Leonard Lawlor - What Immanence? What Transcendence? The Prioritization of Intuition Over Language...

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What Immanence?

What Transcendence?The Prioritization

of Intuition Over

Language in BergsonLeonard Lawlor

a

aThe University of MemphisPublished online: 21 Oct 2014.

To cite this article:Leonard Lawlor (2004) What Immanence? What

Transcendence? The Prioritization of Intuition Over Language in

Bergson, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 35:1,

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Journal of he British Society

for

Phenomenology,

Vol. 35, No. I, January 2004

WHAT IMMANENCE? WHAT TRANSCENDENCE?

THE

PRIORITIZATION OF INTUITION OVER

LANGUAGE IN BERGSON

LEONARD LAWLOR

It is clear to everyone now that Bergson had widespread influence over

20th century Continental philosophy, particularly over Levinas and Deleuze.

Looking back from Levinas and Deleuze, we get a strange view

of

Bergson,

since we generally characterize Levinas as the primary philosopher

of

transcendence and Deleuze

s

the primary philosopher

of

immanence. How

could Bergson have generated such an opposition? While this is the obvious

question, I think that it is, nevertheless, badly stated. t looks s though

Levinas and Deleuze do not form

n

opposition. Levinas seems to have a

starting point in immanence, if we take into

account

the concept of

separation s it is presented in

Totality and lnfinity;

3

and Deleuze seems to

contain some sort of transcendence, if we take into account the transcendent

use of the faculties as it is presented in Difference

and

Repetition.

4

Therefore, we must conceive the relation between immanence and

transcendence neither

s

a contradiction,

s

Deleuze would say,

5

nor

s

a

bi-polar play, s Levinas would say.

6

To conceive the relationship, indeed,

any relationship, s n opposition is even un-Bergsonian, since Bergson says

in Introduction to Metaphysics that the genuine philosophical question

concerns what unity,

what

multiplicity,

what

reality (PM 1409/176;

Bergson s emphasis). So, if we want to understand how Bergson could have

generated such apparently different philosophies, then, it seems, we must

ask: what transcendence, what immanence?

t is this question precisely that I am going to try to answer here. Given

the formulation

of

the question - What immanence? What transcendence? -

that is, given that the question does not ask for an opposition between

immanence and transcendence, we shall see that Bergson s thought consists

in n

ambiguity centred on his concept

of

sense (ES 943-45/168-170). It

is

this ambiguity, I think, that allowed Bergson s thought to flow into that of

Levinas and Deleuze. Yet, while I believe that Bergson s thought contains a

genuine ambiguity which accounts for the different ways his thought gets

appropriated- it is undoubtedly what has made Bergson s thought once

again interesting - I think that the fact that Bergson prioritizes intuition over

language resolves the ambiguity.

t

seems to me that the prioritization of

language

over intuition leads to one specific conception of immanence and

transcendence; this prioritization is what, I think, we find in Levinas s early

s he Theory

of

Intuition

in

Husser/ s Phenomenology. The prioritization

of

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intuition

over language leads to a different conception

of

immanence and

transcendence; the prioritization of intuition over language

is

what, I think,

we find for example in Deleuze s

The Logic ofSense

Obviously, these terms

immanence and transcendence do not really belong to the Bergsonian

lexicon. Indeed, their history in this century - which

no

one, as far as I know,

has laid out - seems to come from Husserl, from

Ideas I

in particular. Most

generally, the term immanence refers to the inside, while transcendence

refers to the outside. More precisely, the inside refers to the inside

of

consciousness, while the outside refers to the exteriority

of

things.

t

seems

to me that what we are going to see in

Bergson

is a dissociation of

immanence from consciousness in order to identify immanence with the

outside. Indeed, my thinking about Bergson here springs from an insight

from Brunschvicg: in an essay from 1943, Brunschvicg characterized

duration, and more particularly, the past in Bergson as the outside

dehors).

7

But to

get

to this

outside, we must

start

with

Bergson s

conception of intuition.

I The Concept of Intuition

When we examine Bergson s various comments on intuition, we find that

he defines intuition by four characteristics. First, intuition is knowledge;

indeed, Bergson calls it absolute knowledge.

t

is absolute knowledge

because, instead

of

being perspectival and thus relative to a viewpoint,

intuition coincides with and enters into what it intuits. The second

characteristic is that, because it enters into what it intuits, it is a

simple

act

(PM 1395-96/161-62). Both

of

these characteristics, simplicity of act and

non-perspectival knowledge, mean for Bergson, of course, that intuition is

not analysis. But they also mean that intuition is not synthesis, which is

nothing more than the reunification

of

analyzed or spatialised fragments.

That intuition

is

neither analysis nor synthesis means, as the famous quote

goes, that metaphysics is the science [made possible by intuition] that

claims to do without se

passer

de] symbols (PM 1396/162). In other words,

since it does without symbols, intuition

is

non- or pre-linguistic. Language,

for Bergson, is extensive or spatial, that is, it is analytic, and made up

of

generalities or commonalities, that is, it is synthetic. Language is both

division and re-unification because its origin lies in society s utilitarian

needs (PM 1273/32, 1321/80), in what Bergson calls inferior needs or

material needs (MM 317/180, 321/184). Already, we can see that Bergson

is prioritizing intuition over language and that intuition looks to be a kind of

inside, an entering into. Intuition is auto-intuition, intuition

of

the spirit,

Bergson says, by the spirit (PM 1273/32): immanence.

While well known, these two characteristics, simplicity of act and non

perspectival knowledge, leave the Bergsonian concept of intuition in

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obscurity. We must turn to two other characteristics. The third characteristic

of intuition occurs in the following quote from the second Introduction to a

pensee et le mouvant:

Thus

we

repudiate easiness. We recommend a certain difficult way

of

thinking. We value

above everything effort. How could certain people be mistaken? We will say nothing of

those who would think that our intuition

is

instinct or feeling. Not one line of what I have

written could lend itself to such n interpretation. And in all of what we have written there is

the opposite assertion: our intuition is reflection. (PM 1328/87-88; my emphasis.)

