Bergson

Abstract

It is nothing new to remark on the puzzling nature of the term postmodernism. For all its prefix's portentous celebration of finality, postmodernism is a thoroughly modern phenomenon. As a firm fixture of thinking, a particularly obstinate paradox has attached itself to the word. Of course, the paradox recedes when is read not simply as the present-day but as a certain tradition within human thought and culture spanning from the Seventeenth-century to the Twentieth. The postmodern then signifies a new manner of thinking with prejudices, themes, and methodologies all its own. In this essay, however, it is the first alternative that is being taken as granted. Rather than pretend that there is a general metatheory defining the postmodern in all its forms, another axiom will be embraced in what follows, namely, that there is much more in common between the ostensibly modern and the avowedly postmodern than either may be willing to admit. Postmodernity does not constitute a radical break with modernity so much as a particular innovative understanding of such modern and mundane topics as subjectivity, the present, and perception. This said, I am not going to continue with any metatheoretical discussion of philosophy here. My object instead is to look at this innovative understanding through the ideas of one currently neglected thinker whose work has for many years been regarded as irredeemably modernist. The figure in question is Henri Bergson, the author of a philosophy which was very much the philosophie nouvelle of its own time.2 For nearly two decades Bergsonism was at the forefront of European philosophy; for half of that time, from 1907 to 1917, Bergson was the philosopher of Europe with an influence spreading far beyond his own discipline and into the fine arts, sociology, psychology, history, and politics.3 Yet by the end of the Great War that influence was over. In a manner presaging our contemporary cult of change, Bergsonian thought departed from the scene almost as quickly as it had arrived on it. For reasons we will not examine here, his philosophical legacy became more of an historical curiosity than a viable position. Recent examinations of his work, however, have sought to re-establish the philosophical integrity of Bergsonism, one avenue of research being its status as a precursor to that currently new philosophy we call postmodern. Yet there are few obvious routes of unambiguous philosophical influence that can be traced in this regard: the postmodern paradigm has been unconditional in its marginalization of Bergson's significance for its thinking.4 So it is Bergson's thematic antecedence that holds an interest for those engaged in this particular exercise of philosophical rehabilitation. Rather than through any acknowledged historical influence, Bergson's philosophy proves its worth, it is argued, through its prescient analyses of such first-order themes as time, space, and subjectivity. For the most part, however, these postmodern readings have confined themselves to re-interpreting subject-matter traditionally associated with Bergson: duree, intuition, and elan vital. Rarely have the characteristically postmodern notions of difference, presence, and the aporia of perception been investigated as properly Bergsonian themes as well.5 The purpose of this essay is to reverse this situation. I want to show that Bergson is thinking about difference and presence at the same time as he writes about the mind-body problem and the status of scientific objectivity (to take just two examples), and that his postmodernism does not lie solely in the retrospective light of contemporary theory: the philosophy of duree is equally the philosophy of duree-dif ference. The three areas of difference, perception, and presence, therefore, will set the structure for what follows.6 Part One examines Bergson's own philosophy of difference as it emerges from his critique of negativity to receive a truly Bergsonian incarnation as the concept of dissociation. …