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katj3x's review against another edition
5.0
It is a well-kept secret among philosophers that their books are often written in perfectly logical, didactic order, then dismembered in chapters or paragraphs and madly shuffled between gulps of alcohol and orgiastic cavorting.
Start with Chapter 4, is my advice for this one, then maybe read the conclusion for a brief overview, after which you may safely flip back to the beginning. It will make much more sense, and I'm sure you'll be delighted by Bergson's upgraded candor.
Start with Chapter 4, is my advice for this one, then maybe read the conclusion for a brief overview, after which you may safely flip back to the beginning. It will make much more sense, and I'm sure you'll be delighted by Bergson's upgraded candor.
ralowe's review
4.0
i come away from this with an outline or notion that deleuze's desiring machines are connected to bergson's ideas of images and perception. our brains process objects in the world as multiple images in a fashion similar to how desiring machines proliferate. i used that to try to follow this, but i could be entirely wrong. i could believe that i was led to bergson through deleuze by kara keeling, who referenced bergson's idea of the senori-motor to talk about how films move us. i wonder if i should read deleuze's bergsonism or stuff on film theory. i liked how bergson talks about memory being in the body and connected to action, or conditioned responses. that made sense with keeling's witch's flight on the affective labor of investment and responses to cinema. the writing kept throwing me off because i don't read philosophy but i appreciate its place in a larger conversation!
chrobin's review
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
“Made of matter and full of memories.”
I cannot remember if this is a direct quote, but it has stuck with me for over a decade.
I cannot remember if this is a direct quote, but it has stuck with me for over a decade.
xolotlll's review
5.0
Dualism
Bergson is a dualist, and he spends a large portion of this book reconciling traditionally opposed dichotomies like matter and mind, quantity and quality, necessity and freedom. Memory is the bridge that makes this all possible; it's “the intersection of mind and matter” (13).
Perception and Recollection
Bergson argues against the idea that recollection is just a weakened repetition of a past perception, or that there is only a difference of intensity between the two. Their fundamental difference becomes quite clear when he tries to imagine the point at which they become one another. He writes that if the recollection of a perception is just a weakened version of that perception, then “it might make us, for instance, take the perception of a slight sound for the recollection of a loud noise” (239). A dull perception might imprint a memory, but it does not reduce to one. In itself, it is a dull perception, and it’s absurd to suggest that its lack of intensity means that it doesn’t just create a memory in the act of being remembered, but that it is already a recollection from the moment of its initial experience.
Bergson also questions how recollection could be a weakened perception on the basis that the latter presupposes a perceived object, but the former does not. He concedes that in pure perception, there seems to be a more or less one-to-one relationship between the external object and cerebral states, with the perceived object causing a specific state of the brain that is essentially its continuation. This cerebral activity causes certain perceptions, and the brain can prolong them in the form of a recollection: “It is true that, from the moment when the recollection actualises itself in this manner, it ceases to be a recollection and becomes once more a perception” (240). But it’s not clear exactly what causes these recollections; without an external stimulus they would seem arbitrary. How is it possible that we can represent things to ourselves which aren’t actually present to the organs of sense, if the cerebral states that correspond with perception are just a continuation things that are actually present to us? This suggests that there is something besides perception which allows us to recall things that are not actually present: As “our perception of the present object is something of that object itself, our representation of the absent object [in recollection] must be a phenomenon of quite another order than perception […]” (236). Perception and recollection are thus qualitatively different things, and the latter isn’t just a weakened version of the former. Pure perception has a one-to-one correspondence with external material objects, but memory – which gives birth to recollection – is something else entirely, and occupies the place of spirit in Bergson’s dualism, as against matter:
Bergson argues that the brain doesn’t “imprison […] recollections in cells” (237) as precisely localised deposits; there is no physical “reservoir of images” (237). The brain is not a jailer. Instead, its role is to facilitate the process of recognition by bringing past perceptions into contact with present ones, creating new possibilities for action. It does this in two ways. Most commonly, recollection is passive and habitual; acted rather than thought. When you put your hand on a hot stove, the brain automatically causes the body to respond, acting out a simple causative relation in which freedom is minimal. The brain can also facilitate behaviour which is active rather than passive by sending memory-images to meet pure perception and mingle with it. This makes actual perception something between the image and the memory-image, or between the present and the past.