Bergsonian intuition is effort. But, when Bergson says here that intuition

is an

effort

and

not

a feeling, this

comment seems

to

contradict

his

Introduction to Metaphysics definition of intuition as sympathy (PM

13951161 ). To unravel this apparent contradiction, we must refer to

Bergson s precise distinction between two kinds

of

emotions in The Two

Sources

(MR 1011143). It

is

important

to

realize that before he distinguishes

these two kinds, he says that they have one feature in common: they are

affective states distinct from sensation, and cannot be reduced like the latter

to the psychical transposition

of

a physical stimulus (MR 1011/43). This

comment means that,

if

intuition is connected somehow to emotion, then we

cannot conceive it in terms

of

sensation insofar s a sensation such s pain

for Bergson is based on a physical stimulus. f there is a connection between

Bergsonian intuition and emotion, intuition is not sensation and thus not

based on physical stimuli. We cannot conceive, therefore, Bergsonian

intuition in terms

of

sensibility (cf. M 968). The distinction between the two

kinds of emotions is s

follows. One kind

of

emotion, according to Bergson,

is based on, comes temporally after an idea or a represented image, while

the other kind comes temporally before ideas or represented images and in

fact generates ideas or represented images. This pregnancy with ideas is

why Bergson calls the second kind of emotion supra-intellectual, while the

first

is

called infra-intellectual because it

is

dependent on representations

MR 1012/44). Does this distinction help

us resolve

the

apparent

contradiction? Is there effort in the supra-intellectual emotions, one

of

which

according to Bergson in The Two Sources is sympathy (MR 1009/40)? The

effort

of the supra-intellectual emotion does not, in contrast to infra

intellectual emotions, motivate actions which respond to needs; supra

intellectual emotions necessitates creativity (MR 1009/41). The effort is

creation.

The fourth characteristic also occurs in the second introduction to a

pensee et le mouvant. Bergson says that intuition is consciousness enlarged

(PM 1273/32). As consciousness enlarged, intuition must be understood s

the reversal of a narrowing down

of

consciousness (cf. PM 14221190). The

narrowing down is what occurs normally. Normally, under the pressure

of

needs, we direct our attention

to

life, that is, to the present with a view

to

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future action, with a view to a future point hence the narrowing down

of

consciousness (MM 166/14). This attention to needs is what intuition

reverses (PM 1320/79). Here, we can introduce a well known Bergsonian

formula. Intuition consists in an effort of reflection in which one goes

seeking experience at its source ... above this decisive turn where, inflecting

itself in the direction

of

our utility, it becomes properly human experience

(MM 321/184). The

tum of

experience is consciousness enlarged. This

enlargement of consciousness is why we must not confuse intuition with

what, in Chapter 1

of Matter and Memory

Bergson calls pure perception,

which is purified down to a point. Pure perception has no memory and

therefore no duration (MM 184-85/34). In contrast, intuition, of course,

concerns internal duration and nothing else (PM 1273/32). And, if intuition

and

duration

and

consciousness

are

identical

as

Bergson

claims

in

Introduction to Metaphysics, then we must say that duration is memory and

in tum that intuition

is

memory, since Bergson says there that consciousness

means memory (PM 1397/164). Let me be clear about this: when Bergson

defines intuition as consciousness enlarged, he is defining intuition as

memory. Thus, I find myself hesitating before John Mullarkey s formulation,

in his recent excellent book,

of

Bergsonian intuition in terms

of

Merleau

Ponty s famous phrase, the primacy

of

perception.

8

While we must

conceive intuition as an experience, I think we can conceive it as perception

only if we identify it with the very specific perception presented in Chapter 4

of

Matter nd Memory: here Bergson describes the steps necessary to

perceive the vibrations of matter (MM 343/208-209).

9

t

seems to me that, if

we took the time to look at this description (which we do not have here), we

would see that this perception is identical to a consciousness enlarged

beyond the present and thus it is not really a perception

of matter but a

memory

of

matter. In Bergson, we must transform the famous Merleau

Pontean phrase into the primacy of memory. Also, when H.W. Carr in

1919 dissociates Bergsonian intuition from any individual mental faculty

such as intelligence and instead associates it with consciousness, which is

wider than the intellect because consciousness

is

identical with life,

1

he is

correct to do this only because intuition

is

first

of

all memory and memory

for Bergson is life. Caused by a supra-intellectual emotion, intuition is a

memorial act which makes the effort to create images.

But

this is not all we can say about intuition. The enlargement of

consciousness goes in another direction. Insofar as intuition makes the effort

to create images, we must also say that intuition is an imaginative act. This

creation

of

images is why Bergson says in Introduction to Metaphysics that

When I speak

of

an absolute movement, I mean that I attribute to what is moving an interior

and, as it were, psychic states; it also means that I sympathize with the states and I insert

myself

in

them by an effort

of

imagination. (PM 1393/159; my emphasis).

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Here we must keep in mind that Bergson uses imagination and phantasy

interchangeably. For example, he frequently uses the word phantasy with

imagination in

Matter and Memory (for example, MM 315-317/179-180).

Unlike imagination which suggests

of

course images, phantasy suggests

light since it comes from the Greek phos. This association of intuition with

phantasy implies that, turning back from the bright sunlight

of

daytime

actions based in needs to the dark darkness

of

yesterday s memories, in other

words, expanding consciousness from the present to include the past,

intuition then makes the effort to bring this darkness into the light

of images.

Intuition is the movement from memory to phantasy. We can refer again to

the turn

of

experience formula. Caused by a supra-intellectual emotion,

intuition takes advantage of

the growing light, clarifying the passage from

the

immediate

to the

useful,

that initiates the dawn

of

human experience

(MM 3211185; Bergson s emphasis).

