Bergson and the Kantian Concept of Intensive Magnitude

Abstract

ABSTRACT Bergson’s critique of intensive magnitude in Time and Free Will mainly targets Kant’s “Anticipations of Perception”, in which the Kantian distinction between matter and form is lowered. Bergson praises precisely this distinction for safeguarding sensation as something extra-intellectual. As the concept of intensity is the main tool of neo-Kantian intellectualism, in which the whole of reality is determined by the intellect, younger Bergson forcefully rejects intensive magnitude. However, his relation towards Kant changes. In Creative Evolution, Bergson proposes a genetic correction to Kantianism in which the distinction between matter and form is weakened. By comparing Bergson’s theory with the genetic Kantianism of Salomon Maïmon, who heavily relies on the concept of intensity, I argue that the concept fits his later project of renewing the Kantian theory. I thus demonstrate how the critique of intensive magnitude merely belongs to a provisional stage of Bergson’s relation to Kant.