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The Challenge ofBergsonism:

Phenomenology, Ontology,

Ethics

Leonard Lawlor

CONTINUUM


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The Challenge of Bergsonism


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For my parents


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The Challengeof Bergsonism

Phenomeno logy , Onto logy, E L t h i c s

LEONARD LAWLOR

ontinuumL O N D O N N E W Y O R K


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ContinuumThe Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX15 East 26th Street, New York, NY 10010

Leonard Lawlor 2003All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any formor by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or anyinformation storage or retrieval system, prior permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 0-8264-6802-0 (hardback), 0-8264-6803-9 (paperback)

Typeset by YHT Ltd, LondonPrinted and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, Guildford and King's Lynn


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Contents

Acknowledgements viiAbbreviations viiiPreface: Memory and Life ixChapter One: The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology 1The Artifice 1The Threefold Differentiation in Order to Determine the Conceptof the Image 4The Role of the Body 11The Theory of Pure Perception 18Chapter Two: The Concept of Memory: Ontology 27The Primacy of Memory 29The Two Differences in Nature that Define Memory 31The Central Metaphysical Problem of Existence 39The Image of the Cone 43Chapter Three: The Concept of Sense: Ethics 60The Bergsonian Concept of Intuition 63Bergson's Philosophy of Language 70Conclusion: Think in Terms of Duration 80Appendix I: The Point where Memory Turns Back into Life:An Investigation of Bergson's The Two Sources of Moralityand Religion 85

I. The Theoretical and Practical Objectives of The Two Sources of Moralityand Religion 86


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vi Contents

II. Asceticism and Sexuality 91III. The Trumpery of Nature 97IV. Mystical Experience: Emotion and Image 99

Conclusion: The Star 110

Appendix II: English Translation of Jean Hyppolite's 1949'Aspects divers de la memoire chez Bergson' ('Various Aspectsof Memory in Bergson'), translated by Athena V. Colman 1 1 2

Notes 128Bibliography 136Index 143


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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Miguel de Beistegui who invited me to deliver threelectures on Bergson at the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in Citta di Costello,Italy, during July of 1999. I would also like to thank John Mullarkey, FredericWorms, Renaud Barbaras, Keith Ansell Pearson and Marie Cariou for helpingme understand Bergson's philosophy. Finally, I would like to thank the stu-dents who participated in two graduate seminars on Bergson that I taught atthe University of Memphis (spring 1999 and spring 2002). In particular, Iwould like to thank Heath Massey, who proofread and indexed the manuscript.The writing of this book was made possible by a Faculty Research Grant fromthe University of Memphis (summer 2001).

Note: Appendix II is an English translation by Athena V. Colman of JeanHyppolite's 'Aspects divers de la memoire chez Bergsons', in Jean Hyppolite,Figures de lapensee philosophique, tome /, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,1971: 468-88. Michel Meyer of Revue International de Philosphie has grantedpermission for this translation. I would like to thank Athena Colman fortranslating this text.


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Abbreviations

The following abbreviations have been used throughout. At times the Englishtranslations have been modified. Reference is always made first to HenriBergson, CEuvres, Edition du Centenaire, textes annotes par Andre Robinet,Introduction par Henri Gouhier, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959,then to the corresponding English translation.EC Creative Evolution, translated by Arthur Mitchell, New York: Dover,

1998 [1911].PM The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, translated by Mabelle

L. Andison, New York: The Citadel Press, 1992 [1946]; translation ofLa Pensee et le mouvant.

R Laug hter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, translated by CloudsleyBrereton and Fred Rothwell, Los Angeles: Green Integer, 1999 [1911].

MM Matter and Memory , translated by N. M. Paul and W. S. Palmer, NewYork: Zone Books, 1994 [1910].

ES Mind-Energy, translated by H. Wildon Carr, London: Macmillan, 1920.DI Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness,

translated by F. L. Pogson, Mineola: Dover Publishing Company, 2001[1913].

M R The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, translated by R. Ashley Audraand Cloudsley Brereton, with the assistance of W. Horsfall Carter, NotreDame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977 [1935].


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PREFACE

Memory and Life

Bergson himself states the challenge that his philosophy represents when hesays, 'Questions relating to subject and object, to their distinction and to theirunion, should be put in terms of time rather than space' (MM 218/71; alsoMM 354/220). To put questions relating to subject and object in terms of timemeans that we must think in terms of duration. While Bergson defines durationin many ways - most basically, this book concerns itself with the concept ofduration - it can be summarized in the following formula: duration equalsmemory plus the absolutely new. Giving the primary role to memory, thisformula implies that Bergsonism is a 'primacy of memory', and not a 'primacyof perception', and this is why Bergsonism is, first, a challenge to phenomen-ology. In the Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty says, 'To perceive isnot to remember'.1 Through this distinction between perception and remem-bering, Merleau-Ponty intends to prioritize perception over memory; for himthere is no call from the present to memory without the 'immanent sense' thatperception makes available. In contrast, in Matter and Memor y , Bergson says,'to imagine is not to remember' (MM 278/135). Through this distinctionBergson intends to prioritize memory over any form of imaging, includingperception; for him, while perception calls for memory, perception does notmake sense without memory. In fact, for Bergson, the priority of memory is soextreme that we must say that being is memory. Even though the concept of theimage in Matter and Memory looks to be a new non-phenomenological conceptof presence, presence becomes in Bergson derivative from memory.

This identification of being and memory is why, second, the challenge ofBergsonism is a challenge to ontology. Of course, in the most famous footnotein Being and Time, Heidegger criticizes Bergson's conception of time as dura-tion for having merely 'reversed' Aristotle's numerical definition of time.2Indeed, Bergson's relentless denunciations of analyses that divide thingsaccording to numbers or according to quantitative differences looks to be areversal in favour of quality. It is possible to see in Bergson's concept ofmemory a reversal of Platonism. Yet, Bergson, to use Heidegger's phrase,'twists free' of Platonism. He twists free because memory in Bergson is onto-


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x Preface: Memory and Life

logical; it gives us a new sense of being: being in terms of the past not in termsof the present, being as the unconscious instead of consciousness. (In order tounderstand the connection between memory and being in Bergson, I reliedheavily on Jean Hyppolite's 'Aspects divers de la memoire chez Bergson'. Thisis why I have included an English translation of it as Appendix II.) This newsense of being means that Bergson is not merely replacing objectivism with akind of subjectivism. But there is more. Because Bergson compares his imageof the memory cone to a telescope, we can see that he has replaced the Platonicsun (the good) with the Milky Way, with stars and planets. This means thatwhat memory recalls are multiplicities and singularities, not identities anduniversals.

It is clear that Bergson at least reverses Platonism since he constantly criti-cizes Zeno's alleged paradoxes; he does not subscribe to the Eleatic philosophyof the same. Moreover, Bergson's emphasis of the absolutely new means thathis thought is not totalizing; in fact, the slogan for this book could be that 'thewhole is not given'.3 In his later writings of course, Levinas acknowledges theimportance of Bergson's philosophy for ethics, ethics in the sense of a discourseof alterity.

4But, Levinas also wonders whether the Bergsonian experience ofduration - what Bergson calls intuition - really lets the 'alterity of the new . . .

explode, immaculate and untouchable as alterity or absolute newness, theabsolute itself in the etymological sense of the term'.5 Levinas can say thisbecause he believes that Bergsonian intuition is a form of representation. Butthis 'failure' in Bergsonism, for Levinas, may be what is most important aboutit: it leads us away from the discourse of intersubjectivity and the logic ofalterity. When Bergson criticizes the Eleatic tradition, he in effect criticizes theentire logic of the same and other. He does this in what we could call a 'phi-losophy of language'. Through the concept of the dynamic schema, Bergsonfurnishes us with a new concept of sense (a new concept of the concept) inwhich there is no alterity, but, instead of representation, there is alteration,variation, movement and, therefore, life.