Sorry, Kaufman
So how does the brain mix the present with the past? As I’ve said, the memory-images are not stored as specific deposits in the physical structure of the brain, so there can't be the sort of selective brain damage seen in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but only a general diminution of faculties. For Bergson, the memory-images which go out to meet the pure perception arise from the interaction between pure memories and the present perception. Bergson is pretty vague about the exact nature of these pure memories, and I’m not sure if they correspond with specific structures in the brain or they’re completely spiritual. In any case, there would be less of them than there would be with specific memory-images, because they’re more like schemas or general concepts that only become specific memory images in response to external objects. My take on this difficult concept is that a pure memory corresponds with a “virtual state” (239) of the potential relation of the subject’s body to other bodies. It’s a past perception reduced to an abstract relation of bodies rather than a specific sensory image. It becomes a memory-image that can mingle with pure perception by interacting with an internal, virtual version of the sense organ. So past spatial relations give rise to memory-images by interacting with virtual organs of the sense, in the same way that present spatial relations give rise to pure perceptions by interacting with actual sensory organs.
Freedom and Necessity
According to Bergson, “The state of the brain exactly corresponds to the perception. It is neither its cause, nor its effect, nor in any sense its duplicate: it simply continues it, the perception being our virtual action and the cerebral state our action already begun” (233). This was really hard for me to get my head around because I tend to see "continue" as a synonym for "cause". He explicitly acknowledges that “we cannot substantiate [this] by facts, since on our hypothesis everything is bound to happen as if perception were a consequence of the state of the brain” (235). He asks us to suspend disbelief and allow him verify his theory of pure perception by his theory of memory - which was derived from it in the first place.
Bergson uses the word "tension" to denote the degree of pure perception and pure memory in perception. Our freedom seems to consist in adjusting this tension between the plane of action, which constitutes little more than the present relation of bodies, and the plane of dream which constitutes our whole past. According to Bergson, we are able to summon pure memories from the past and mix them with pure perceptions in the present, creating new potential actions besides those which are offered by external circumstance alone. At one extreme of tension, our entire past is packed into the present perception. At the other extreme, we exist only in the moment. Simpler organisms are less capable of shifting tension in order to detach themselves from the present. Bergson writes that as an organism becomes more complex, we see “an ever greater latitude left to movement in space” (248). But we also see “the growing and accompanying tension of consciousness in time” (248):
Planes of Consciousness
Bergson imagines consciousness as an upside-down funnel, the point of which connects to a plane symbolising pure perception. Adjusting tension involves sliding up and down the funnel, to let more or less of the past enter the present.
On the plane of action, consciousness exists almost entirely in the present perception. It is an automatic and sensori-motor way of being where the body is of prime importance. At the plane of dream, on the other hand, consciousness packs as much of the past into the present as it can, and the body is much less important. In dreams, there is a disconnect between sensation and potential action; something unbalances “the sensori-motor equilibrium of the body” (174). Recollections are called up almost arbitrarily, without reference to external objects. Bergson suggests that this may also explain near death experiences where someone's body fails and their entire life flashes before their eyes.
Latent Consciousness
The idea that consciousness exists on a spectrum leads to a sort of panpsychism where inert matter responds unthinkingly and automatically to the effects of other bodies on its own, just like organisms at a certain degree of tension:
The Image
Bergson starts from a deliberately naïve perspective when it comes to the relation between mind and body. Quite simply, there doesn’t need to be a sharp distinction between them. Everything comes to us as an image, and our consciousness is just a collection of images pertaining to the virtual or potential action of our body - which is another image. There doesn’t need to be a perceiving subject if the percepts are the subject. Perception therefore exists in the perceived object rather than the perceiving subject: “It is not true that consciousness, turned round on itself, is confronted with a merely internal procession of inextensive perceptions. It is inside the very things perceived that you put back pure perception” (246). So there is no difference between phenomena and noumena, but this does not mean appearance is without independent reality. Perception is like a surgeon's blade, cutting away every image that doesn't pertain to the potential action of one privileged image, the body. Consequently, “The relation of “phenomenon” to “thing” is not that of appearance to reality, but merely that of the part to the whole” (230).