Because

of

this identification

of

intuition with memory and with phantasy

(understood as the creation of images on the basis of memory), I am going to

examine memory in Bergson. But before I do that, I am going to summarize

the

development

we

have

seen so far. We now

have

a

definition

of

Bergsonian intuition: intuition is an effort

of

reflection (that is, memory and

phantasy) caused by a supra-intellectual emotion (therefore it is neither

intelligence understood

as

representations nor instinct understood

as

stimulus-response sequences based in material needs) - it is an effort of

reflection which reverses the normal work of thought in the present and turns

it towards the past, an effort which enlarges consciousness beyond the

present in order to make the past progress towards the present into an image.

Bergson

calls

intuition knowledge because it generates images or

representations. But,

if

we recall The Two Sources discussion

of

supra

intellectual emotion, intuition results in more than knowledge; it results in a

creative work (MR 1013/45). Intuition is knowledge and a work, for

Bergson. I can put the definition of intuition in another way: intuition is

a

simple, that is, continuous act consisting in three components. First, intuition

is emotional; second, it is an act of memory; and third, intuition is an act of

imagination.

These three components explain why Bergson varies his

descriptions

of

intuition throughout his writings. On the one hand, in the

second introduction to

La pensee

et

le mouvant,

Bergson calls intuition

vision (PM 1273/32); this comparison

of

intuition to vision, it seems

to

me,

is

due to the act of imagination, to the created images, visible images. On the

other hand, again in the second introduction, Bergson calls intuition

contact ; this comparison

of

intuition to touch

is

due to its cause in supra

intellectual emotions which are ffective states But there is a third

comparison with a sense. In Introduction to Metaphysics, he calls intuition

auscultation

(PM 14081175); this comparison

of

intuition to hearing

is

due

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to the act

of

memory, to the imageless past, pure memories, which, it seems,

can only at first be heard. Intuition, we can say finally, is a spiritual touching

which then spiritually hears and sees.

t is

spiritual because

of

memory.

2

The Concept

o

Memory

Before we tum

to

Bergson s famous theory

of

memory, which

is

focused

in the image

of

the inverted cone in Chapter 3

of

Matter and Memory we

must briefly summarize four discussions which occur in Chapter 2 and early

in Chapter 3

First, Bergson spends most

of

Chapter 2 trying to show us that

with the word memory we confuse two very different phenomena. On the

one hand, we use the word memory to refer to the bodily or motor habits

we acquire throughout our lives, which are repeated into the future; on the

other hand, we use the word memory to refer to images which progress

from the past to the present. This is the distinction between habit or body

memory

and

true

or

progressive memory. The conclusion

of this

differentiation between body memory and true memory for Bergson is that

true memory is entirely spiritual. Second, bodily habits are general; habits,

for Bergson, are motor behaviours which can be repeated indefinitely; in

contrast, true memories are singular, each being differentiated by its own

date and context; in fact, true memories are so spiritual that they exist prior

to

being recalled in an image; they are pure memories. So, third, for Bergson,

because all memories are spiritual, that is, insofar as they are not bodily and

thus cannot be affected by things such as brain lesions, all memories survive.

In fact, Bergson says that their existence is unconscious. Thus, fourth,

existence for Bergson is not limited to consciousness or to the present.

Although Bergson discusses the all important problem of existence only

within the context of the psychological realm, we must note that the word

existence for Bergson has a large extension, including not just the present

but also the past. In fact, we must say that the past for Bergson defines

existence ; the present is

a part

of

the past, while the past is the whole.

Before we tum to the cone image, let us summarize these four points: (1)

there is a true memory which is spiritual, the memory which progresses from

the past to the present; (2) true memories are not general but singular; (3)

insofar as being spiritual, all memories survive. (4) the meaning

of

being is

the past. Now, I am going to tum to the cone image.

Of

course, the cone image

is

found in Chapter

3

t

is

constructed with a

plane and an inverted cone, whose summit is inserted into the plane.

12

The

plane, plane P, as Bergson calls it, is the plane of my actual representation

of the universe (MM 293/152). The cone SAB symbolizes memory. At the

cone s base, AB, we have unconscious memories, the oldest surviving

memories - pure memories - which come forward spontaneously, for

example, in dreams (MM 294/153). As we descend, we have an indefinite

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number (MM 309/170) of different regions of the past ordered by their

distance or nearness to the present.

3

At the summit

of

the cone, S, we have

the image of my body which is

concentrated into a point, into the present.

The summit is inserted into the plane and thus my body participates in the

plane

of

my actual representation

of

the universe (MM 293/152). So at the

base

of

the cone, which

is

at the top

of

the image, we have memories and at

the summit, which is at the bottom, we have action. Now, what is most

difficult to visualize with the cone image is that it symbolizes a

dynamic

process: memories are descending down from the regions of memory

towards the present; they are making progress towards present action (MM

293/152-53). This progressive movement

of

memory takes place, according

to Bergson, between the extremes of the base which is

immobile and which

Bergson calls contemplation (MM 3021163), and the plane where action

takes place.

4

This movement of memory between immobile contemplation

and moving action is

really what defines intuition in Bergson, even though in

atter and emory he calls it intelligence (MM 3711242; cf. MM 2691125).

I do not think that Bergson s calling this movement intelligence eliminates

the possibility that here we have the movement of

intuition since,

as

Husson

has shown, Bergson s use of the word intelligence in the earlier writings

has a much broader scope than in the later.

5

So, I think we can say that what

defines intuition, for Bergson,

is

the movement between the two extremes,

the movement from the base to the summit, which is a movement from

singularities to generalities (MM 296/155). The generalities which are

involved in this movement are different than static symbolized generalities;

they are, for Bergson, sense, as we shall see in a moment. But, before turning

to the Bergsonian concept

of

sense, I am going to show how this movement

of

intuition, from the singular to the general, works for Bergson. I am going

to lay this movement out in three distinct steps.

