Time Thinking: Bergson's Double Philosophy of Mind

It is the intention of the present paper to show the importance of the contradiction that Bergson might be said to have discovered, namely, the contradiction between thought and time.

Moreover, the purpose here is to show the importance of this contradiction not only for Bergson's own philosophy, but in itself, or for philosophy in general, for philosophy today, and not only for the philosophy of time but for the philosophy of thinking, for the philosophy of mind.

This remark sets up a triple goal, three objectives that we will try to reach in order:

• • The first one would be, of course, to remind us of the precise contradiction discovered by Bergson between time and thought. How can he be said to have discovered such a contradiction, since time has been a mystery in thought since at least Heraclitus and Augustine?

• • Bergson's goal, however, was not only to state a general contradiction between time and human thought. It was, of course, to go beyond it. One might even say that he tried to go beyond it in two directions, methodological and ontological, by trying to think time with the mind, but also to think the mind as temporal, time as a paradoxical object for thought, and time as the hidden being of thought! We can recognize the respective titles of both of his collections of essays as a double hint: La pensée et le mouvant ("thought and movement," 1934, the better known of the two), hinting at the difficulty of thinking, but L'Energie spirituelle ("spiritual energy," 1919), hinting at the activity of thinking. In any case, going beyond the apparent contradiction between time and thinking seems to be the main goal of philosophy as such.

• • Yet Bergson's main philosophical importance might finally lie in the fact that, even if there is some unity between time and thought, the other aspect and the contradiction itself does not disappear (thanks to any philosophical wizardry). It remains, both within time and within thinking, as part of our being and condition. It is in this contact and difference, in this double philosophy of reality and mind, that Bergson might also be most important for us today. That is at least the point we will try to stress toward the end of this paper.

The Initial Contradiction

Let us go back, then, to the initial contradiction between time and thought. What is there that is so new about it? Again, has not the very succession of time been a contradiction, at least since Heraclitus, or a mystery, since Augustine? The passing of one thing into another, and precisely into its opposite (life/death, young/old, and the like), the unreality of the future, the past, and even the "present" (not to speak of Zeno's paradoxes!): have these not always been a challenge to human thinking? The very limits of our thought before time have been seen, it seems, from the very beginning of thought itself.

The originality of Bergson's theory does not lie, indeed, in having stressed that the difficulty which thought has with time is not a difficulty among others but a major contradiction, the original contradiction, the mother, so to speak, of all problems and contradictions! His originality may not even lie in having pointed at the spatial and thus simultaneous essence of any representation, as contradictory to the very succession of time. Rather, it may lie in the effects of such a determination, which undermines the traditional setting of the problem at its very heart. As Bergson puts it when he wants to oppose his own effort to that of all of his philosophical predecessors, and to summarize their primary error: "aucun d'eux n'a cherché au temps des attributs positifs." (La Pensée et le mouvant 10/1261)¹

That is: "none of them ever tried to give time any positive attributes"!

Everything is said, in a nutshell.

The contradiction between time and thought has been attributed to a defect in time and not in thought! More precisely and importantly still, it has led to...