Intellectual Analysis in Bergson's Theory of Knowing

Intellectual Analysis in Bergson's Theory of Knowing MARY CHRISTINE MORKOVSKY, C.D.P. HENRI BERGSON'S INSISTENCE that being is free and that the aim of life is to increase liberty is perennially appealing to those who find deterministic explanations insufficient. This view, however, also arouses both scientists and philosophers to demand methodic proof. It seems that Bergson cannot meet this demand because his philosophy is one of intuitive insight. How can there be verification of intuitions that are by nature individual and indefinable? Can Bergson provide a program which other individual investigators may follow to arrive at conclusions similar to his? These questions are subsidiary to a more basic one: Is it true that Bergson considers analysis, the characteristic work of intellect, totally worthless in philosophy since intuition is for him the most valuable kind of knowledge? In order to discover whether Bergson's intuition of the basic freedom of being forces him to reject all determinate analysis, this article first presents his outline for conducting philosophical investigations and then gives two examples of his own methodic investigations. The conclusion suggests how he would answer the two secondary questions. I. BERGSON'SMETHOD Bergson gives the most explicit "definition" of his "more sure" method of positive observation and reflection in Chapter II of Creative Evolution. Before turning to this exposition, it is helpful to consider two other texts. In "An Introduction to Metaphysics" he maintains that self-intuition must be preceded by "a very large number of psychological analyses." 1 He further clarifies the function of analytic isolation in a letter to the psychologist Alfred Binet concerning a correspondent who experienced difficulty in communicating Bergsonian views. Bergson states that no one can grasp any thesis of his philosophy, much less his central insight into the freedom of being, without the difficult preliminary work of exposing and renouncing certain pre-conceived ideas. He gives the following example. Thus I doubt that one can arrive at a clear notion of liberty--such as I understand it, or rather such as I perceive it--if one has not earnestly made the effort to reject the (Indianapolis, 1955),p. 61. Henceforth, IM. [43] 44 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY deterministic fallacy which is innate to our reasoning faculty. How can one have a clear idea of this delusion if he has not first isolated it? And how isolate it if not by examining thoroughly the various forms of determinism as they are presented to us by the history of philosophy? 2 This passage proves Bergson's high regard for intellectual analysis. Analysis of determinate forms is a necessary first step even when the subject investigated is indeterminate creativity. In the "Introduction" to Creative Evolution Bergson declares that for him theory of life and theory of knowledge are inseparable. A theory of life must be critical of the habitual concepts of understanding, which work best in the realm of the non-living. A theory of knowledge must relate intelligence to evolution and show whether supposedly given frames of knowledge are not actually man-made. If man has forged them, he can enlarge or even transcend them. When he investigates the history of life on this planet, Bergson discovers two tendencies similar to those found in the history of philosophy: a tendency to crystallize and a tendency to move and to choose new directions. This second tendency to liberty will not be discovered simply by isolating examples of the first tendency to determinism and investigating their genesis. But the isolation and study of determination is necessary to throw light on the creative tendency. At the beginning of Chapter II of Creative Evolution Bergson discusses the way to apprehend duration, which is the very being of things, by ascertaining centers around which the incoherence of nature crystallizes. For him the unity of nature can never be represented in abstract, geometric form even though matter is predominantly inert and therefore amenable to this form of representation. In the material world he finds living centers of real action which is not repetitious. This action is self-initiated, spontaneous and of indeterminate quality by contrast with the univocity characteristic of any action that intellect can conceptualize. Indeterminacy is incoherent to intellect...