which, if we were to recast it in Bergsonian terms, breaks up the simultaneity

of actual and virtual, the simultaneity of the double tendency of the present to

thrust forward into the future and fall back into the past, the very duality of

tendencies that enables the present to function as the fleeting limit between

the immediate past which is now no more and the immediate future which is

not yet.61 And it is here that we encounter the most striking convergence

between the texts of Bergson and Levinas.There is a familiar trope in aesthetics that gestures toward the eternal in

the work of artas Levinas says, the Mona Lisa will smile eternally.62 What

is being evoked here is, Levinas claims, a stoppage of time [un arrt du temps],or rather its delay behind itself [son retard sur lui-mme]. The task that remains,Levinas continues, is to show in what sense it stops or delays.63 This

stoppage in time realizes the paradox of an instant that endures without a

future [qui dure sans avenir] . . . [that] has a quasi-eternal duration [une durequasi eternelle].64 This is precisely the notion of a present detached from itsfuture that Bergson had previously employed to describe the images experi-

enced in false recognition. It is important at this point to notice that Levinas

evokes the general context of Bergsonism through his use of the word

60 Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 23; La ralit et son ombre, 773.61 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 165;uvres, 917.62 Levinas,Collected Philosophical Papers, 9; La ralit et son ombre, 782. We could equally think

of the characters in Keatss Grecian Urn, the bride of quietness still unravished, the happyboughs . . . that cannot shed their leaves, the happy melodist who remains forever unwea-rid ( John Keats, The Complete Poems, ed. John Barnard, 2nd ed. [Harmondsworth: Penguin,1976], 34445).


386 ROBIN DURIE


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endures here and his claim that it would represent a paradox (implicitly, for

Bergsonism) to talk of an instant both enduring and having no future, since

duration consists, as we have repeatedly underscored, in the continuous

movement of the present into the future. Developing this notion of theeternally suspended future in the work of art, Levinas writes:

The imminence of the future endures before an instant stripped of the essential

characteristic of the present, its evanescence. It will never have completed its task as

a present, as though reality withdrew from its own reality and left it powerless. In this

situation the present can assume nothing, can take on nothing, and thus is an

impersonal and anonymous instant.65

Although Bergsons name is invoked fairly regularly inFrom Existence to Exis-tents, which was composed at the same time as Reality and Its Shadow anddeals with similar issues pertaining to time and temporality, and although

Reality and Its Shadow develops a theory of images and their temporality

that, as we have sought to demonstrate, has its provenance in Bergsons work

on memory and associated phenomena of consciousness such as dreams and

false recognition, it is striking that it is only at this point in Reality and Its

Shadow that Levinas finally names Bergson explicitly. It is striking because

he does so in the following way: Since Bergson it has become customary to

take the continuity of time to be the very essence of duration. By contrast,

and again following Bergson, it is now commonplace to dismiss the Cartesiannotion of time as a series of discontinuous instants as being an illusion of a

time grasped in its spatial trace, an origin of false problems for minds inca-

pable of conceiving duration.66

Despite the degree to which his position derives from Bergsonism, it is clear

that Levinas wishes to claim that the theory of time on which he bases the

aesthetics of Reality and Its Shadow is in fact contrary to that of Bergson.

It is contrary to Bergsonism, according to Levinas, because it stems from

a sensitivity to the paradox that an instant can stop (linstant puisse

sarrter)67

a paradoxicality that, by implication, would lead Bergson toconsign the phenomenon of the momentary stoppage of time to the realm of

the false problems generated by the spatialized conception of time criticized

in Time and Free Will (1910). Now, while the Bergson ofTime and Free Willmight indeed have baulked at the apparent paradoxicality of an instant

detached from the future into which it would otherwise have been bound to

move, and that would thus be unable to pass, it is nevertheless clear that the

Bergsonian texts from which, as we have been arguing, Levinas draws on in

65 Ibid.66 Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 11; La ralit et son ombre, 785.67 Ibid.



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the development of his theory of images in Reality and Its Shadow directly

countenance this otherwise paradoxical detachment of the instant from its

future.68 However that may be, Levinas goes on to underscore that the work

of art reveals in time the uncertainty of times continuation. It is as if, hecarries on, in the interstices on the hither side of time, as though parallel with

the duration of the living ran the eternal duration of the intervalthemean-while[lentretemps]. Art brings about just this duration in the interval.69 Theduration of the instant that endures without a future is an entretempsit is,literally, between time, an interval carved out in time, but an interval in time

to which art brings a certain temporality.