These three challenges - to phenomenology, to ontology, to ethics - cameabout on the basis of a reading of Bergson's Matter and Memory (1896). Thethree chapters in the present volume correspond to those three challenges.Chapter Three, however, ends by taking up the idea of creative emotion fromBergson's The Two Sources o f Morality and Religion (1932). Appendix I expandsthe investigations of The Two Sources by attempting to think about Bergson'sethics as such (and not in relation to his so-called philosophy of language).Between the completion of the third chapter and the writing of the firstappendix, I started to wonder about the resources available in contemporaryphilosophy for ethical thinking, resources other than Scheler, other thanLevinas, other than Heidegger, other than Sartre and deBeauvoir. I also started


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Preface: Memory and Life xi

to wonder about the possibility of an ethical thinking that is distinctly 'con-tinental', in contrast to analytic philosophy's moral theory. But it is clear that,when I started to wonder about ethics, I had fallen into the line called forth bythe very noisy drumbeat of philosophy today: 'ethics and politics, ethics andpolities'. In contemporary philosophy it is hard not to be swept up into trends;it is hard to be genuinely untimely. But I hope the reader can recognize that, bylinking Matter and Memory with The Two Sources - two books, by the way, thatBergson himself did not directly link; he intended The Two Sources as a con-tinuation of Creative Evolution (MR 1193/256) - I am trying to link some nowapparently uninteresting 'metaphysical' ideas, like reversing Platonism, withsome now apparently interesting 'ethical' ideas, like absolute justice. In thisbook I am trying to follow my own line. Nevertheless, as Bergson would say,there is always aspiration along with pressure. So, one should note that the titleof this preface is an allusion to a small book by Gilles Deleuze, Memoire et vie.6

Deleuze, of course, defined Bergson's philosophy with this phrase, 'Memoryand Life'. But it also makes one think, thanks again to Deleuze, of Nietzsche'sOn the Genealogy o f Morals. When I started then to investigate The Two Sources,I was looking fo r similarities with Nietzsche. After all, The Two Sources is theonly published book of Bergson's in which Bergson mentions Nietzsche byname (MR 1212/278).7 With Nietszche in mind, it turned out that The TwoSources is engaged in a project that cannot be characterized as moral theory.Instead, Bergson is engaged in an archaeology of originary experience. Thisexperience is what Bergson calls mystical experience; it is the experience of thereciprocal implication of images and emotion. In fact, it is not even clear thatwe can call what he is doing in The Two Sources an ethics in the standard sense,since he says that this experience is more metaphysical than moral. If it presentsanything, The Two Sources presents an 'originary ethics'. But besides anarchaeology, Bergson is engaged in a genealogy. He thinks that mysticalexperience (and its asceticism) will transform the genus humanity into a 'divinehumanity', into, one might say, a super-humanity. As archaeology and gen-ealogy suggest, the most striking similarity between Bergson and Nietzsche isthe concern with memory. Again, as I said above, I have tried to show here thatBergson's 'ethics', his originary ethics, maintains a deep connection with theconcept of memory developed in Matter and Memory . Mystical experience inBergson is an experience of memory. Consequently, following the image hegives us in Matter and Memory - the memory cone is a kind of telescope - wemust say that Bergson ethics is really an astronomy. This 'astronomy', lookingheavenward, indicates a fundamental difference between Bergson andNietzsche, a difference that perhaps overturns the results of Chapter Three.The Two Sources privileges a religious experience - and Bergson explicitlymentions the ascetic ideal - over philosophy; On the Genealogy of Morals pri-


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xii Preface: Memory and Life

vileges 'we knowers', that is, the philosophers who question even the value oftruth, over the ascetic ideal. Perhaps in the final analysis we have to char-acterize Bergson as a philosopher of transcendence rather than as a philosopherof immanence. On the basis of this investigation, I am more certain than everthat, today, we must rethink precisely the relation between immanence andtranscendence. In any case, because Deleuze focused primarily on Matter andMemory - Deleuze says that Matter and Memory contains the 'secret' of Berg-sonism8 - he classified Bergson as an immanentist. Indeed, Deleuze (andGuattari) in Wh at is Philosophy? say:

Will we ever be mature enough for a Spinozist inspiration [of immanence]?It happened once with Bergson: the beginning of Matter and Memory marksout a plane that slices through the chaos - both the infinite movement of amatter that continually propogates itself, and the image of a thought thateverywhere spreads an in principle pure consciousness (immanence is notimmanent 'to' consciousness but the other way around).9

Because Matter and Memory lays out a strict plane of immanence, it confrontsthe problem of metaphysical dualism. The subtitle of the original Frenchedition of Matter and Memory (there is no subtitle to the English edition)translates as 'An essay on the relation of the body to the mind or spirit' (I'esprit,of course) and immediately makes one think of An Essay on the Immediate Datao f Consciousness, the title of Bergson's first book (Time and Free Will is the titleof the English translation). This association to the Essay is supposed to indicatethe progress made over the seven years (1889 to 1896) between the twopublications. The Essay constructed a dualism between time and space,between spirit and matter. As I have already stated, Bergson always denouncesthinking in terms of differences of degree; the conclusion of the Essay is that thedifference between spirit and matter is a difference in nature. So, like the Essay ,Matter and Memory is, as Bergson says explicitly in the preface of 1910, 'clearlydualist' (MM 161/9). But, unlike the Essay, Matter and Memory 'asserts thereality of spirit and the reality of matter' (MM 161/9). It is not the case thatmatter is some sort of illusion; rather, matter is real. The dualism of realityallows us then, according to Bergson, to 'attenuate, if not suppress, the theo-retical difficulties' which the dualism suggested by immediate consciousnessand adopted by common sense has always raised (MM 161/9, 318/181).Therefore, the purpose of Matter and Memory lies in showing that both con-sciousness (conscience, in French, con-science) and science are right (MM 191/41), that 'science and conscience fundamentally agree provided that we regardconsciousness in its immediate data and science in its remotest aspiration'(MM 333/197). Thus Matter and Memory is supposed to bring us to a new


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Preface: Memory and Life xiii

monism, 'the plane of immanence'. In Matter and Memory's fourth chapter,Bergson himself says that his philosophical method of intuition, which hadbeen used in relation to the problem of consciousness in the Essay , is now beingapplied to matter. He says,

The question is whether . . . the confused mass which tends towardsextension could be seized by us on the nearer side of the homogeneous spaceto which it is applied and through which we subdivide it - just as that partwhich goes to make up our inner life can be detached from time, empty andindefinite, and brought back to pure duration. (MM 323/186-7)

Commenting on this discussion, Victor Delbos noted in his 1897 review thatMatter and Memory allows us 'to surmount th e dualism with which th e Essayhad been content and which here [in Matter and Memory] is conceived only as acritical procedure resulting in a provisional conclusion'.10 The real conclusionis memory, or more precisely, duration, understood as a sort of monisticsubstance (cf. PM 1420 n. I11) where substance itself is not understood assomething stable but rather as unstable differentiations of spirit into matter.Bergson's psychology of the immediate data of consciousness, therefore, isnothing less than a 'springboard' into ontology;12 it is an introduction tometaphysics, to the metaphysics that Matter and Memory presents. Thismetaphysics begins with the concept of the image.


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CHAPTER I

The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology

In this opening chapter we are going to consider Bergsonism's relation tophenomenology, and to do this we must consider the Bergsonian concept ofperception, which is found in chapter one of Matter and Memory . This chapteris entitled 'Concerning the Selection of Images for Representation'; its subtitleis 'The Role of the Body'. While Bergson himself, in his Table of Contents,divides the chapter into thirteen sections1, we are going to approach the con-cept of perception with three preliminary steps. The first step will concern theBergsonian method, the second the concept of image that is introduced on thefirst page of Matter and Memory , and the third 'the role of the body'. Finally, weshall turn to what Bergson calls 'pure perception'. What we are going to see isthat Bergsonism differs from phenomenology by means of its concept of pre-sence; the Bergsonian concept of image amounts to a new concept of presence.We shall also see that, unlike phenomenology, Bergsonism refers consciousnessto matter. But this reference of consciousness to matter does not mean thatBergsonism is a kind of 'fleshism', as we find in Merleau-Ponty. Nor does itmean that Bergsonism is a kind of materialism. Most importantly, Bergson inMatter and Memory's first chapter is not making a 'phenomenology of per-ception'.

THE ARTIFICEOverall, chapter one of Matter and Memory announces that the traditionalmetaphysical positions of materialism or realism and idealism or spiritualismare dead.2 Spiritualism and materialism are reductionistic metaphysical posi-tions; each is the reverse of the other, either reducing the reality of matter tospirit or the reality of spirit to matter. Both positions are based in views ofexternal perception. In idealism, external perception is defined by the spiritualprojection of representations that are taken to be reality; in realism, externalperception is defined by the brain having the role of generating representationswhich are then projected out but which do not meet up with external things


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2 The Challenge of Bergsonism

( c f . MM 317-18/181). Reductionistic positions such as spiritualism (or ide-alism) and materialism (or realism) move around in a circle and are enclosed inirresolvable or badly stated problems. For Bergson, the problem of perceptionneeds to be restated, or, as Bergson says, 'enlarged' (MM 176/25: 's'elargit'y,when the problem of perception (like all metaphysical problems) is stated well,it will open itself to solutions.