The Illusion of Multiplicity
This brings us to another parallel with Leibniz’s Monadology, which is the idea that every individual thing expresses every other thing in some sense: “Science […] by an evermore complete demonstration of the reciprocal action of all material points upon each other, returns, in spite of appearances, to the idea of universal continuity” (197). This seems particularly tenable if we consider the fact that every body exists in a gravitational relation with every other body in the universe. Leibniz writes that there is an “interconnection, relationship, or […] adaptation of all things to each particular one, and of each one to all the rest” (The Rationalists 464). This “brings it about that every simple substance [monad] has relations which express all the others and that it is consequently a perpetual living mirror of the universe” (The Rationalists 464). According to both authors, every individual thing participates in the entire universe at once, but only experiences something distinctly if it pertains directly to its body in space and time:
Bergson sees atomistic conceptions of matter as a mere convenience of thought. He is opposed to the idea of a hidden realm of extended corpuscles which obey the laws of necessity according to accidental interactions. We only make space homogenous and infinitely divisible to help organise the potential action of our bodies:
Intuition
Bergson believes that many philosophical “difficulties, contradictions and problems are mainly the result of the symbolic diagrams which cover […] up [immediate knowledge], diagrams which for us have become reality itself, and beyond which only an intense and unusual effort can succeed in penetrating” (187). So it's possible to dispel ourselves of these convenient illusions by immersing ourselves in experience, and intuiting images in a continual flow. He uses this method to tackle Zeno’s paradox of motion and finds that it's based on a faulty analogy between movement and its trajectory; between motion and the inert line it traces; between something that occurs in time and something that occurs in space:
Bergson is a dualist, and he spends a large portion of this book reconciling traditionally opposed dichotomies like matter and mind, quantity and quality, necessity and freedom. Memory is the bridge that makes this all possible; it's “the intersection of mind and matter” (13).
Perception and Recollection
Bergson argues against the idea that recollection is just a weakened repetition of a past perception, or that there is only a difference of intensity between the two. Their fundamental difference becomes quite clear when he tries to imagine the point at which they become one another. He writes that if the recollection of a perception is just a weakened version of that perception, then “it might make us, for instance, take the perception of a slight sound for the recollection of a loud noise” (239). A dull perception might imprint a memory, but it does not reduce to one. In itself, it is a dull perception, and it’s absurd to suggest that its lack of intensity means that it doesn’t just create a memory in the act of being remembered, but that it is already a recollection from the moment of its initial experience.
Bergson also questions how recollection could be a weakened perception on the basis that the latter presupposes a perceived object, but the former does not. He concedes that in pure perception, there seems to be a more or less one-to-one relationship between the external object and cerebral states, with the perceived object causing a specific state of the brain that is essentially its continuation. This cerebral activity causes certain perceptions, and the brain can prolong them in the form of a recollection: “It is true that, from the moment when the recollection actualises itself in this manner, it ceases to be a recollection and becomes once more a perception” (240). But it’s not clear exactly what causes these recollections; without an external stimulus they would seem arbitrary. How is it possible that we can represent things to ourselves which aren’t actually present to the organs of sense, if the cerebral states that correspond with perception are just a continuation things that are actually present to us? This suggests that there is something besides perception which allows us to recall things that are not actually present: As “our perception of the present object is something of that object itself, our representation of the absent object [in recollection] must be a phenomenon of quite another order than perception […]” (236). Perception and recollection are thus qualitatively different things, and the latter isn’t just a weakened version of the former. Pure perception has a one-to-one correspondence with external material objects, but memory – which gives birth to recollection – is something else entirely, and occupies the place of spirit in Bergson’s dualism, as against matter:
We understand then why a remembrance cannot be the result of a state of the brain. The state of the brain continues the remembrance; it gives it a hold on the present by the materiality which it confers upon it: but pure memory is a spiritual manifestation. With memory we are, in truth, in the domain of spirit (240).Memory Prisons
Bergson argues that the brain doesn’t “imprison […] recollections in cells” (237) as precisely localised deposits; there is no physical “reservoir of images” (237). The brain is not a jailer. Instead, its role is to facilitate the process of recognition by bringing past perceptions into contact with present ones, creating new possibilities for action. It does this in two ways. Most commonly, recollection is passive and habitual; acted rather than thought. When you put your hand on a hot stove, the brain automatically causes the body to respond, acting out a simple causative relation in which freedom is minimal. The brain can also facilitate behaviour which is active rather than passive by sending memory-images to meet pure perception and mingle with it. This makes actual perception something between the image and the memory-image, or between the present and the past.