The implicit criticism of Bergson sketched out in Reality and Its Shadow

is developed more fully in From Existence to Existents. In this text, Levinas is

particularly concerned with the event of hypostasis, the event whereby anexistent stands out from the anonymous murmur of existence, the il y a, thefact thatthere is.70 This event has a fundamentally temporal dimension, thesame temporal dimension that is addressed from the perspective of aesthetics

in Reality and Its Shadow. Just as existence in and of itself does not yield the

event of hypostasis, so of itself, time resists any hypostasis.71 Rather,

hypostasis is the accomplishment [accomplissement] of a subject.72 Thehypostasis within time consists in the coming to presence, or better, the

coming into the present, of the instant.73 In and of itself, the present is

evanescence, pure passing, as Levinas also makes clear in Reality and ItsShadow. In and of itself, as pure passing, the present is the pure event of

being. The hypostasis, the coming to presence of the instant, constitutes the

transmutation of this pure event into a substantive.74 The event becomes

a substantive due to what Levinas calls the instants halt [larrt delinstant].75 When the instant is present, when it comes to presence, the

68 In a forthcoming book on Bergson, I argue that the development that can be traced inBergsons work from Time and Free Willthrough Matter and Memory and its associated texts toCreative Evolutionrepresents a pathway from a static to an emergent, dynamic, dualism. It is fromthe perspective of this development that the later Bergson is able to make sense of this otherwiseirreducibly paradoxical halt in time.

69 Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 11; La ralit et son ombre, 786.70 Levinas,Existence and Existents, 20;De lexistence lexistant, 20.71 Levinas,Existence and Existents, 73;De lexistence lexistant, 125.72 Levinas,Existence and Existents, 73;De lexistence lexistant, 126. Levinass accomplissement

here translates the Husserlian concept ofLeistung, which has the sense of an effect or productand the performance by which this effect or product is brought about. The genitive in thephrase accomplishment of a subject would, therefore, be both subjective and objective.

73 The common root shared by instant and hypostasis, as well as ecstasis, is the Latinstari, meaning to stand (upright); it also can mean to remain, tarry, or linger.

74 Levinas,Existence and Existents, 73;De lexistence lexistant, 125.75 Ibid.

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present is a halt [est arrt], not because it is arrested [quil est arrt], butbecause it interrupts and links up again to the duration [la dure] to which itcomes, out of itself.76

We have repeatedly drawn attention to the fact that the Bergsonian textthat provides a description of the temporal source for the phenomenon of

doubling that offers the wherewithal for Levinass aesthetics of images turns

on an account of the momentary stopping, or halting, of time. We argued that

the potential for this stopping consisted in the movement of splitting, a

movement that, Bergson argues, enables the present moment to function as a

fleeting limit between the immediate past which is now no more and the

immediate future which is not yet. Without this movement of splitting,

indeed, Bergson claims that this function of the present moment would be a

mere abstraction.77 It would be a mere abstraction for two reasons: first, itwould have no content or structure; but second, and more importantly, the

bifid tendencies of the actual and virtual create, on the one hand, the future

into which the actual surges forward and, on the other hand, the past into

which the virtual falls back. Thus, the movement of splitting within the

present is a differential movement, one that differentiates the future and the

past. Rather than acknowledging this resource in Bergsons thought,

however, Levinas chooses to consign him to the camp of modern philoso-

phy that sees in the instant only the illusion of scientific time and that

conceives of the instant as the limit between two times, a pure abstraction.By contrast to this lifeless abstraction, reality would be composed of the