So, let us say that I am confronting an obstacle in the present, in contact

with a problem which can be solved only if I impose an order on a situation.

First, according to Bergson, I must make a leap (MM 288/146). This leap

means that, when I am remembering I do not make a one-by-one regress

into the past; rather, by

means

of

the leap, I am immediately in the past (cf.

MM 278/149-50, 2611116; also,

ES

944/170), in, as Bergson says, the past

in general and then in a region

of

the past (MM 276/134). Let us say that,

with the leap, I have landed in a region of my childhood, in the region before

my parents moved to the suburbs. Even though the leap places me in this

region, no image appears at first because I have forgotten the events that

formed my character; all I have

is

the idea

of

my character. The idea

of

my

character, according to Bergson, is like a cloud, composed

of

thousands

of

drops of water (MM 277/134); Bergson call this state the nebulosity of the

idea (MM 266/122; cf.

3101171). Before these

drops

condense, each

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Bergson, is always progressive. And this progressiveness of memory means

that memory, for Bergson, does not come

from

perception but

to

perception;

the past does not come from the present but to the present. Now, in a well

known essay on Bergson, Jean Hyppolite has argued that we must conceive

pure memories in Bergson as essences. Hyppolite says, The German

language allows us to bring the past and essence together gewesen and

Wesen).

This

is

really how, he says, it seems, we must understand pure

memory in Bergson.

6

To say that the past is

gewesen,

that it

was,

means

not only that the actual object

of

perception has passed away, but also that

nothing can change the past; the past cannot be repeated in the sense of being

done over. In fact, Bergson defines memories in this way, as perfect, that

is, as non-perfectible through repetition; that memories are non-perfectible -

that I cannot do the summer

of

1964 over - is why Bergson says, in his

descriptions of the cone, that the base of the cone is immobile. The memories

at the base are in a sense eternal, since they have passed out

of

the present

where change occurs, where one can perfect actions. But, although the

memories have passed out

of

the present, they have not, as we have seen

Bergson also claim, passed out

of

time; insofar as they constitute our

character, they continue to affect the present. Since the memories have not

and cannot pass out

of

time - they can pass only out

of

the present - we

really cannot call them eternal ; at best we can say that they are quasi

eternal. In any case, what we must recognize here is that for Bergson

memories cannot pass away. This is crucial: although we must say that

present perceptions cause memories, that memories are copies

of

objects

actually perceived, the present object

of

perception always passes away:

my

skinny brother

of

1964 has passed away; he s not dead,

of

course, but he is

no longer skinny. Insofar as the present object passes away, it liberates the

memory from the present, and the memory, unlike the perception, does not

pass away. t is no longer tied to the factual object which caused it; it has

become an essence, at once

Wesen

and

gewesen.

This detachment from the

object allows the memory

to

be repeated, not in the sense

of

doing it over but

in the sense

of

unifying it with others on the basis of resemblance; the

memories can be evoked and, so to speak, can be generalized. The cone s

contractions bring the memories together into a unity which, so to speak,

forgets the differences, so that the present action I am considering can base

itself on them.

This idea from Hyppolite, that we must conceive Bergsonian memories

as

essences, allows us to say that the movement

of

memory - which is intuition,

as I am arguing - bases itself on, or, is even identical to, sense.

7

As is well

known, in the twentieth century the concept of sense has come to replace the

traditional metaphysical concept of essence. In fact, Hyppolite himself

presented this replacement in his

Logic and Existence.

8

In order, however,

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to

understand the Bergsonian concept

of

sense,

we

must now turn

to

Bergson's 1902 essay 'Intellectual Effort.' As Frt deric Worms has stressed

in his extremely helpful introduction to

Matter and Memory

it is impossible

to underestimate the importance of this essay.

9

In 'Intellectual Effort,'

Bergson calls sense a 'dynamic schema' (ES 936/160), which he explains by

means

of

an example: the memory

of

a skillful chess player (ES 937-381161-

62). Bergson notes that a skillful chess player can play several games at once

without looking at the chess boards. According to Bergson, this chess player

does not have the image

of

each chess-board in memory 'just s it is, "as

if

it

were in a mirror",' nor does he have

a

mental vision

of

each piece' (ES

9381161). Instead, the chess player, according to

Bergson,

retains and

represents to himself

...

the power, the bearing, and the value, in a word, the

function

of

each piece' (ES 938/162). And, for each game, the player retains

and represents to

himself

a composition of forces

or

better a relation

between allied or hostile powers' (ES 938/162). Then, at every move, the

player

makes an

effort of reconstruction ;

in

other words,

he

or

she

'remakes' the history

of

the game from the beginning, or 'reconstitutes' the

successive events which have led to the present situation. Therefore, as

Bergson says, 'He thus obtains a representation of the whole which enables

him

at any moment to visualize the elements (ES 938/162). What the

example

of

the chess player implies is that the chess player has something

like what Bergson would call an intuition; he or she has an intuition of the

whole and the differences which can be developed from it. We cannot think,

however, that the chess-player has the whole as such; this would imply that

the whole is given in the intuition. Instead, the chess-player has the whole

s

a schema, in which there are unforeseeable developments. So, Bergson

defines a dynamic schema in this way: a dynamic schema is - these are

Bergson's words - a 'simple' 'outline

of

temporal relations' (ES 950/177),

which is 'developable' into 'multiple images' (ES 9361160). In other words,

it is a 'representation'

of

the whole which can be developed into multiple

parts or elements. Even though the dynamic schema is an 'outline,' it is not,

according to Bergson,

an

impoverished

extract or

summary of

this

particular series

of

images (ES 937/160);