Sorry, Kaufman
So how does the brain mix the present with the past? As I’ve said, the memory-images are not stored as specific deposits in the physical structure of the brain, so there can't be the sort of selective brain damage seen in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but only a general diminution of faculties. For Bergson, the memory-images which go out to meet the pure perception arise from the interaction between pure memories and the present perception. Bergson is pretty vague about the exact nature of these pure memories, and I’m not sure if they correspond with specific structures in the brain or they’re completely spiritual. In any case, there would be less of them than there would be with specific memory-images, because they’re more like schemas or general concepts that only become specific memory images in response to external objects. My take on this difficult concept is that a pure memory corresponds with a “virtual state” (239) of the potential relation of the subject’s body to other bodies. It’s a past perception reduced to an abstract relation of bodies rather than a specific sensory image. It becomes a memory-image that can mingle with pure perception by interacting with an internal, virtual version of the sense organ. So past spatial relations give rise to memory-images by interacting with virtual organs of the sense, in the same way that present spatial relations give rise to pure perceptions by interacting with actual sensory organs.
Freedom and Necessity
According to Bergson, “The state of the brain exactly corresponds to the perception. It is neither its cause, nor its effect, nor in any sense its duplicate: it simply continues it, the perception being our virtual action and the cerebral state our action already begun” (233). This was really hard for me to get my head around because I tend to see "continue" as a synonym for "cause". He explicitly acknowledges that “we cannot substantiate [this] by facts, since on our hypothesis everything is bound to happen as if perception were a consequence of the state of the brain” (235). He asks us to suspend disbelief and allow him verify his theory of pure perception by his theory of memory - which was derived from it in the first place.
Bergson uses the word "tension" to denote the degree of pure perception and pure memory in perception. Our freedom seems to consist in adjusting this tension between the plane of action, which constitutes little more than the present relation of bodies, and the plane of dream which constitutes our whole past. According to Bergson, we are able to summon pure memories from the past and mix them with pure perceptions in the present, creating new potential actions besides those which are offered by external circumstance alone. At one extreme of tension, our entire past is packed into the present perception. At the other extreme, we exist only in the moment. Simpler organisms are less capable of shifting tension in order to detach themselves from the present. Bergson writes that as an organism becomes more complex, we see “an ever greater latitude left to movement in space” (248). But we also see “the growing and accompanying tension of consciousness in time” (248):
Not only, by its memory of former experience, does this consciousness retain the past better and better, so as to organise it with the present in a newer and richer decision; but, living with an intenser life, contracting, by its memory of the immediate experience, a growing number of external moments in its present duration, it becomes more capable of creating acts of which the inner determination, spread over as large a multiplicity of the moments of matter as you please, will pass the more easily through the meshes of necessity (248).So memory is a form of power, parallel to physical mobility, that enables us to transcend physical causality; to detach ourselves from the contingencies of the present moment. In this way, our bodies are temporal, but our minds are atemporal. If we base our actions primarily on perception, our freedom is diminished and we become subject to the relentless flow of duration. If we base our actions on recollection, however, we are free: “By allowing us to grasp in a single intuition multiple moments of duration, [memory] frees us from the movement of the flow of things, that is to say, from the rhythm of necessity” (228).
Planes of Consciousness
Bergson imagines consciousness as an upside-down funnel, the point of which connects to a plane symbolising pure perception. Adjusting tension involves sliding up and down the funnel, to let more or less of the past enter the present.
On the plane of action, consciousness exists almost entirely in the present perception. It is an automatic and sensori-motor way of being where the body is of prime importance. At the plane of dream, on the other hand, consciousness packs as much of the past into the present as it can, and the body is much less important. In dreams, there is a disconnect between sensation and potential action; something unbalances “the sensori-motor equilibrium of the body” (174). Recollections are called up almost arbitrarily, without reference to external objects. Bergson suggests that this may also explain near death experiences where someone's body fails and their entire life flashes before their eyes.
Latent Consciousness
The idea that consciousness exists on a spectrum leads to a sort of panpsychism where inert matter responds unthinkingly and automatically to the effects of other bodies on its own, just like organisms at a certain degree of tension:
The material universe itself, defined as the totality of images, is a kind of consciousness, a consciousness in which everything compensates and neutralises everything else, a consciousness of which all the potential parts, balancing each other by a reaction which is always equal to the action, reciprocally hinder each other from standing out (235).This reminds me of Leibniz’s monads which are the simple, unextended building blocks of the universe. Even in matter, they have vague, muddled perceptions and desires which enable them to respond mechanically, but they aren’t soul or spirit because they don’t have memory or feelings; they exist as if in a “profound, dreamless sleep” (The Rationalists 458). The distinction between animate and inanimate objects is very similar for Bergson; one has memory and the other does not. As an aside, I’ll note that strictly speaking, monads are "windowless" and can’t interact with one another directly, but God moves them according to a “pre-established harmony” that makes it seem as if they are moving one another.