To state the problem of perception well, Bergson starts with what seems tobe a fiction. The first sentence of Matter and Memory says: 'We are going tofeign for an instant that we know nothing of the theories of matter and of thetheories of spirit, nothing of the discussions concerning the reality or ideality ofthe external world' (MM 169/17; cf. also MM 162/10). The wordfeindre, likefeign in English, literally means to fashion or to shape; the opening of Matterand Memory therefore is an 'artifice'. We can call it an artifice, because, inMatter and Memory's fourth chapter, Bergson speaks of the artifice of his phi-losophical method; the artifice consists in distinguishing the viewpoint ofcustomary or useful knowledge from that of true knowledge (MM 322/186). Ina lecture Bergson delivered in 1895, the year before the publication of Matterand Memory, he defines an artifice as something that leads some of us to a placewhere others find themselves naturally.3 With this artifice, therefore, he intendsto call us back from the habitual ways we think about the problem of per-ception. So, this artifice is based in an act of liberation, an act of freedom, inwhich Bergson himself is inventing the terms of the problem. Like Descartes'sfiction of the evil genius - Descartes too uses the word 'feindre'4 - Bergson'sartifice is needed to restrain our habits and to restrain the metaphysical theoriesthat develop on the basis of them. The last sentence of the 1910 preface says,'the habits formed in action find their way up to the sphere of speculation,where they create fake [ f a c t i c e ] problems; metaphysics must begin by dis-sipating this artificial obscurity' (MM 168/16). So, Bergson's artifice is sup-posed to 'dissipate' the obscurity; it is a 'hypothesis' in the literal sense of theword; it is a thesis, which is 'below', but which is supposed to return us toexperience 'above' utility, return us to what he calls 'immediate experience' or'immediate consciousness'. This return to immediate consciousness is Berg-son's famous 'turn of experience': the philosophical enterprise, for Bergson,consists in 'seeking experience at its source, or rather above that decisive turnwhere, taking a bias in the direction [ s e n s ] of our utility, it becomes properlyh u m a n experience' (MM 321/184, Bergson's emphasis). We shall return to theturn of experience in Chapter Three, but for now let us note that the turn ofexperience is really the Bergsonian equivalent to the phenomenologicalreduction, but it is not a return to perceptual faith.

One can say that the turn of experience does not return us to perceptual faithbecause, for Bergson, immediate experience is not common sense, although, in


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The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology 3

the 1910 preface as well as in the original 1896 preface, he suggests as much.5Again, in Chapter Three, we shall return to the question of common sense inBergson and distinguish it from what he calls 'good sense' and especially fromwhat he calls 'superior good sense'. But for now, we must recognize theimportance for Bergson of the word 'sens '; like the German 'Sinn', sens meansnot only meaning and sense, but also direction. Common sense in Bergson isthe common (or even natural) direction, the direction towards utility. It is ourcommon theories about how to make things useful, what Bergson, in thesecond introduction to his 1934 collection of essays called La pensee et lemouvant (The Creative Mind - the title of the English translation), calls 'thesocialization of the truth' (PM 1327/87).6 This theoretical outlook based insocial needs is why common sense is primarily concerned with decomposing.The tendency of common sense to decompose is why Bergson throughoutMatter and Memory finds himself 'correcting' common sense (M M 219/73; cf.also MM 327/191, 329/193, 332/196). The most important comment Bergsonmakes in Matter and Memory concerning common sense is found in chapterfour when he says,

Against [materialism and idealism] we invoke the same testimony, that ofconsciousness, which shows us our body as one image among others and ourunderstanding as a certain faculty of dissociating, of distinguishing, ofopposing logically, but not of creating or of constructing. Thus, willingcaptives of psychological analysis and, consequently, of common sense, itwould seem that, after having exacerbated the conflicts raised by ordinarydualism, we have closed all the avenues of escape which metaphysics mightset open to us. But, just because we have pushed dualism to an extreme, ouranalysis has perhaps dissociated its contradictory elements. (MM 318/181)

This comment implies that Matter and Memory's opening hypothesis is reallysupposed to 'push' common sense up above to an extreme which in turn willopen common sense up and allow us to escape from it. In other words, theimmediate experience that Bergson is hypothesizing here is not a 'naive con-viction' (MM 192/43), an Urdoxa; rather it is intuition, knowledge. But, thisknowledge is not equivalent to science, at least not science in the normal sense.With Bergson, we must always speak of this conjunction: 'consciousness in itsimmediate data' and 'science in its remotest aspiration' (MM 333/197). So,since Bergson speaks of science in its remotest aspiration, it is difficult tomaintain, as Merleau-Ponty does in Phenomenology of Perception, that he pre-supposes 'the objective world' for the sense given to the word 'being'.7 As weshall see in a moment, Bergson is concerned, in Matter and Memory , with the


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refutation of materialism; we shall also see how important the word 'image' isfor Bergson and with it the word 'vibration' (ebranlement or vibration).

So, the opening hypothesis is leading us above the 'turn' in experience; itreads: 'Here I am therefore in the presence of images, in the vaguest sense ofthe word, images perceived when I open my senses, unperceived when I closethem' (MM 169/17). Thus the opening hypothesis defines all of reality withone term, 'images'. The problem of perception must be restated 'in terms ofimages, and of images alone'; images are the 'common terrain' on which rea-lism and idealism do battle (MM 177/26). Undoubtedly, the concept of theimage is the central concept of Matter and Memory , since the title of eachchapter concerns images ('The Selection of Images', 'The Recognition ofImages', 'The Survival of Images' and 'The Delimitation and Fixation ofImages'); it is also one of the most difficult concepts. We are going to make athreefold differentiation in order to try to understand it. The threefold differ-entiation consists in this: the Bergsonian image differs from an affection, from athing and from a representation. We are going to start with the first difference,that of image from affection.

THE THREEFOLD DIFFERENTIATION IN ORDERTODETERMINE THE CONCEPT OF THE IMAGE

In the 1910 preface, Bergson tells us that matter is images (MM 161/9). Sincematter is always denned in terms of extension, then extension must apply toimages. So, the first characteristic of the Bergsonian image is extension and thismeans objectivity. Things that are external have an order that does not dependon our perceptions; in fact, the order of our perceptions depends on extension.This independence is why Bergson can say that 'an image may be without beingperceived 1 (MM 185/35). Because extension and objectivity define the Berg-sonian image, it differs in nature from what Bergson calls affection: affection isinternal; it is the lowest degree of subjectivity (MM 206/57, 364/234). Simply,the image is matter and not spirit (MM 355/221). Thus, the first differentiationwe can make is that the Bergsonian image is not affection; the 'pure image' hasno affection mixed in with it (MM 206/58); the image is defined by extensionand objectivity. The second differentiation we can make is between the imageand the thing. Again, we must return to the 1910 preface. Here, Bergson tellsus that realism has been excessive in its conception of matter insofar as realismattempts to make matter 'a thing that produces representations in us but thatwould be of a nature different from these representations' (MM 161/9). Hiscriticism of realism is directed at this 'thing'.8 With the concept of the image,Bergson is dispelling the false belief that matter is a thing that possesses a


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hidden power able to produce representations in us (cf.ES 961-6/191-8). AsBergson says: 'The truth is that there is one, and only one, method of refutingmaterialism: it is to show that matter is precisely what it appears to be. Therebywe eliminate all virtuality, all hidden power, from matter . . . ' (MM 219/72).Bergson's refutation of materialism is contained in this rather obscure com-ment from Matter and Memory's first chapter:

No theory of matter can escape [the necessity of thinking in terms of theimage]. Reduce matter to atoms in motion: these atoms, though denuded ofphysical qualities, are determined only in relation to an eventual vision andan eventual contact, the one without light and the other without materiality.Condense atoms into centers of force, dissolve them into vortices revolvingin a continuous fluid, this fluid, these movements, these centers, canthemselves be determined only in relation to an impotent touch, an inef-fectual impulsion, a colorless light; they are still images. (MM 185/35)

This comment means that if one denudes matter of physical qualities, in otherwords, if one insists on conceiving matter not in terms of the image, one muststill define these denuded things negatively in relation to perceivable qualities: alightless vision, an immaterial touch, an impotent touch, an ineffectual impulsion,a colourless light. These 'things' are still images. This 'concession to idealism', asBergson calls it (MM 360/229), is why he then defines the image as 'presence'(MM 185/35). Especially after the developments of twentieth-century phe-nomenology, we always tend to turn the word 'presence' into the phrase'presence to consciousness'; in particular, after Derrida, we place this word,presence, immediately in the lexicon of idealism. But, with Bergson, presence,understood as an image, is not immediately or not yet idealistic. Presence, forBergson, means only that the image is what it appears to be. So far therefore,we have tw o characteristics of the Bergsonian image: extension (and objective)- it is not affection (and subjective) - and presence - it is not the thing. But ifthe image is what it appears to be, then we must wonder: Why does Bergsonuse the word 'image'? This question is crucial.