if

it were, the schema would be

limited

just

to

that

series

of

images, and then the chess player would be

unable to play new and different games. Similarly, a dynamic schema is not

what the images taken together 'signify'; in other words, it is not a 'logical

meaning,' because a logical meaning 'may belong to quite different series of

images'; so, a logical meaning would not allow us to retain and reconstruct

one definite series

of

images to the exclusion

of

others (ES 937/160). So,

while an impoverished extract is too limited to

be

a dynamic schema, a

logical meaning is too unlimited to

be

a dynamic schema. In other words, the

extract has too small an extension, while the logical meaning has too large an

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extension. A dynamic schema, as Bergson says, is as complete as the images

which develop from it; it has reciprocal implication and consequently

internal complication, which the elements or images develop. The dynamic

schema or sense in Bergson is, to repeat an image from the cone, the

nebulosity

of

the idea (MM 266/122). A cloud is a whole composed of

thousands of drops

of

water, but

I do

not see the different drops until the

cloud condenses. Similarly, the idea I have of my character is composed of

thousands

of

singular events, but I do not see those singular events until I

rotate the cone. The idea anyone has of his or her character would be an

example of a dynamic schema in Bergson. The idea I have of my character is

a simple outline

of

forces which are developable into singular images or

actions. The dynamic schema is not a mere form, the outline, but a tendency.

This dynamic schema

is

sense in Bergson:

sens

both sense and direction.

3

The Priority o Intuition over Language

This examination of the concept of sense allows us to see the potential of

Bergson s thought. It contains an ambiguity which allows it to flow into both

the thought of Levinas and that of Deleuze. If following Hyppolite, we must

conceive memories as essences - and that means as sense or as dynamic

schemas - then it seems we can characterize memories in at least two

different ways.

f

Bergsonian memories are essences, then, on the one hand,

it seems we could call them singularities, meaning, according to Deleuze,

ideal events or even idealities which generate signification,

20

and, on the

other hand, it seems we could call them traces, meaning, according to

Levinas, an

irreversible

disturbance or even an abstraction which

generates significance.

2

If

Bergsonian memories are generative, or, more

precisely, creative of new images, ideas, or works, if,

as

Bergson says in

The Possible and the Real, the whole

is

not given (PM 1333/93), then, on

the one hand, it seems we could speak of the memories as being based in an

irrectitude, meaning, according to Levinas, a non-correlation between the

trace and what it refers to - the signified of the trace withdraws

22

-

and, on

the other, it seems we could speak of the memories as being based in a

virtuality, meaning, according to Deleuze, a non-resemblance between the

actualization and the singularity

it

incarnates - the virtual is not the

possible.

3

Finally, if Bergsonian memories only pass out

of

the present and

do not ever pass away, if they are,

as

we said, quasi-eternal, then, on the

one hand, I think that we can call them impassible, meaning, according to

Deleuze, that they do not pass away,

4

or, on the other hand, we can call

them immemorial, meaning, according to Levin as, that these memories are

not bound to a perceived present.2

5

All of these ways of characterizing

Bergsonian memories or sense or dynamic schemas lead us, I think, to an

expression that

is

common in twentieth-century French thought. The phrase

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is a past that was never present.' To characterize Bergsonian memories with

this phrase raises the question

of

priority, since, whenever this phrase occurs

- whether it is in Deleuze,

26

Levinas,

7

Derrida,

28

or Merleau-Ponty

29

-

it

always refers to what we used to call an

a priori

condition. As is well

known, in the twentieth century, a priori conditions must be conceived as at

once

experiencable and yet not reducible to experience. But,

if

Bergsonian

memories are a priori conditions in this sense of conditioning the present

without being reducible to the present, then we must recognize that in

Bergson himself-

without consideration for the Levinasian-Deleuzian

ambiguity

of

his thinking - this prioritization of memory prioritizes intuition

over language.

t

seems to me that this prioritization is decisive in

determining the ambiguity.

We can see the Bergsonian priority

of

intuition over language

in

Chapter

2

of

Matter and Memory. Here, in order to explain memory, Bergson

describes the process of understanding the speech of someone who is

speaking in a language I do not know well. Bergson says, 'To understand the

speech of another

is

...

to

reconstruct intelligently - that is, starting from the

ideas-

the continuity of sound which the ear perceives' (MM 2611116-17;

my emphasis). In other words, if I am to understand, I must place myself

'immediately' - d embtee- 'in the midst of the corresponding ideas' (MM

261/116). This 'd'embh e' is the leap we saw in the cone, which implies we

are not engaged in a step-by-step regress. In fact, in the case

of

hearing or

understanding, it is really impossible to regress from the words that I am

hearing to the ideas, because words, as Bergson says, have no 'absolute

sense'; their sense is always relative to what follows them and what precedes

them. Bergson makes the following comparison; he says,

... a word has individuality for us only from the moment we have been taught to abstract it.

We do not first learn how to pronounce words but sentences. A word is always

anastomosed

to the other words which accompany it and takes different aspects according to the cadence

and movement

of

the sentences

of

which it makes an integral part: just as each note

of

a

theme vaguely reflects the whole theme. (MM 262/118; my emphasis; cf. also 269/124; and

ES 945/170).

The word 'anastomose' suggests that a sentence is a complicated but

unified pattern of flows or rhythms. So, if I tried to regress from each distinct

word to an idea, I would be 'at a loss,' 'wandering' from word to word (ES

9451170). I would never find the pattern. In Chapter 2 of Matter and

Memory

Bergson says that sense or the idea is the 'solder'

of

the words

(MM 267/122). Therefore, in order to find this 'soldering' sense, I must not

regress; instead, I must leap right into the sense, and that means into the past

in general and then into a region

of

the past. But, this leap into the past also

means that we have escaped the particular language and escaped language

as

a whole: we are intuiting. Thus, the direction consists in going from the ideas

to the images, from the sense to the distinct words.