The Image
Bergson starts from a deliberately naïve perspective when it comes to the relation between mind and body. Quite simply, there doesn’t need to be a sharp distinction between them. Everything comes to us as an image, and our consciousness is just a collection of images pertaining to the virtual or potential action of our body - which is another image. There doesn’t need to be a perceiving subject if the percepts are the subject. Perception therefore exists in the perceived object rather than the perceiving subject: “It is not true that consciousness, turned round on itself, is confronted with a merely internal procession of inextensive perceptions. It is inside the very things perceived that you put back pure perception” (246). So there is no difference between phenomena and noumena, but this does not mean appearance is without independent reality. Perception is like a surgeon's blade, cutting away every image that doesn't pertain to the potential action of one privileged image, the body. Consequently, “The relation of “phenomenon” to “thing” is not that of appearance to reality, but merely that of the part to the whole” (230).
The Illusion of Multiplicity
This brings us to another parallel with Leibniz’s Monadology, which is the idea that every individual thing expresses every other thing in some sense: “Science […] by an evermore complete demonstration of the reciprocal action of all material points upon each other, returns, in spite of appearances, to the idea of universal continuity” (197). This seems particularly tenable if we consider the fact that every body exists in a gravitational relation with every other body in the universe. Leibniz writes that there is an “interconnection, relationship, or […] adaptation of all things to each particular one, and of each one to all the rest” (The Rationalists 464). This “brings it about that every simple substance [monad] has relations which express all the others and that it is consequently a perpetual living mirror of the universe” (The Rationalists 464). According to both authors, every individual thing participates in the entire universe at once, but only experiences something distinctly if it pertains directly to its body in space and time:
God, in ordering the whole, has had regard to every part and in particular to each monad; and since each monad is by its very nature representative, nothing can limit it to represent merely a part of things. It is nevertheless true that this representation is, as regards the details of the whole universe, only a confused representation, and is distinct only as regards a small part of them, that is to say, as regards those things which are nearest or greatest in relation to each monad […] In a confused way, they reach out to infinity or to the whole, but are limited and differentiated in the degree of their distinct perceptions […] Although each created monad represents the whole universe, it represents more distinctly the body which specially pertains to it and of which it constitutes the entelechy (The Rationalists 465).Bergson's view is strikingly similar: “Science […] shows us each thing exercising an influence on all the others and, consequently, occupying, in a certain sense, the whole of the extended (although we perceive of this thing only its center and mark its limits at the point where our body ceases to have any hold upon it)” (231).
Bergson sees atomistic conceptions of matter as a mere convenience of thought. He is opposed to the idea of a hidden realm of extended corpuscles which obey the laws of necessity according to accidental interactions. We only make space homogenous and infinitely divisible to help organise the potential action of our bodies:
In regard to concrete extension, continuous, diversified and at the same time organized, we do not see why it should be bound up with the amorphous and inert space which subtends it – a space which we divide indefinitely, out of which we carve figures arbitrarily, and in which movement itself […] can only appear as a multiplicity of instantaneous positions, since nothing there can ensure the coherence of past with present (187).Space is therefore a kind of schematic or overlay that helps us arrange our bodies in relation to other bodies. It serves a similar role in Kant’s transcendental aesthetic, but Bergson proposes it as an avoidable tendency rather than a fundamental prerequisite for experience, and it doesn't hide an inaccessible realm of things-in-themselves.
Intuition
Bergson believes that many philosophical “difficulties, contradictions and problems are mainly the result of the symbolic diagrams which cover […] up [immediate knowledge], diagrams which for us have become reality itself, and beyond which only an intense and unusual effort can succeed in penetrating” (187). So it's possible to dispel ourselves of these convenient illusions by immersing ourselves in experience, and intuiting images in a continual flow. He uses this method to tackle Zeno’s paradox of motion and finds that it's based on a faulty analogy between movement and its trajectory; between motion and the inert line it traces; between something that occurs in time and something that occurs in space:
When I put aside all preconceived ideas, I soon perceive that […] even my sight takes in the movement from A to B as an indivisible whole, and that if it divides anything, it is the line supposed to have been traversed, and not the movement traversing it. It is indeed true that my hand does not go from A to B without passing through the intermediate positions, and that these intermediate points resemble stages, as numerous as you please, along the route; but there is, between the divisions so marked out and stages properly so-called, this capital difference, that at a stage we halt, whereas at these points the moving body passes. Now a passage is a movement and a halt is an immobility. The halt interrupts the movement; the passage is one with the movement itself. When I see the moving body pass any point, I conceive, no doubt, that it might stop there; even when it does not stop there, I incline to consider its passage as an arrest, though infinitely short, because I must have at least the time to think of it; yet it is only my imagination which stops there, and what the moving body has to do is, on the contrary, to move. As every point of space necessarily appears to me fixed, I find it extremely difficult not to attribute to the moving body itself the immobility of the point with which, for a moment, I make it coincide; it seems to me, then, when I reconstitute the total movement, that the moving body has stayed an infinitely short time at every point of its trajectory. But we must not confound the data of the senses, which perceive the movement, with the artifice of the mind, which recomposes it. The senses, left to themselves, present to us the real movement, between two halts, as a solid and undivided whole. The division is the work of our imagination, of which indeed the office is to fix the moving images of our ordinary experience, like the instantaneous flash which illuminates a stormy landscape by night (189).So we think habitually in things which our bodies can act upon, and we have a great deal of trouble imagining continuity. As soon as we endeavour to think of something, it's frozen and sealed off from everything else. We even understand movement and duration in terms of space. That is, language and common sense use spatial metaphors to describe time, even though it’s fundamentally different.