Bergson insists on the word image because it suggests vision (cf.PM 1355/118). We shall return to the priority of vision in Bergson when we discuss pureperception below, but for now,we must note that, with the image, Bergson isprivileging vision because vision is dependent on light. The Bergsonian imageemits light; it is a 'picture', as Bergson himself says (MM 186/36). What theilluminated picture gives vision to see primarily is colour, not lines. Bergsonalways praises Berkeley for having proved that th e secondary qualities of matterhave at least as much reality as the primary qualities (MM 162/10). So, theBergsonian image is composed of what modern philosophy called 'secondary


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qualities' and it is not therefore defined by what modern philosophy called'primary qualities', which are spatial relations defined by geometry. Therecognition that the Bergsonian image consists in secondary qualities, likecolour in particular, provides us with other characteristics of the image: theimage in Bergson is at once simple or one, complex or different, and con-tinuous or successive. When I see a picture, I see a unity composed of amultiplicity of colours all different from one another; Bergson says: 'Betweenlight and darkness, between colors, between shades, the difference is absolute'(MM 332/196). These absolute differences between qualities like colours arewhat Bergson calls 'natural articulations' (MM 333/197) or 'the articulations ofthe real' (PM 1292-4/50-2). That there are natural articulations of the real iswhy Bergson constantly speaks of 'images' in the plural; for example, in chapterone of Matter and Memory he says that 'I call matter the whole of images'(MM 170/22). Despite this plurality of articulations, when I see a picture, thecolours flow continuously one into another. Unlike the senses of hearing, smelland taste, vision does not contain intervals during which or between which it isnot functioning (MM 332/197).9 If we think about taste, for example, it isnever necessary that, as soon as I open my mouth, I taste something; even if Imaintain my mouth open, it is still not necessary that I am going to tastesomething. But, as soon as I open my eyes - as the opening hypothesis ofMatter and Memory says -1 see and continue to see, because light immediatelyflows into this opening; even if it is night-time, even if there is virtually no light,I see pictures.

Bergson also insists on the word image because it is always a picture ofsomething; the word, of course, literally means 'copy'. But, we have just seenthat the Bergsonian image is not a copy of a hidden thing. The impression thatthe image copies a thing comes from the fact that it is a surface and a surfacehas depth. Bergson says in Matter and Memory'?, fourth chapter:

Indeed we have no choice: if our belief in a more or less homogeneoussubstratum of sensible qualities has any ground, this can only be found in anact that would make us seize or guess, in quality itself, something that goesbeyond our sensation, as if this sensation itself were pregnant with detailssuspected yet unperceived. Its objectivity - that is, what it contains over andabove what it yields up - must then consist . . . precisely in the immensemultiplicity of movements which it executes, somehow, within its chrysalis.Motionless on the surface, in its very depth it lives and vibrates. (MM 339/204, Bergson's emphasis; cf. also MM 376/247)

In this comment Bergson emphasizes the phrase 'in quality itself, whichimplies that we are still not referring the image to a hidden thing. We can guess


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about something that goes beyond quality but which 'is not essentially differentor distinct from' (MM 343/208) quality. Deep within the chrysalis, there arevibrations of the larva that make the chrysalis gleam. Deep within the light ofqualitatively different colours, which are given to con-science, there are thequantitatively continuous vibrations of science. The concept of vibration,which the chrysalis suggests, means that consciously seen colours are neitherthe mere translation of a hidden original text (cf. MM 171/22) nor the'duplicata' of a non-present object; the colour is not even the duplicata of adiminutive object like an atom or a corpuscle (cf. MM 358-9/226-7, 338-9/203).10 The vibrations are there in the qualities, just as when we strike a key ofthe piano at the low end of the scale, we hear the note and can see thevibrations of the string (cf. MM 338/203). Science, for Bergson, in its remotestaspiration aims at a metaphysics of plural rhythms.11

Because the chrysalis is not a relation of translation or of duplication,Bergson, in this comment, also emphasizes the word 'act'; there must be an actwhich would make us guess what goes beyond perception, towards theunperceived. We shall come back to this act later in this chapter when wediscuss pure perception. So, it is important to note the direction of the tran-sition that this act involves: here, we go from what is for us to what is in itself,we go from part to whole. Pure perception, as we shall see, goes in the oppositedirection. To use the language that Bergson develops in the later 'Introductionto Metaphysics', pure perception is diminution instead of an 'enlargement'.This act - which we can indeed call intuition - is thegenuine experience of matter . InMatter and Memory, Bergson in fact describes this act by which we experiencematter (MM 343/208). This is a remarkable description, and we shall havereason to return to it in Chapter Three:

If you abolish my consciousness . . . matter resolves itself into numberlessvibrations, all linked together in uninterrupted continuity, allbound up witheach other, and traveling in every direction like shivers. In short, try first toconnect together the discontinuous objects of daily experience; then, resolvethe motionless continuity of these qualities into vibrations, which aremoving in place; finally, attach yourself to these movements, by freeingyourself from the divisible space that underlies them in order to consideronly their mobility - this undivided act that your consciousness grasps in themovement that you yourself execute. You will obtain a vision of matter thatis perhaps fatiguing for your imagination, but pure and stripped of what therequirements of life make you add to it in external perception. Reestablishnow my consciousness, and with it, the requirements of life: farther andfarther, and by crossing over each time enormous periods of the internalhistory of things, quasi- instantaneous views are going to be taken, views this


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time pictorial, of which the most vivid colors condense an infinity of repe-titions and elementary changes. In just the same way the thousands ofsuccessive positions of a runner are contracted into one sole symbolic atti-tude, which our eye perceives, which art reproduces, and which becomes foreveryone the image of a man who runs. (MM 343/208-9)

This is the only time Bergson mentions art in all of Matter and Memory . While itis the case that Bergson insists on denning matter in terms of the image becauseimage suggests vision and because it suggests surface with depth, we must seethat, ultimately, Bergson insists on image because it suggests art.

In his 1899 essay on laughter, Bergson defines art as the picture of thevibrations of nature:

What is the object of art? If it were the case that reality strikes our senses andour consciousness directly, if we could enter into immediate communicationwith things and with ourselves, I really believe that art would be useless, orrather that all of us would be artists, for our soul would vibrate then con-tinually in unison with nature. Our eyes, helped by memory, would carveout [decouperaient] in space and fix in time inimitable pictures. (R 135-51458-9; cf. PM 1370/135)

Art and image are, therefore, virtually identical in Bergson. Nevertheless, wemust keep them distinguished: the artistic picture is art, while the imagisticpicture is nature. Insofar as it is nature, the image is material l i f e ; it is, asBergson himself says, a 'living unity which was born from internal continuity'(MM 320/183). The image, therefore, is one or simple - 'contracted into onesole symbolic attitude' - and yet multiple and continuous - 'the successivepositions of a runner'. The image, in other words, is 'the interior organizationof movement', 'the intimate nature of movement' (MM 327/191). To be,however, the intimate nature of movement, the image must itself be movement;it cannot be a thing that moves. For Bergson, movement is real; that thingsmove, that movement depends on things, is illusory (MM 337/202). Thispriority of movement over things, a priority that defines the Bergsonian image,is why Bergson in chapter four of Matter and Memory speaks of 'moving images'(MM 325/189). The moving image, so to speak, 'runs in place'. It is not likethe 'snapshot', but like the motion picture: 'cinema'. We can call the movingimage cinema and ignore Bergson's famous criticisms of cinema in chapter fourof Creative Evolut ion by noting only, as Deleuze does, that cinema has changedsince Bergson's day.12 But, cinema - thanks to production techniques, themobile camera and the liberation of the viewpoint - is art, not nature. Whilewe must maintain the distinction between the artistic picture created by


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spiritual energy and the natural picture created by material energy, we mustalso see why the two are virtually identical. The artistic picture, for Bergson,does not reverse the relation of movement to thing; it does not make move-ment a function of the thing. In this way, the artistic picture remains virtuallynatural; in the artistic picture there are no intervals, there is continuity. But,there is a second reason for the virtual identity. The artistic picture isvirtuallyidentical with the natural image because it carves up the universe according toits natural articulations; the 'symbolization' of the artistic picture 'corre-sponds' to the differences in nature between colours; the painting is not adrawing, and especially not language. And again, the artistic picture remainsvirtually natural.13

Before turning to the third and last differentiation of the Bergsonian image,let us summarize this section so far. Overall, we have seen that for Bergson theimage defines matter. More specifically, we have seen that the image differs notonly from affection since th e image is extension and objective,but also from thething since the image is presence. This equation of the image with presenceseemed to be leading us in the direction of idealism. Bergson's so-called'concession to idealism' then allowed us to raise the question of why he insistson the word image. We then saw that Bergson has three reasons for doing thisthat actually provide us with a very specific, and new, definition of presence.First, the word image suggests the visual unity of a picture composed of con-tinuous and complex colour; secondly, it suggests a surface which itself impliesdepth: the chrysalis; and thirdly, it suggests art. With this last suggestion again,it seems that the Bergsonian image is leading us in the direction of idealismsince artistic creation is spiritual. But, of course, the crucial word of idealism isnot 'art', nor even 'presence', but 'representation'. This gives us the thirddifferentiation of the Bergsonian image: th e image differs from representation.