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So, if we are to understand another person who is speaking a language

that I do know well, we see that it requires an intuition

of

sense like that

of

the chess player. t may seem that I start from the sounds I am hearing, but,

according to Bergson, this starting point is an illusion: the articulate words I

can discern act as nothing more than suggestions or benchmarks for me to

follow (ES 943/168). From them, 1 make the leap into sense, that is, into the

past in general and then into a region

of

the past. When I have the sense

suggested or the corresponding idea, I then have what Bergson calls the

directing idea (ES 956/184). This idea directs my progression towards

distinct elements or auditory images such as words. In other words, on the

basis

of

the sense, I repeat what the other person has said. Both in

atter

and emory and in Intellectual Effort, Bergson compares this process to

the

operation

of

solving

a

mathematical

problem MM 2611116; ES

943/168). Even if the solution to a mathematical problem is written on the

blackboard,

printed in

books,

or

verbally

explained to me, I do

not

understand the solution to the problem unless I do it myself. Again, the chalk

marks on the blackboard or the symbols in the book or the sounds I hear do

not lead me to the idea; they are nothing but suggestions. I understand the

solution to the problem when I can

do

it myself. Similarly, in the case

of

hearing a language I know imperfectly, I understand the other person when I

reconstruct, or re-say his or her sentence. In fact, I must say the sentence

over again just as rapidly as the person speaking in order to keep up But,

only if I can repeat the sentence completely, can I say I really understand it,

and this understanding is not that of

static generalities. Because of the

starting point in sense from which I develop the singular images of words, I

understand exactly what has been said in its singularity. But, while this

understanding has had its suggestions and benchmarks in the speech I hear,

and while Bergson calls it is a re-construction or a re-constitution, we

must realize that the understanding

of

these specific words, in their very

difference, is dependent on my sense. I must make the leap to understand the

sentence, but, insofar as I leap into sense, the understanding

of

the sentence

develops from me, not you. Indeed, we must even see the rhythm

of

the

other s speech as a function of my own rhythm. For Bergson, therefore, the

plurality

of

rhythms develops - and we must say develops immediately -

from my intuition of my own sense. So, the direction is not from the other to

me, but from me to the other. The direction in Bergson

is

not from language

to intuition, but from intuition to language.

Since we now recognize the Bergsonian priority

of

intuition over

language, we are in a position to answer the questions with which we began.

So, what kind of transcendence? Since I contain virtually, in my sense, the

rhythms of all others speeches, in other words, since the other s rhythms

creatively evolve from me, we can indeed speak

of a transcendence in

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Bergson. This creativity is a direction to something other than me, to

something novel. But, since we are speaking here of a creation from me I

think

we cannot

use the

phrase absolute other to

describe this

transcendence, to describe the new. Instead, we must describe Bergsonian

creation s n auto-divergence or n auto-dissociation or an auto-alteration

(cf. CE 571-578/88-96). So, first, in Bergson, we have a transcendence

relative to myself or, more precisely, a transcendence relative to the self, and

not a transcendence of absolute alterity. In fact, I think we have to speak, in

contrast, of an absolute immanence in Bergson. But, does this absolute

immanence imply an absolute inside? While the transcendence of auto

alteration implies an immanence, this immanence is not the immanence of

subjectivity; in other words, it is not an immanence of present consciousness.

Bergsonian intuition enlarges consciousness to include the unconscious and

that inclusion of the unconscious means the past (cf. PM 1273/32). So, if we

have here an unconscious past that is different from the present - it is a past

that was never present - and that is different from consciousness, we could

call it an outside of consciousness. But, since this outside is in existence,

according to Bergson, we cannot say that this outside is otherwise than

being or that it is beyond essence. We have an outside which is the same

s

being and which is within essence. Again we find ourselves in Bergson

before

an

absolute immanence but

one

which

is

not

equivalent

to

consciousness: absolute immanence is absolutely

outside.

So,

in

his

prioritization of intuition over language Bergson, I think, has separated

immanence from consciousness and identified it with the non-conscious. In

other words, he has made immanence and the outside synonymous, in order

to make consciousness be the inside of the outside: consciousness is an

inside relative to the outside. In order to understand this unity of the outside

and immanence, I think one has to recall the ambiguity

of

the Greek word

autos, between ipse and idem between self and identity; it seems s though

Bergson retains only the ipse and eliminates the identity. In short, we have a

same which is not identical.

I think this Bergsonian prioritization of intuition over language - which

therefore prioritizes a kind of absolute immanence - is why Levinas wonders

in The Old and the New whether the Bergsonian intuition of duration really

lets the alterity of the new ... explode, immaculate and untouchable as

alterity or absolute newness, the absolute itself in the etymological sense

of

the term. 30 Now it seems possible to me that the failure in relation to

alterity that

Levinas

points to, here

in

Bergson,

may

not amount to

something we should repair in Bergson s philosophy. In fact, I am not sure

that Bergson s not letting the alterity of the new explode s absolute newness

is really a failure at all. Everything, it seems to me, depends on how we

interpret Bergson s idea of a supra-intellectual emotion. Minimally, I think

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this idea of supra-intellectual emotions must be interpreted as being a

question. While I am taking this interpretation, obviously, from Heidegger s

Introduction to

Being and Time it is not entirely alien

to

Bergson. In Matter

and

Memory for example,

Bergson

calls

external

stimuli

questions

addressed to my motor activity (MM 194/45). While we carefully followed

Bergson and separated supra-intellectual emotions from sensation, we noted

that they are still affections, and thus we could say that they are like

questions put to my memory and imagination. In my example in the

discussion

of

the cone, I could have said that I felt something first which

caused the leap; I could say that I experienced a question: can I impose order

on my life?