concretelanof duration.78

Despite employing the exact turn of phrase used by Bergson in order to

condemn a certain conception of the instant as a mere abstraction, and

despite Bergson describing the movement of splitting that accounts for the

possibility both of a halt in time and the presents function as a concrete,

moving limit differentiating future and past, Levinas is evidently seeking to

distance himself from Bergson at this precise point. We may reconstitute the

series of interconnected steps by which Levinas seeks to do so here. First, he

wants to delineate the way in which the instant is characterized, and then

criticized, within a certain tradition of modern philosophynamely, the

instant as an abstract line of division between past and future. Second, he

wants to align Bergson to this way of thinking about, and criticizing, the

instant. Clearly, this is an accurate representation of Bergson. Third,

however, Levinas wants to present an alternative account of the instant, on

the temporal basis of which the hypostasis of the subject is accomplished

76 Levinas,Existence and Existents, 73; De lexistence lexistant, 126.77 Bergson,Mind-Energy, 165;uvres, 91718.78 Levinas,Existence and Existents, 7374;De lexistence lexistant, 126.



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namely, the halt of the instant. Fourth, Levinas wants to argue that the notion

that the instants halt can only be thought as a paradox within a Bergsonian

theory of time as continuous duration. According to this version of his posi-

tion, Bergson must condemn the instant and its halt as an illusion generatedby scientific time, just as surely as he must condemn the present as abstract

limit as an illusion generated by scientific time.

The false representation of the instant, the representation that Bergson is

supposed to endorse, is one in which the instant has no breadth, has no

duration, is not duration.79 Whatever qualities the instant may possess, they,

like the instant itself, are derived from the prior nature of time itself, of which

the instant is merely a function. The existence of the instant is a consequence

of the existence of time. Moreover, to the extent that existence consists in

persistence through time, the instant cannot be the locus of completeexistencean existing object traverses the stance of the instant; it carries

across (pass travers) the instant in order to accomplish a duration.80

Levinass aim is to reconceive the relation between time, existence, and the

instant, to consider the possibility of an existence specific to the instant itself,

such that the instant is the accomplishment of existence, on the basis of

which it becomes possible to make functional sense of the halt of the instant.81

It is this possibility, Levinas argues, that Bergsons confinement of the instant

to abstract time (as opposed to concrete, lived duration) misses.82 What is

distinctive about the existence of the instant is that beyond duration itsexistence must be accomplished by the instant itself. The instant, Levinas

argues, must have a beginning in and of itself, a birth, and this beginning,

because of the very nature of the instant, must be a relationshipsui generis.83

Levinas explicates this fundamental point in the following way:

What begins to be does not exist before having begun, and yet it is what does not

exist that must, through its beginning, give birth to itself, come to itself, without

coming from anywhere. Such is the paradoxical character of beginning which is

constitutive of an instant. And this should be emphasized. A beginning does not start

79 Levinas,Existence and Existents, 74;De lexistence lexistant, 126.80 Levinas,Existence and Existents, 75;De lexistence lexistant, 128.81 The functional sense of the halt of the instant goes back to the theme of effort, the effort

by which the instant is begun, and by which the stance of the instant is taken up. Thisphenomenon of effort, when analyzed alongside such phenomena as lassitude and fatigue, allowus to catch sight, as Levinas writes, of the articulation of an instant (Levinas, Existence andExistents, 80;De lexistence lexistant, 137), an articulation that contrasts with the instant lackingin breadth and duration condemned by Bergson as a mere abstraction. For a fuller discussionof Levinass account of the articulation of the instant, see David Webb, The Complexity of theInstant: Bachelard, Levinas, Lucretius, in Time and the Instant, ed. Robin Durie (Manchester:Clinamen Press, 2000).

82 Levinas,Existence and Existents, 76;De lexistence lexistant, 130.83 Ibid.

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out of the instant that precedes the beginning; its point of departure is contained in

its point of arrival, like a rebound movement [choc en retour]. It is out of this recoil

[recul] in the very heart of the present that the present is accomplished, and an

instant taken up.84

Whereas, following Bergson, we might want to say that existence stems from

the continuity in and of duration, Levinas wants us to think of an existence

specific to the instant, an existence that must therefore be accomplished in

and by the instant, indeed, such that the instant would consist in this accom-

plishment, and such that the instant would come to be in the present, that is,

would come to presence. But such an existence cannot be derived from

preceding instants, nor from the duration of which it might form a part. The

beginning of the instant must be an absolute beginning, literally, creation ex

nihilo. And it must be creationex nihiloprecisely because of the isolation of theinstantits absolute separation from any instant that precedes or succeeds it.