If we return again to Bergson's 1910 preface, we see that he criticizes notonly materialism, but also idealism insofar as it attempts to reduce matter to therepresentation we have of it; unlike materialism, which is excessive in itsconception of matter as being different in nature from representation, idealismis excessive in its conception of matter as being identical to representation.While the realistic excess is one of extreme differentiation, the idealistic excessis one of extreme non-differentiation. Bergson's criticism of idealism of courseimplies that th e image differs from representation, but it cannot differ in naturefrom representation since his criticism of materialism consists in showing thatmatter does not differ in nature from representation. His solution to thisproblem lies in the following comment: 'by "image" we mean a certain exis-tence that is more than what the idealist calls a representation, but less than whatthe realist calls a thing - an existence placed halfway between the "thing" andthe "representation" ' (MM 161/9). The 'more' and the 'less' in this comment


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10 Th e Challenge of Bergsonism

indicate that representation differs from the image by degrees; the repre-sentation is less than the image, which is connected continuously to otherimages in the whole.14 A representation is a part cut out (decouper) of thewhole; representation is a decomposition of the whole. So, here, with repre-sentation, we have the first interval that breaks up the natural continuity ofimages (MM 185/35). But this first interval is not necessarily a 'denaturation'of nature; representations, although partial, can be recomposed. This recom-position is artifice (MM 325/189). As Bergson says again in the essay onlaughter, 'Below art, there is artifice' (R 418/63). Artifice is the 'zone', asBergson calls it in Laughter , in which imagination constructs only relations andfigurations; it is the zone of lines and drawings, schemas and symbols, languageand sense. Thus it is not a zone of colours; rather it is the grey zone - like thegrey light between night and day - between colours and forms, between matterand spirit, and also between life and death and between the natural and theunnatural. We shall return to this grey zone of artifice, which is the grey zone of'the turn of experience', in Chapter Three and in Appendix I. But for now, wemust note that artifice remains natural insofar as it does not reverse the priorityof movement and things and insofar as it does not carve up the imagesaccording to utility. As long as artifice does not reverse the priority of move-ment and things out of needs of utility, it remains turned towards the movingimages, towards the real, towards experience, towards 'true knowledge'(MM 334/199); in a word, it remains 'open'. But, if imagination - our 'spirit ofinvention', as Bergson calls it in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (M R1234/304) - 'reverses the natural order of the terms' out of 'inferior needs'(MM 351/217), then it ends up enclosing movement in things; it carves up themoving images artificially. Then, we no longer have artifice, but factice, fakery(MM 320/183). Nature is denatured; we have lost the pictures and only the'empty frames' remain (MM 320/183); everything becomes 'inert' (MM 320/183), a word he uses frequently in Matter and Memory, which literally meansartless. These ideas have turned their back on true knowledge, on experience,on the real. If the understanding then works on these 'perverse' ideas(MM 351-2/217-18), then we end up with ideal schema which we take for thereal. We have only mathematical or abstract symbols by means of which wedesignate different things indifferently (MM 297/156). These abstract symbolsand inert schema homogenize so well that it even looks as though the whole isgiven, but it is not. No matter what, representation gives us only a part of thewhole.15


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So, we stay on the outside in Matter and Memory's first chapter, until wecome to the discussion of affections. That we remain on the outside is whyBergson says in the opening hypothesis that 'On the basis of bodies similar tomine, I am now studying the configuration of this particular image that I callmy body' (MM 170/18). This study of bodies similar to mine, from the out-side, leads us, as Bergson says, to interrogate the physiologist and the psy-chologist concerning the system of afferent and efferent nerves that I can detectin these other bodies. Bergson himself in Matter and Memory does not specifywho these physiologists and psychologists are, but we can see that with them heis pointing at a general scientific attitude of his own time, an attitude that isperhaps still prevalent today. In any case, according to Bergson, this generalscientific attitude says that if the centrifugal movements of the nervous systemcan provoke the movement of the body or parts of the body, the centripetalmovements or at least some of them can give birth to create or engenderrepresentations of the external world. What this general scientific attitude issaying implies that the image called the brain contains the representation of thewhole material universe. In a letter from 1897, Bergson says,

I believe that if we study all the realist and idealist doctrines from Descarteson, we will see them always start - consciously or unconsciously - from thisradical distinction between our body and the rest of matter. Since my bodyis separated from other bodies that I perceive, we think that it is self-sufficient and that it could be conceived as attached to the soul and detachedfrom the rest of matter.16

In other words, to hold this scientific position (which all realist and idealistdoctrines since Descartes have held), one would have to maintain that since therepresentation of the whole material world is infinitely greater than that ofcerebral vibrations, these molecular movements are not images like others; ifthey were of the same nature, how could they engender something greater thanthemselves? So, to hold this belief consistently, one has to say that cerebralvibrations are something that differs in nature from an image; this difference innature, say, between the brain and the rest of matter, is the only way one couldexplain how it could create the representation of the whole material world(MM 174/23, 175/24).

For Bergson, however, this scientific hypothesis is self-contradictory; it saysthat a part is the whole. Here, science, here not in its remotest aspiration, hasreversed the true container-contained relation; as Bergson says, 'The brain ispart of the material world; the material world is not part of the brain' (MM 171/19; cf. MM 174/23); or, as he says - and this is a crucial comment - 'Everyimage is inside certain images and outside others; but concerning the whole of


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The Concept of the Image: Phenomenology 1 3

images, we cannot say that it is inside us or that it is outside us, since interiorityand exteriority are only relations between images' (MM 176/225). To test thisclaim, Bergson engages in another sort of hypothesis: if the image that bears thename of the material world were suppressed, the brain and the cerebralvibrations which are part of it would be annihilated; in contrast, if you eliminatethe image called the brain, you erase only an insignificant detail from theimmense picture, 'The picture as a whole, that is, the universe, subsists com-pletely' (MM 171/19). We cannot overlook the fact that this Bergsonian fictionof the destruction of the world resembles Husserl's famous fiction of thedestruction of the world in Ideas /, para. 49. And it seems we can interpret thesimilarity in two ways. On the one hand, one could say that both Husserl andBergson draw the same conclusion from this thought experiment. Since thedestruction of the world, fo r Bergson, affects only matter, it does not affectspirit, which, as we shall see in Chapter Two, differs in nature from matter.Since the destruction of the world, for Husserl, affects only transcendent being,it does not affect the immanence of consciousness, which differs essentiallyfrom transcendent being. But, there is one important difference here betweenHusserl and Bergson. For Husserl, spirit, if we can use that word, is con-sciousness; for Bergson, spirit is primarily unconscious. So, we must go to theother interpretation of the similarity concerning the thought experiment of thedestruction of the world. One could say, and it seems one must, that theconclusion that Bergson draws from it is exactly opposite to that of Husserl.For Bergson, after the annihilation of the world, there is no residuum ofconsciousness, since consciousness corresponds to cerebral vibrations and isdefined by the present awareness I have of my body (MM 281/138). In contrastto phenomenology, consciousness is referred to the image of the universe. Inother words, the hypothesis of an isolated material object - the brain forinstance - implies a kind of absurdity, since this object borrows its physicalproperties and consequently its very existence from the relations which itmaintains with all others in the universe as a whole (MM 175-6/24).

The general scientific attitude, and that of some philosophers, those of themodern tradition, is that the brain is an isolated material object capable ofcreating representations because of the phenomena of hallucinations anddreams. In hallucinations and dreams, representations are created withoutexternal objects influencing th e afferent nerves: 'the object has disappearedwhile the brain persists' (MM 192/43). Hallucinations seem to suggest thatthere is some hidden source of representations within us; if this is the case, thenwe might believe that perception is nothing more than what Bergson calls a'veridical hallucination' (MM 192-3/43, 215/68, 369/239). Here, Bergsondoes not demonstrate the existence of God to provide the veracity of ourrepresentations, he merely points to a very simple observation:


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in many people blind from birth, the visual centers are intact; yet they liveand die without having formed a single visual image. Such an image,therefore, cannot appear unless the external object has played its part at leastonce; at least in the first time, it must have consequently actually enteredinto the representation. (MM 193/43)

In hallucinations and dreams, memory, according to Bergson, plays the chiefpart; this role of memory will motivate him, as we shall see in a moment, tostrip perception clean of memory. But besides the phenomena of dreams andhallucinations, there is another reason philosophers and scientists believe thatperception is a veridical hallucination, that we, our brains in other words,create representations. They presuppose that perception has a wholly spec-ulative interest, that it is pure knowledge (MM 179/28), that it is a kind ofcontemplation (MM 215-16/68). To conceive perception as having a purelyspeculative end, as aiming at some sort of disinterested knowledge, amounts,for Bergson, to cutting off its attachment to the real, to severing the part fromthe whole, to reversing the relation of container and contained.