t

seems to me that we can interpret this idea

of

a supra

intellectual emotion

as

a question in two ways. On the one hand, we could

interpret the question put to me in terms

of

language,

as

an experience

of

language. If we do this, then it is impossible to conceive this experience as

anything other than common or general. There can be no utterance which is

not based on a prior agreement or convention. In this interpretation of the

question, we are led in the direction of a promise that is prior to the question

itself, a promise to obey the laws of language by means of which I can

understand the question. In this interpretation, we are led into ethics. This

first way of interpreting the question is indebted to Levinas (and ultimately

to Derrida). But there is another way to interpret the question. We can

interpret the question put to me in terms

of

intuition, as an experience

of

force.

f

we do this, then it is impossible to conceive this experience as

anything other than singular and extraordinary. There can be no intuition

which is not based on a prior singularity or extraordinary point. In this

second interpretation, which is obviously indebted to Deleuze and

somewhat to Foucault), we are led not in the direction of a prior promise but

in the direction

of

a prior

problem

through which one understands the

question. In this interpretation, we are led into epistemology. To conclude,

let me suggest - and this is

really only a suggestion - that there is perhaps a

reason for preferring the second interpretation. In the first interpretation, as

the experience of language and therefore as the experience of the general, we

cannot conceive the experience

of

the question as singular. And if we cannot

have

an

experience

of

singularity, then we have to say, perhaps, that we have

lost all difference. Maybe we have to say that we have lost all alterity in the

broadest sense

of

the term. f it is indeed the case that only intuition gives

us

singularity, then we must bring all of our ethical reflections, reflections

which transform themselves quickly into religion, we must bring all

of

them

back to what we might call noetics, back to what is called thinking.

The University

of

Memphis

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References

I. This essay

is

part of a larger work called The Challenge of Bergsonism: Phenomenology,

Ontology, Ethics (Continuum Press, 2003), and it is based on lectures I delivered at the

Collegium Phaenomenologicum (Citta

di

Castello, Italy) in 1999.

2. All references to Bergson s works will use the abbreviations listed below in the

Bibliography. The French Centennial Edition is referred to first, then the English

translation.

3. Emmanuel Levinas, Totalite et l infini (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961), p.122;

English translation by Alphonso Lingis as Totality nd Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne

University Press, 1969), p.148.

4. Gilles Deleuze, Difference et repetition (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968),

p.182; English translation by Paul Patton as

Difference nd Repetition

(New York:

Columbia University Press, 1994), p.140.

5. Deleuze, Difference et repetition, pp.64-65; Difference and Repetition, pp.44-45.

6. Emmanuel Levinas, 'La signification et

le

sens,'

in

Humanisme et / autre homme (Paris:

Fata Morgana, 1972), p.59; English translation by Alphonso Lingis as 'Meaning and

Sense,' in Collected Philosophical Papers (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), p.104.

7. Leon Brunschvicg, La vie interieure de 'intuition,' in Henri Bergson, essais et temoignes

recueillis, par Albert Beguin et Pierre Thevenaz (Neuchatel: Baconniere, 1943), p.182.

8.

John Mullarkey,

Bergson and Philosophy

(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999),

p.159.

9. Here is the quote: If you abolish my consciousness

...

matter resolves

itself

into

numberless vibrations, all linked together in uninterrupted continuity, all bound up with

each other, and traveling in every direction like shivers. In short, try first to connect

together the discontinuous objects of daily experience; then, resolve the motionless

continuity

of

these qualities into vibrations which are moving in place; finally, attach

yourself to these movements, by freeing yourself from the divisible space which underlies

them in order to consider only their mobility - this undivided act that your consciousness

grasps in the movement which you yourself execute. You will obtain a vision

of

matter

which is perhaps fatiguing for your imagination, but pure and stripped

of

what the

requirements of life make you add to it in external perception. Reestablish now

my

consciousness, and with it, the requirements of life: farther and farther, and by crossing

over each time enormous periods of the internal history

of

things, quasi-instantaneous

views are going to be taken, views this time pictorial,

of

which the most vivid colors

condense an infinity

of

repetitions and elementary changes. In just the same way the

thousands

of

successive positions

of

a runner are contracted into one sole symbolic

attitude, which our eye perceives, which art reproduces, and which becomes for everyone

the image of a man who runs' MM 343/208-209).

10.

H.W. Carr,

Henri Bergson: the Philosophy of Change

(London and Edinburgh: T.C. and

E.C. Jack, 1919), p.32; my emphasis.

II.

And this role

of

phantasy is why, as we shall see in a moment, we must not conceive

memory here in terms

of

memory-images ; memory here is what Bergson in Matter and

Memory calls 'pure memory.'

12. The cone image occurs first on page 152 of the English translation, which is page 293 of

the Centennial Edition, and then again on page 162

of

the English translation, which

is

page 302

of

the Centennial Edition.

13. The second cone image represents these different regions with horizontal lines trisecting

the cone; see page 162 of the English, page 302 of the French.

14.

Cf. Hyppolite, Figures de

l

pensee philosophique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,

1971), tome I, p.480.

15. See Leon Husson, L lntellectualisme de Bergson (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,

1947), p.21, where he says that '

...

in the early text, the word 'intelligence designated the

set

of

superior functions

of

knowledge, taken

as

a whole, regardless

of

the distinction one

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can make between them, or, at least, it designated the set of functions of intellection, that

is, comprehension. See, for example, PM 1275/35.

16.

Hyppolite,

Figures de

l

pensee philosophique,

tome

1

p.482,

my

translation.

17.