As a consequence, when an instant comes to presence, the present becomes

the occurrence of an origin (vnement de lorigine).85

Here then we can see one way in which it might be possible to interpret

Levinass claim that it would be necessary to insist on a novelty signifying by

force of the concordance in the very discordance of time. Normally, we

understand the present as a moment within the continuity of duration, what we

might take to be the concordance of time. Despite the insistence on novelty

and creation that resounds throughout Bergsons work, and in his reflectionson time in particular, Levinass claim here is that it is only in the coming to

presence of the instant that we encounter the full force of novelty. We do so

precisely because of the nature of the instant that entails that it must, of

necessity, have an absolute beginning. However, it is this very nature of the

instant that constitutes the discordance of time, times being out of joint, or

unhinged. Yet, despite being unhinged in this way, there is still time. The

instant does not destroy timerather, as we have seen, it constitutes a halt in

time, and the distinctive path that Levinass philosophy will follow consists in

exploring the nature of the concordance of time that follows from this halt.

We have seen the extent to which the analyses of these crucial early works

of Levinas have their roots in certain key texts by Bergson. We have also seen

that these same texts provide an account of the very phenomenon, namely,

times halt, which Levinas wishes to argue marks the point where his own

thought takes its leave from the milieu of Bergsonism. Why then, we must ask

in conclusion, does Levinas refuse to find the resource for thinking the

discordance of time in the Bergsonian account of times splitting and dou-

bling? One reason may be that Levinas harbored reservations about the84 Levinas,Existence and Existents, 76; De lexistence lexistant, 13001.85 Levinas,Existence and Existents, 79; La ralit et son ombre, 136.



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capacity within a Bergsonian thinking of time for thinking the corollary of the

absolute beginning of the instant, namely, its absolute cessation, a notion

anticipated in the theme of death that begins to permeate the analyses toward

the end of Reality and Its Shadow. Similarly, we saw that for Bergson thehalt that can arise from the splitting of time stems from a certain enfeebling

of the movement of duration that follows inattention to life. By contrast,

Levinass account of the halt of time concentrates on the effort entailed by the

accomplishment of an existent in hypostasis. In other words, the halt in time

in Levinas is an effect of tension, whereas in Bergson it is an effect of

de-tension. On the other hand, in such later works as Intentionality and

Sensation (1965) and Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (1974), Levinasoffers an analysis of the HusserlianUr-impression, which has the same quality

as the absolute beginning of the instant, utilizing the notion of the cart,revealing a clearer thread of affinity with Bergsonian splitting. What is dif-

ferent about the position adopted by Levinas in these later texts is that the

minimal deviation of the cart is a movement occurring in the midst of thepassage of time, while also being constitutive of the temporalization of time,

and in this way, the position adumbrated in these later texts is much closer to

that of the text in which Bergson explicates the movement of times splitting.

InFrom Existence to Existentsand Reality and Its Shadow, however, Levinasis driven by the imperative of demonstrating that the being of the instant does

not derive from the continuous movement of duration and that the instant isseparate from this movement. Although Bergson depicts the splitting of the

moment as the originary movement of time, just as Levinas will go on to

locate thecartat the origin of time, in these earlier texts, Levinass position isdetermined by the more or less polemical need to assert the absolutely

originary status of the instant. It is perhaps suggestive that, while Bergson

features far less in these later texts, nevertheless the position worked out in

them becomes closer to the Bergsonism that provides the conceptual

resources for the positions developed in Levinass earlier texts. However we

answer this question, it is clear that the distinctive trajectory of Levinass

thought emerges from a profound engagement with the philosophy of

Bergson, an engagement whose complexity challenges us to think anew about

the most fundamental problems of the philosophy of time.

392 ROBIN DURIE

Durie - Wandering Among Shadows

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