In the opening hypothesis of images, Bergson therefore is reattaching per-ception to the real. Since the body is one image in the whole of the materialworld, it acts like other images, receiving and giving back movement 'with,perhaps, this sole difference, that my body appears to choose, within certainlimits, the manner in which it shall restore what it receives' (MM 171/19). Thebody therefore is a centre of action, its role is 'to exercise on other images a realinfluence, and, consequently, to decide which step to take among several whichare all materially possible' (MM 172/20; cf. MM 356/225 and ES 965/196). Infact, my body is a 'privileged centre' insofar as it regulates the other images; asmy body moves closer to or farther from other images, they change. Fartheraway from my body they are removed from my possible action; closer they canbe touched. As Bergson says, 'The objects that surround my body reflect itspossible action upon them' (MM 172/21). To demonstrate that the body is acentre of action, he takes up another hypothesis: 'in thought', sever all theafferent nerves of the cerebro-spinal system (MM 173/21). What happens isthat while the rest of the universe, even the rest of my body, remains the same,'my perception' has entirely vanished. The usual role of the centripetal nerves isto transmit movements to the brain and to the spinal cord; the centrifugalnerves send back the movement to the periphery. Therefore, as Bergson says,

Sectioning of the centripetal nerves can . . . produce only one intelligibleeffect: that is, to interrupt the current that goes from the periphery to per-iphery by way of the center, and, consequently, to make it impossible for mybody to extract, from among all the things that surround it, the quantity and


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quality of movement necessary in order to act upon them. Here is somethingthat concerns action, and action alone. (MM 173/21-2)

Perception for Bergson occurs when the whole of images called matter isrelated to the possible action of one image, my body (MM 173/22).

Besides this 'thought' experiment of sectioning the nerves, Bergson providesa second argument to show that perception concerns action and not con-templation. This is an evolutionary argument that follows 'step by step theprogress of external perception from the monera up to the superior vertebrates'(M M 179/28). Here in chapter one of Matter and Memory , he starts with 'livingmatter', 'a simple mass of protoplasm', but he could have started with inani-mate matter such as hydrochloric acid (MM 299/159) because, like proto-plasm, hydrochloric acid 'is open to the influence of external stimulation, andanswers to it with . . . chemical reactions' (MM 179/28). As in hydrochloricacid, the reaction in protoplasm is immediate, without delay, automatic, areflex. But as soon as we leave single-celled creatures, we have what Bergsoncalls 'a division of physiological labor' (MM 179/28-9; cf. MR 997/27). Whennerve cells appear, they tend to group themselves into systems, which allowsthe animal to react to external stimuli with more varied movements. Thesedivisions of cells into systems allow delays in reaction or in the reflex. But,Bergson says, 'even when the vibration received is not immediately prolongedinto movement, it appears merely to await its occasion' (MM 179/29). Thiscomment is important because the prolongation of the vibration through thecomplexity of cellular systems might lead one to think that 'the receivedimpression is being spiritualized into knowledge' (MM 180/29). This spir-itualization of the vibration, however, does not take place, even when the brainintervenes. A s Bergson says, and this comment reiterates what we have alreadynoted about the true whole-part relation,

as soon as we compare the structure of the spinal cord with that of the brain,we are bound to infer that there is merely a difference of complication, andnot a difference in nature, between the functions of the brain and the reflexactivity of the medullary system. (MM 180/29; cf. MM 175/23-4)

For Bergson, the brain is an instrument in a very complex reflex; when avibration is received from the periphery, it goes through the centripetal fibres tothe brain, which then allows 'the received vibration to reach at will this or thatmotor mechanism of the spinal cord, and so to choose its effect' (MM 180/30,Bergson's emphasis). So, the brain adds nothing to what it receives, andtherefore Bergson describes the brain as 'a kind of main telephonic desk'(MM 180/30).


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16 The Challenge ofBergsonism

We cannot underestimate the importance of this image of the main tele-phonic desk: Bergson conceives th e living body as a machine. On the one hand, thisconception of the living body means that we cannot make something like thelived body (Lett) or something like the flesh central to Bergsonism. For Berg-son, if one talks about the body known from the inside, one has crossed adifference in nature, going from matter to spirit. In chapter two of Matter andMemory , Bergson says that my body is 'the mobile sharp point' of memory,pushing incessantly into the future (MM 224/78). Memory, and that meansduration, is how the body known from the inside produces something new thatescapes the deductions of science. So, if we speak of the Bergsonian bodyknown from the outside by perceptions, we are in the scientific body (andultimately the body taken up by science when it enters into its remotestaspiration); and if we speak of the Bergsonian body known from the inside byaffections, we are in memory. To repeat, on the one hand, the Bergsonianconception of the body as a machine means that Bergsonism is not a, so tospeak, 'fleshism'. But, on the other hand, while the image of the main tele-phonic desk clearly anticipates the computer, there is one rather obvious dif-ference between these two types of machine. The main telephonic desk includesa type of slowness, a hesitation, a 'making wait', an interval; everything con-cerning computers and now modems and the Internet comes down to speed, nowaiting, no hesitation. But, the slowness in reaction, which the main telephonicdesk indicates, has allowed nature, according to Bergson, 'to make a machinethat should triumph over mechanism' (EC 719/264).17 In this interval inmatter, as we shall see, spirit has the opportunity to insert memories.18 So justas we cannot say that Bergsonism is a fleshism, w e cannot say that Bergsonismis a philosophy of artificial intelligence. Unlike the brain, artificial intelligencegoes too fast, and because it goes too fast, it makes no room for spirit.

Now this is what we have to visualize with the main telephonic desk: whatused to be called a 'switchboard'. A switchboard consisted in a large table witha large number of pins attached to wires that could be pulled out of the table inorder to allow any pin to be inserted into any one of a large number of socketswhich were located in the wall perpendicular to the table; the calls would comein through the wires to which the pins were attached and the insertion of thepin into a socket would allow communication to take place. With this com-parison, Bergson intends to make us see that sometimes the brain is an instru-ment of 'analysis', meaning that it leads the received vibration up to a pluralityof systems of movements; in other words, the brain is the large, perhapsindefinite number of sockets on the wall. The brain opens to the receivedvibration 'the totality of motor pathways so that it indicates to it all the possiblereactions with which [the brain] is pregnant and so that [the brain] analyzesitself by dispersing itself (MM 181/30). With analysis, the brain's role is to


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make the vibration wait. At other t imes, however, the brain is an instrument of'selection', meaning that it puts the received vibration in relation with a par-ticular chosen motor mechanism; in other words, the brain is the pin beinginserted into a specific socket. The brain 'leads the received [vibration] to anorgan of reaction that has been chosen' (MM 181/30). With selection, thebrain's role is to allow communication. But, 'in one case as in the other, [thebrain's] role is limited to the transmission and division of movement. And nomore in the higher centers of the cortex than in the spinal cord do the nervouselements work with a view to knowledge: they only sketch all at once apluralityof possible actions or organize one of them' (MM 181/30-1).

Before we turn to the next section, let us summarize what we have seenconcerning the role of the body for Bergson. When Bergson speaks of the roleof the body, he is really speaking of the brain. He focuses on the brain becauseof a position adopted by scientists as well as philosophers since Descartes, thatsomething in us, the brain, creates representations. To claim that the brain,which is material, creates the representation of the material world requires thatthe brain be conceived as different in nature from the rest of matter. It alsorequires the presupposition that perception aims at disinterested knowledge,and that one has to assemble support phenomena such as hallucinations anddreams, because in these phenomena representations are created although theobject has disappeared. So, what we saw was that Bergson tries to show thatthere is only a difference in degree between the brain and the rest of matter,between the brain and the reflex function of the spinal cord. He argues for thisdifference in degree by means of the hypothesis of the suppression of thematerial world which shows that the brain is part of or contained in the materialworld. He also argues against the supporting phenomena of hallucinations anddreams by pointing to an obvious fact of blindness: fo r someone to have a visualrepresentation, the object must have been effective at least once. And finally, hedoes not accept the presupposition that perception is contemplation. AsBergson says in the very first sentence of the conclusion, 'our body is aninstrument of action, and of action alone' (MM 356/225). He shows that thebody is an instrument of action in two ways. On the one hand, he engages inanother thought experiment, the experiment of severing the nerves, whichshows that when perception has vanished the body cannot extract from externalobjects the quality and quantity of movement in order to act upon them. Onthe other, he places the brain in the evolutionary scale, which shows that thebrain is a 'main telephone switchboard'. Its role is to allow vibrations tocommunicate with a chosen motor system (selection) or to make vibrationswait before the plurality of motor possibilities (analysis). With this conceptionof the role of the body, we now have the context within which to consider whatBergson calls pure perception.


