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THREE BERGSONISM INTRODUCTION In the second part of this work, I want to set out in detail how Hegel and Deleuze respond to the problematic nature of representation that we discovered in part 1. In the first chapter we looked at the general conditions of a transcendental empiricism through an argument traced from Sartre’s rejection of Kant’s transcendental ego. After, in the last chapter, exploring the limitations of classical logic, we are now ready to consider the diagnoses and proposed remedies offered by Hegel and Deleuze for the problems that we uncovered. In chapters 3 and 4, I want to explore Deleuze’s response to representation, before moving on to that of Hegel in chapter 5. Of all Deleuze’s precursors, it is perhaps Bergson who makes the most significant contribution to Deleuze’s philosophy, so in this chapter we will focus on some of the Bergsonian themes that will become central to Deleuze’s own thinking.1 Deleuze largely reiterates Bergson’s diagnosis of the problem of representation, so this chapter will form a prolegomenon to the discussion of Deleuze’s philosophy proper. As Deleuze makes clear in his study of Bergson, what is needed is “a renewal or extension of his project today” (B, 115). In making this claim, however, Deleuze is arguing for the selection of certain concepts elaborated by Bergson that may be preserved and, together with elements gleaned from other sources, revitalized within the context of a new philosophical system. In particular, it is the method of intuition and the theory of multiplicities that Deleuze will take up, removing them from what he calls the “French-style history of philosophy” (B, 8). In making a sharp distinction between space and duration, Bergson was able to provide a theory of the foundations of classical logic, as well as explain why classical logic fails to explain large groups of systems, such as living systems. Chapter 5 will then explore Hegel’s own response to representation, infinite thought. Paralleling the first chapter, we will begin by seeing how Hegel develops 69 70 HEGEL, DELEUZE, AND THE CRITIQUE OF REPRESENTATION his own account of an absolute idealism immanently from the limitations he finds in Kant’s transcendental idealism. We will see how the introduction of the infinite into his conceptual schema allows him to resolve the problem of representation. BERGSON’S ACCOUNT OF KANT AND CLASSICAL LOGIC Much of the work of Bergson, and also Deleuze, can be seen as an attempt to come to terms with the intuitions and results of evolutionary theorists such as Herbert Spencer, while simultaneously trying to show how the formulations of these theories, as they stood in the nineteenth century, were problematic. In particular, in this chapter, we will look at one point that relates the work of Bergson, Russell, Kant, and evolutionary theory, namely, the relation of the structure of knowledge to the structure of the object. Kant’s project of providing a ground for the sciences provides one solution to this problem, in the form of conditioning the object by the categories of our thought, thereby escaping the inherent problems of both metaphysical and empirical theories of the correspondence of the understanding and the world.2 In moving to a theory of transcendental categories, Kant attempts to show that these categories cannot have an empirical origin, as they introduce necessity and universality into our judgments. From this, as we saw in the first chapter, a certain isomorphism between the understanding and the object under consideration emerges. For Russell, likewise, the object under consideration and the system used to examine it must be seen as possessing certain similarities. It is axiomatic in his approach to philosophy that “in a logically correct symbolism there will always be a fundamental identity of structure between a fact and a symbol.”3 Thus, as we saw in the previous chapter, the analytic conception of problems tends to lead to a parallel atomistic conception of the world, hence Russell’s solution of Zeno’s paradoxes through the idea of an infinite discrete series. The resolution of a paradox of thought therefore leads to an alteration of the conception of the object. We will consider in this part of the chapter briefly how this conception of an isomorphism between representations of the world and the world itself was taken up by one of the leading representatives of evolutionary theory. This will be done through examining the idea of a certain kind of multiplicity , which results in...

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