HENRI BERGSON

TRISTAN JAY N. GOLENA

BERGSON
1959- 1941
PROCESS PHILOSOPHY

● Matter- Final, irreducible stuff….. All

things are formed
●Model of thinking of behavior(nature):
Machine– mathematical exactness; precise
rules or laws.
● Human Nature: Machine
○People no longer thought of
as being “free” as possessing
freedom if the will.
Going Around vs. Entering into

● 2 Ways in knowing a thing:

○1. Move around the object (ANALYSIS)
○2. Enter into the object (INTUITION)
●(1) Knowledge is relative (depends on
the vantage point); gives descriptive
traits.
●(2) Knowledge is objective (overcome
the limitations of any particular
perspective and grasp the object as it
really is.
● Why (1) do not help knowing as such
○ Traits are merely symbols
○ Known only by comparisons with person or things
already known.
○ Gives the comparison with others and not from him
alone.
●Bergson: It is not possible to perceive
what constitute its “essence” from
without: essence is internal and
therefore cannot be expressed by
symbols.
● Description and Analysis: require the use
of symbols.

“ Not all translation of a poem render the

inner meaning of the original.
●Intuition
○Intellectual Sympathy
○One places oneself within an object
in order to coincide with what is
unique in it and consequently
inexpressible.
SCIENTIFIC WAY OF ANALYSIS

● Bergson: Scientific Meaning: misinterpret the

nature of object it analyzes .
○ Analysis-reduces the object to elements already
known.
■ Elements common both for it and other objects
●Analytic Intellect learns, ironically, by
destroying the objects’ essence.
●ESSENCE- dynamic, thriving,
pulsing, living, continuing existence.
○= DURATION
●Analysis- Interrupts essential
duration.
○Stops life and movement
○Separates into several independent and
static parts what in true life is a unified,
organic and dynamic reality.
●Uses symbols; as many symbols ( as
there are ways at looking a thing)
● Function of scientific analysis- work
with symbols.
●Bergson: Intellect:
Prolongation of senses
THE METAPHYSICAL WAY OF INTUITION

●Another way of knowing the self:

INTUITION
○In contrast with rationalism
●INTUITION: Intellectual Sympathy
○Enables our consciousness to become
identified with an object
○To think Intuitively is to think in duration
● Difference between Analysis and Intuition
○ Analysis begins with the static and reconstruct
movement as best it can with immobility in
juxtaposition
○ Intuition starts from movement, posits it, or rather
perceives it as reality itself and sees in immobility only
on abstract movement, a snapshot taken by our mind.
●Intuition discovers that the self is
in enduring and continuous flux.
●State C
THE PROCESS OF DURATION
● Duration- becoming
● Continuous stream of experience in which we live
● Bergson criticizes classical school of philosophy:
Failed to take duration seriously..
● Neither empiricists and rationalists took it
seriously .
● “To think in duration is to have true grasp of reality.
○ Give more accurate notion of time-real and continuous
time.
○ (Time and motion in spatialized term: e.g Parmenides
and Zeno)
EVOLUTION AND THE VITAL IMPULSE
● Theory of evolution –duration and becoming (?)
● Bergon on evolution: unable to give convincing
accounts of how the transition is made (gap) from
one level to higher level.
● Bergson: Evolution is best explained in terms of
vital impulse
○ Evolution: Drives organisms toward constantly more
complicated and higher types of organization
○ Elea Vita (Vital Impulse)- essential interior elements of all
things.
■ Creative power that moves in unbroken continuity through
all things.
● Intellect can only grasp static things

○ Not capable of grasping Vital Impulse…essence of duration

and movement, and “all change, all movement… absolutely
indivisible.

● Bergson: Living is Primary; Knowing is secondary activity.

● Intuition and consciousness, not analytic intellect grasp this
primary life and discover it to be continuous and undivided
process of which all things are expressions and not parts.
● Intuition challenges Intellect
○ Intellect views movement as static states
○ Intuition-movement is continuous; cannot be
reduced to parts

○ Creative process of vital impulse is irreversible.

●To get a notion of irreducibility and
irreversibility, do violence to the
mind– go counter the bent of the
intellect– function of philosophy.
● Intellect- evolution as single and steady line moving
upward.
● Intuition- differing tendencies at work:
○ Vital impulse moved in three discernible directions
■ Vegetative beings
■ Anthropods
■ Vertebrates (including human beings)
●Matter- weighted with geometry
●Neither matter nor geometrical figures
represented ultimate reality.
●Vital impulse must itself resemble
consciousness= life and all its creative
possibilities.
●Evolution is creative; because future
is open.
●No preordained “final” goal
●Vital impulse as “being of God”, if it
is not God himself.
MORALITY AND RELIGION
● 2 SOURCES OF Morality
○ 1. Sheer feeling of the necessity for social
solidarity. To achieve such solidarity, society
formulate certain reules of obligation (formulated
rules)… pressure of social necessity
○2. Deeper seat of feeling; sparked by
great moral people
■Aspiration toward higher types of
life.
●These 2 reflects the difference between
intellect and intuition.
○Intellect as of the (1) think in particular
terms; direct specific rules and therefore
restrict morality to a closed society.
●Even intellect formulates laws for
people, we still need intuition to
develop a genuine morality that
extends to a wider group.
● Intuition opens up richer sources of emotional
power at once, inducing aspiration and providing
creative power to embrace new types of life. .. Such
moral progress occurs only when moral heroes
appear e.g mystics, saints.. In this way, morality
moves constantly from ourselves and society to the
larger field of humanity.
● 2 TYPES OF RELIGION
○ Static- ceremonies, discipline.. Beliefs etc.
○ Dynamic- more in the nature of mysticism_
establishment of a contact with the creative effort
which life itself is manifests.
■ Intuition grasps reality more completely; dynamic
religion discovers God more vividly.
 Thank you!
Sources S. Stumpf and J. Fieser .Philosophy
A Historical Survey with
Essential Readings, ninth edition. Mcgraw Hill
publication.