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1 8 Th e Challenge of Bergsonism

THE THEORY OF PURE PERCEPTION

We can see already that it is very hard to maintain, as Merleau-Ponty does inth e La nature lectures, that Bergson in Matter and Memory wants to make a'phenomenology of perception'.19 Clearly, by means of the concept of image,as we have discussed it here, Bergson is not adopting a realist perspective onperception. But, just as much, if a phenomenology of perception consists inshowing how conscious syntheses constitute the perception of an object, thenthis is not Bergson's project. He is not showing us how consciousness castslight on things in order to let them be perceived, instead, he is showing us howconsciousness, that is, conscious perception, is deduced from matter (MM 182/31). 'Deduction' is a word Bergson always uses in relation to matter; when hespeaks of spirit, he always uses the word 'progress' (cf. MM 354/221).

The starting point for this deduction is the indetermination in regard tomotor reactions that the brain's complexity symbolizes: the main telephoneswitchboard. Bergson says, 'Let us start, then, from this indetermination asfrom the true principle, and try whether we cannot deduce from it the possi-bility, and even the necessity, of conscious perception' (MM 182/31). Withinthe images of matter, living beings are 'zones of indetermination', zones inwhich the strict laws of natural necessity encounter hesitations. In inanimatematter, there is no hesitation between action and reaction; thus the reaction isalways determined. In a being with a nervous system, however, the influenceofan action or a vibration takes time, and thus the reaction is indeterminate. As ittravels through the system, the vibration encounters numerous paths downwhich it can travel; so, in effect, it must choose to continue on its way and onlythrough this 'choice' does it result in a reaction. Perception - here we have tosay perception in the forms of touch and taste - arises in the moment ofhesitation before the reaction.

Bergson states that there is a strict connection between the zones of inde-termination and perception: 'Let us note first that a strict law connects theextent of the perception back to the intensity of action that the living being hasat its disposal' (MM 182/31). For Bergson, this lawmeans that there is a directproportion between the indeterminacy of reaction and the scope of perception,that is, a direct proportion between the uncertainty, the 'making wait', thehesitation of the reaction and the distance over which the living being is sen-sitive to the actions of the object which interests it. For example, in a rudi-mentary organism, a reaction 'can hardly be made to wait' (MM 182/32).Therefore, its only means of perception is touch; in an organism such as aprotozoa, touch is at once passive, insofar as the organism's membrane mustcome into immediate contact with an object to perceive and recognize it, andactive, insofar as the same membrane reacts by moving away from the object (if


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the object is a menace) (MM 182/32). In a living being with a complex brain -like a dog for example (cf. MM 228/82) - there are numerous hesitations; so, indirect proportion to the quantity of hesitations, there is vision and hearing andsmell through which the being can be subject to more and more distantinfluences. A s Bergson says, 'perception has space at its disposal in exactproportion to the time that action has at its disposal' (MM 183/32). In otherwords, the longer the wait in reaction, the more the living being can see.20

This exact law governing the relation between the indeterminacy of reactionand perception of distance does not, however, explain why the relation of theorganism to more or less distant objects takes th e particular form of consciousperception. So far, we have concerned ourselves only with action, whichallowed us to see perception deduced from the action-reaction system ofmatter, but we have not yet reached representation. As Bergson asks, 'how is itthat this perception is consciousness?' (MM 183/33). To answer this question,he constructs the famous hypothesis of pure perception (MM 184/33). Pureperception is not factual perception; in fact, perception is 'complex and con-crete' (MM 184/34), because it is 'mixed with' or 'impregnated by' memories(souvenirs) (MM 183/33). Here (MM 184/34), we have the first mention ofduration when Bergson says: 'However brief we suppose any perception to be,it naturally occupies a certain duration, and involves, consequently an effort ofmemory [ la memoire] which prolongs, one into another, a plurality of moments'(MM 184/34). We see therefore that memory, for Bergson, defines duration;but duration and memory are not the focus here in the first chapter of Matterand Memory . Anticipating the discussion of memory in the second chapter,Bergson says that memory ( la memoire) has two forms: one that 'covers over[recouvre] a bedrock of immediate perception with a covering of memories';and one that 'contracts a multiplicity of moments' (MM 184/34). These twoforms of memory imply that factual perception, on the one hand, 'swells' withmemories (souvenirs} and, on the other hand, always offers a certain 'thicknessof duration' (MM 185/34). According to Bergson, memory in both these formsmakes up the principal contribution of personal or individual consciousness inperception; it is the 'subjective side of the knowledge of things' (M M 184/34).The covering of memories especially, allows us to perceive quickly and con-veniently, that is, to perceive without effort; but also, according to Bergson,these memories give birth to every kind of illusion (MM 184/33). In particular,as we have already noted, these memories are the source of the illusion inwhich we conceive perception as a veridical hallucination. If we do not realizethat memories are the content of hallucinations, then we start to think thatperception could be an interior, subjective, and therefore unextended visionthat would be projected outward and would somehow gain objectivity andextension (MM 184/34). The hypothesis of pure perception is supposed to


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eliminate this illusion and show us that we perceive things in the things, andfor Bergson, is supposed to show us that conscious perception is veridical butis not an hallucination. And this claim - that conscious perception is true - isno hypothesis for Bergson (MM 188/39); pure perception is a theory(MM 212/65).

Bergson provides two descriptions of pure perception. First, he says.Nothing forbids us from substituting for this perception, which is entirelypenetrated with our past, the perception that an adult and formed con-sciousness would have, but enclosed in the present and absorbed, to theexclusion of all other work, in the task of molding itself upon the externalobject. (MM 184/33)

Then, he says,By [pure perception] I mean a perception which exists in principle ratherthan in fact [ en droit and en fait] and would be possessed by a being placedwhere I am, living as I live, but absorbed in the present, and which iscapable, through the elimination of memory in all of its forms, of obtaining avision of matter both immediate and instantaneous. (MM 185/34)

On the basis of these two comments, we can say first that pure perception forBergson is defined by being 'in principle' rather than 'in fact', which means thatpure perception is a condition of factual perception: pure perception 'is at thebase of our knowledge of things' (MM 184/34). Thus, pure perception differsin nature from pure memory, as we shall see in Chapter Two. But now we cansee that, since memory is subjective, personal and interior, and since pureperception differs in nature from memory, pure perception is defined by beingobjective, impersonal and external or extended. Moreover, it is a vision; it is avision that has eliminated memory in both forms of prolongation and con-servation in memories. On the one hand, since it is a vision that has eliminatedthe mediation of the covering of memories, this vision is not 'concrete percep-tion'; instead, it is 'ideal' (MM 184/33); but also it seems to me that we arejustified in calling pure vision 'abstract', since that term is really the opposite of'concrete'. In relation to the elimination of memories, we have to make onemore point: since it has removed the covering of memories, that is, the med-iation that memory makes available to perception, pure vision is immediate (cf.MM 319/182). Now let us turn to the elimination of the other form of memory,prolongation. On the other hand, since this vision has eliminated the 'multi-plicity of moments', it is not thick or complex perception; instead, it is'instantaneous' (see above in the last passage cited) and 'simple' (Bergson


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2 2 The Challenge of Bergsonism

concept of the image. In pure perception (and as well in perception mixed withmemory), the image or presence of a material thing becomes a representation,perception becomes conscious. According to Bergson, as we have seen,representation is always in the image virtually, as a part of the whole (MM 186/36). In perception, there is therefore a transition from the image being in itselfto its being for me (MM 186/35); in other words, in pure vision, the transitiongoes from the inside of the chrysalis to its outside. Again, this opposite direc-tion of transition is why we cannot confuse pure perception with the fatiguingact by which we reached the more rapid duration of matter. Bergson describesthe transition in the following way:

[The image of the material object appears to be in itself what it is for me]because, being in solidarity with the totality of other images, it is continuedin those which follow it just as it is prolonged in those which preceded it. Inorder to transform its pure and simple existence into a representation, itwould suffice to suppress all of a sudden what follows it, what precedes it ,and also what fills it, to conserve from it only its external crust, its superficialskin. What distinguishes the image as a present image, as an objective image,from a represented image is the necessity which obliges it to act througheach of its points upon all the other points of other images, to transmit thetotality of what it receives, to oppose to each action an equal and contraryreaction, to be finally only a path upon which the modifications which arepropagated in the immensity of the universe pass in every direction. I wouldconvert it into a representation if I could isolate it, especially if I could isolateits envelope. (MM 186/36)

The verbs by means of which Bergson always describes this transition are:isolate, detach, suppress, limit and diminish. Pure perception implies, forBergson, that there is merely a difference of degree, and not in nature, betweenbeing and being perceived (MM 187/37). So, we perceive things in them, notin us. Pure perception adds nothing new to the image; in fact, it subtracts a partfrom the whole. If there is a relativity to perception, fo r Bergson, it is a relativitynot to us, but to the whole universe. Bergson, therefore, defines the transitionof pure perception as 'discernment in the etymological sense of the word', a'slicing up', or a 'selection' (MM 188/38).