What we are describing here as sense (without any qualifying adjective) is what Bergson

calls good sense. In Chapter 3 of Matter and Memory, Bergson calls good sense practical

sense, which means that its direction is towards action. In fact, in a speech Bergson made

in 1895, one year before the publication of

Matter and Memory,

Bergson says that good

sense

loves actions

(M 363). Nevertheless, its direction towards action must be

understood through its primary characteristic; good sense is primarily defined as being

well-balanced between the extremes

of

the cone; it is balanced between the docility

of

the dreamer and the energy of the person who acts (MM 294/153). Insofar as good sense

is well-balanced, it never regresses, but always makes the leap and then progresses from

the sense or dynamic schema to action and language. The leap and the progress towards

action and language is why we have to define good sense as doubly directed or bi

directional; it is dynamism itself. This dynamism is why, in the 1895 speech, Bergson calls

good sense intellectual work itself (M 362). It is docile enough to use memory-images to

recognize the singularity of the present situation and energetic enough not to fall asleep

and dream. Again in the 1895 speech Bergson says that good sense neither sleeps nor

dreams. Indeed, this is why good sense is so fatiguing (ES 892/102). In the 1895 speech,

Bergson also calls good sense an intuition of a superior order which is necessarily rare

(M 361). In fact, this entire speech implies that what Bergson, throughout his writings calls

intuition is good sense, which means that intuition in Bergson is never simply knowledge,

never simply speculative, but always also active, directed towards action. Finally, in the

1895 speech, Bergson tells us that good sense s love of action comes profoundly moved

for the good, from an intense warmth which has become light (M 371, 372). In contrast,

common sense in Bergson is the common direction, the direction towards utility; and,

unlike good sense which for Bergson is practical, common sense is theoretical. It is our

common theories about how to make things useful, what Bergson, in the second

Introduction

to a pensee et le mouvant,

calls the socialization

of

the truth (PM 1327 /87).

This theoretical outlook based in social needs is why common sense is primarily concerned

with decomposing.

The

tendency of common sense to decompose is why Bergson

throughout Matter and Memory finds himself correcting common sense (MM 219/73; cf.

also 327/191; 3291193; 332/196). The most important comment Bergson makes in

Matter

and Memory

concerning common sense is found in the Fourth Chapter; he says, against

[materialism and idealism] we invoke the same testimony, that of consciousness, which

shows us our body

as

one image among others and our understanding

as

a certain faculty

of

dissociating,

of

distinguishing,

of opposing

logically, but not

of

creating or

of

constructing. Thus, willing captives of psychological analysis and, consequently, of

common sense, it would seem that, after having exacerbated the conflicts raised by

ordinary dualism, we have closed all the avenues of escape which metaphysics might set

open

to

us. But, just because we have pushed dualism to an extreme, our analysis has

perhaps dissociated its contradictory elements (MM 318/181). This comment implies that

Matter and Memory s opening hypothesis is really supposed to push common sense up

above to an extreme which in turn will open common sense up and allow us to escape from

it.

18.

Jean Hyppolite, Logique et existence (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1952);

English translation by Leonard Lawlor and Amit Sen as Logic and Existence (Albany: The

SUNY Press, 1998).

19.

Frederic Worms,

Introduction aMatiere et memoire

(Paris: Presses Universitaires de

France, 1997), p.l83.

20. Gilles Deleuze, Logique du sens (Paris: Minuit, 1969), pp.67-68; English translation by

Mark Lester with Charles Stivale, edited by Constantin

V.

Boundas as

The Logic

o

Sense

(New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp.52-53.

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21. Levinas, Le signification et

le

sens, pp.58-59; Meaning and Sense, pp.l02-103.

22. Levinas, Le signification et

le

sens, p.59; Meaning and Sense, p.l03.

23

Deleuze, Difference et repetition, pp.273-274; Difference and Repetition, p.212.

24. Deleuze, Bergsonisme (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967), p.50; English

translation by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam

as

Bergsonism

(New York: Zone

Books, 1991), p.55.

25

Levinas, Le signification et

le

sens, p.59; Meaning and Sense, p.I03.

26

Deleuze, Difference et repetition, p.111; Difference and Repetition, p.82.

27. Emmanuel Levinas,

Autrement qu etre ou au-dela de l essence

(The Hague: Nijhoff,

1974), pp.\23-124; English translation by Alphonso Levinas as Otherwise than Being or

Beyond Essence (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1981), p.97.

28

Jacques Derrida, Differance, in

Marges de a philosophie

(Paris: Minuit, 1972), p.22;

English translation by Alan Bass as

Margins of Philosophy

(Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1982), p.21.

29

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenologie de

a

perception (Paris: Gallimard, 1945), p.280;

English translation by Colin Smith as

Phenomenology of Perception

(New Jersey: The

Humanities Press, 1981), p.242.

30. Emmanuel Levinas, The Old and the New, in Time and the Other, and Other Essays,

translated by Richard

A

Cohen (Pittsburgh, Duquesne University Press, 1983), p.\33.

ibliography

Oeuvres, Edition du Centenaire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959).

Melanges (Paris: Presses Universitaires

de

France, 1972). Abbreviation: M.

English Translations Utilized (all texts cited by page numbers first to the relevant French

edition, then to tbe English translation, witb the abbreviations listed below):

Creative Evolution,

tr., Arthur Mitchell (New York: Dover, 1998 [1911]). Abbreviation: EC

The Creative Mind,

tr., Mabelle

L

Andison (New York: The Citadel Press, 1992 [1946]);

translation

of

La Pensee et le mouvant.

Abbreviation: PM.

Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, trs., Cloudsley Brereton and Fred Rothwell

(Los Angeles: Green Integer, 1999 [1911]). Abbreviation: R

Matter and Memory,

tr., N.M. Paul and W.S.

almer

(New York: Zone Books, 1994).

Abbreviation:

MM

Mind-Energy, tr., H Wildon Carr (London: Macmillan and Company, 1920); translation

of

L energie spirituelle. Abbreviation: ES.

Time and Free Will: n Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness,

tr., F.L. Pogson

(Montana: Kessinger Publishing Company, original date, 1910). Abbreviation: Dl.

The

Two Sources ofMorality and Religion, trs., R Ashley Audra and Cloudsley Brereton, with

the assistance

of W

Horsfall Carter (Notre Dame,

IN:

University

of

Notre Dame Press,

1977[1935]). Abbreviation: MR.

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Leonard Lawlor - What Immanence? What Transcendence? The Prioritization of Intuition Over Language...

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