How does the selection occur? According to Bergson, it occurs because of lifenecessities (MM 333-4/198); there is 'a purely utilitarian origin of our per-ception of things' (MM 299/158). Living beings, according to Bergson, as wehave seen, are 'centres of indetermination'; and indetermination is based onhaving a variety of'funct ions ' (MM 186/36) or 'needs' (MM 188/38). In pureperception, things turn the side of themselves that interests our functions and


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needs, in short, our body. As Bergson says, 'Our representation of matter is themeasure of our possible action upon bodies: it results from the discarding ofwhat has no interest for our needs, or, more generally, our functions' (MM 188/38, 218/71). In other words, conscious representation results from the sup-pression of what has no interest fo r bodily functions and the conservation ofonly what does interest bodily function. Thus, compared to 'the perception ofany unconscious material point whatsoever, in its instaritaneousness, [which] isinfinitely greater and more complete than ours, since it gathers and transmitsthe influence of all the other points of the material universe', the consciousperception of a living being exhibits a 'necessary poverty' (MM 188/38).21 Wemust not get confused here: what Bergson is calling 'pure perception' resem-bles what he calls 'intuition', that is his philosophical method, only insofar asboth are immediate. Because pure perception is poor, it cannot be intuition.Later in chapter three of Matter and Memory , he tells us that 'a luxury ofperception' is 'the clear distinction of individual objects', and at the same timehe says that 'a clear representation of general ideas is a refinement of intelli-gence' (MM 298/158). But this luxurious perception is not intuition either, aswe shall see in Chapter Three. In any case, in contrast to this luxury andrefinement, Bergson speaks of perception starting from an 'intermediateknowledge', one equally remote from generality fully conceived and fromindividuality clearly perceived (MM 298-9/158). This intermediate knowledgeis the poverty, even the crudity of pure vision. He goes on to say, 'Whatinterests us in a given situation, what we are likely to grasp in it first, is the sideby which it can respond to a tendency or a need. . . . A need . . . cares little forthe individual differences' (MM 299/158). In pure vision, I see an appleimmediately because of my need for nourishment and because this need hasbeen repeatedly satisfied with apples. But, I do not see an apple clearly anddistinctly with a specific shade of the colour green, which would allow me todistinguish it from another variety of apples; what difference does th e shade ofcolour make for nourishment? M y need for nourishment makes me see anapple as confusedly distinct from, say, th e apple tree, which does not satisfy th eneed for nourishment. (But th e apple tree could, of course, satisfy other needsand is therefore seen as well.) O ur needs therefore are like 'so many beams oflight', as Bergson says in chapter four of Matter and Memory , beams of light thatsketch out confusedly 'distinct bodies' (MM 334/198).

But we can see immediately that if pure perception gives us only confusedlydistinct bodies (and not clear and distinct shades of colour), it could be nothingmore than a sketch: impoverished, ideal and abstract. For Bergson, a clear anddistinct idea must have the colours and differences, the complexity anddynamism that only memory can provide; a clear and distinct idea in Bergsoncould never be geometrical, that is, static. Pure perception for Bergson is a


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simple line drawing, in fact, a drawing that could, with effort, become geo-metrical. That pure perception is like an abstract and simple line drawing iswhy he compares pure perception to a photograph (MM 188/38-9). We mustremember that in 1896 we are at the beginning of photographic technology:colour photographs have not yet been invented. So, pure perception is like ablack-and-white photograph. The beams of light of needs only illuminate partof the surface of things, giving us only the external crust, the envelope, thechrysalis - in other words, only the contours of the thing. As Bergson says, inorder to make the transition from presence to representation, from whole topart, 'it would be necessary, not to throw more light on the object, but, on thecontrary, to obscure some of its aspects, to diminish it by the greater part ofitself, so that the remainder . . . should detach itself from [its surroundings]'(MM 186/36). Moreover, according to Bergson, the light does not really floodout from our needs; rather, it emanates from the surfaces themselves, frompresence. What happens is that the light, when it reaches living beings, can nolonger pass through unopposed because it encounters them as zones of inde-termination. If it could propagate itself, it would issue immediately in areaction; in this case, it would be refracted. But when light reaches a 'spon-taneity of reaction', in short, freedom, the light is no longer refracted butreflected. The reflection is a 'virtual image', an image of potential reactions(MM 187/37). When I see the apple, the representation I have is an image ofthe fact that I have the potential reaction of eating it. As Bergson says, 'Per-ception therefore resembles those phenomena of reflection that result from animpeded refraction; it is like a mirage effect' (M M 187/37). Because consciousperception is a mirage of reflected light, it 'adds nothing to what is there; [it]effects merely this: that the real action passes through, the virtual actionremains' (MM 188/39).

Let us summarize this discussion of pure perception before we bring thischapter to a close. All perception for Bergson is connected to action, notcontemplation; in fact, perception results from the 'hesitation' between actionand reaction. This 'hesitation' or 'interval' is caused by the brain makingindeterminate reactions possible; the brain is the 'main switchboard' for all ourbodily functions. Therefore, fo r Bergson, what we always perceive first is whatinterests our needs or functions. Because living beings like human beings havelots of bodily needs, we have vision, which is subject to the influence of lots ofdistant things. While factual perception involves all the senses, pure perceptionis only a visual representation. Insofar as it is vision (and not touch), pureperception has not yet completed itself in an action. What makes pure per-ception pure is that it does not involve memory at all; so, it is both immediateand instantaneous. What pure perception recognizes immediately is a con-fusedly distinct body. This discernment of a confusedly distinct body is due, to


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The Concept of the I m a g e : Phenomenology 25

say it again, to our needs. In other words, the beams of light of our needsdelimit the contours, and only the contours of this body rather than that one.Pure perception therefore for Bergson is 'delimitation', as the title of the fourthchapter of Matter and Memory indicates. But delimitation, again as the title ofthe fourth chapter indicates, is not 'fixation'. In order to fix the vision, in otherwords, in order to make the virtual action become actual action, we wouldhave to restore some of perception's thickness; we would need an affection oremotion (and that means life). An emotion always makes us leap across theinterval of indetermination. If we experienced an emotion of sufficient force,we would complete the drawing we make with our eyes with a real drawing onpaper. Lacking such an emotion, the drawing we make with our eyes vanishesas soon as it happens; pure perception is like, as Bergson says, 'an instanta-neous flash of lightning which illuminates a stormy landscape by night'(MM 325/189).

It is well known, of course, that Bergson loved all psychological and psychicalresearch. Hence, Matter and Memory is filled with discussions of cases of psy-chic illnesses. But, sadly, no 'Schneider' emerges in Matter and Memory toamuse us with his sexual problems and to make us read the book as if it were anovel. This lack of a 'Schneider' means probably that Merleau-Ponty's Phe-nomenology of Perception will always be more popular than Bergson's M atter andMemory . But in the second chapter of Matter and Memory , Bergson focuses on apeculiar fact of patients who suffer from 'psychic blindness', that is , patientswho cannot recognize specific objects even though their vision is perfectlyintact (MM 242-3/96-8). These patients seem unable to draw pictures or atleast they cannot draw pictures very well, and this leads Bergson to discuss twoways of drawing, discussion which, I believe, is very helpful in understandingBergson's theory of pure perception. On the one hand - and this is howBergson's poor mental patients draw they 'fix' on paper in an uncertain way 'acertain number of points', then they connect the points up, verifying at everymoment whether the image resembles the object they are drawing. Bergsoncalls this first way of drawing 'drawing "by points"' (MM 243/97). Clearly, thename implies that Bergson's mental patients are rather untalented geometers.But there is a second way to draw according to Bergson, 'the habitual way',which he describes as 'drawing with "a continuous line" after having looked ator thought of the model' (MM 243/97). Bergson explains this second, non-geometrical way of drawing 'by means of our habit of discovering immediately[tout de suite} the organization of the most usual contours, that is, by means of amotor tendency to draw its schema in one whole line' (MM 243/97). This habitof drawing a schema with a continuous line is at the base of our knowledge ofthings, allowing us immediately to draw with our eyes the most usual contoursof things; this habit is not only at the base of science in its remotest inspirations


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but also at the base of art. But to have a painting and not a drawing, to have artand not artifice, to add colour and not subtract greys, we need memory. As weshall see in Chapter Two, memory differs in nature from perception and evenall forms of imaging; this difference is such a radical difference that Bergsonsays that 'to imagine is not to remember' (MM 278/135). Although a radicaldifference in nature, this difference can be experienced; to have this experiencewill require us to pay attention to the mental illness that Bergson calls 'divisionof the personality' (MM 313/175); we ourselves will have to divide our per-sonali