virtualmima's review
informative
reflective
slow-paced
5.0
Quite possibly the greatest book ever written. Without a doubt among the top ten of all time.
alexander0's review against another edition
3.0
Bergson here opens with a series of concerns following a mind-body dualism. What if the spirit and the body are truly distinct (unlike Descartes' mostly analytic distinction)? In doing so, he offers a really interesting theory of mind which is distinct from traditions of psychology at the time and neuroscience (as a theory of cognition). In holding to this ontology, he forces his metaphysic to be primarily in relation to the human experience: the perception, senses, memory, and so forth, are all related to the human condition. This is perhaps how this work is limited.
Deleuze uses Bergsonian concerns to develop his cinema in a way that confronts some of Bergson's limitations of pure distinctions between the mind and body. He does this by suggesting that images are not static in the sense that Bergson suggests, but yet makes a convincing argument that the only reason images are considered static for Bergson is because of an odd dichotomy between the media of image and the mental image that does not purely exist. Deleuze's answer to this is that "minds" of other bodies than human are equally a part of of this distinction, including the images of film themselves, and by extension the material media which forms our semiotic experience. Thus, even the images of mind are connected to the materiality of Deleuze's Cinema. Or, to put it another way, Bergson's tendency to love dualisms often overshadows the fact that we should recognize the structure of these dualisms are, in of themselves, dynamic or evolutionary. While Deleuze posits this is "Bergsonian," I do not see this as obvious from a direct read of Bergson.
Another issue here is that it seems Bergson creates another dichotomy wherein he believes duration and thus time are qualitative and thus not quantitative. He is very assertive about this in a way that's not entirely convincing. It seems instead that it would have been better to say there are both qualitative and quantitative interpretations of duration that enable both distinction of all events in a qualitative sense, but have quantitative commonalities that also exist in the real, without purely real distinctions. This, again, is likely due to a distinction that hinges on privileging a metaphysic central to the human experience.
However, these points aside, this work was core to developing the way we think about media theory and offered a scaffolding for a metaphysical philosophy that would not have existed without Bergson pushing back against dominant metaphysical theory that had existed long before. Affect theory and new materialism owes a lot to Bergson because of this work.
Deleuze uses Bergsonian concerns to develop his cinema in a way that confronts some of Bergson's limitations of pure distinctions between the mind and body. He does this by suggesting that images are not static in the sense that Bergson suggests, but yet makes a convincing argument that the only reason images are considered static for Bergson is because of an odd dichotomy between the media of image and the mental image that does not purely exist. Deleuze's answer to this is that "minds" of other bodies than human are equally a part of of this distinction, including the images of film themselves, and by extension the material media which forms our semiotic experience. Thus, even the images of mind are connected to the materiality of Deleuze's Cinema. Or, to put it another way, Bergson's tendency to love dualisms often overshadows the fact that we should recognize the structure of these dualisms are, in of themselves, dynamic or evolutionary. While Deleuze posits this is "Bergsonian," I do not see this as obvious from a direct read of Bergson.
Another issue here is that it seems Bergson creates another dichotomy wherein he believes duration and thus time are qualitative and thus not quantitative. He is very assertive about this in a way that's not entirely convincing. It seems instead that it would have been better to say there are both qualitative and quantitative interpretations of duration that enable both distinction of all events in a qualitative sense, but have quantitative commonalities that also exist in the real, without purely real distinctions. This, again, is likely due to a distinction that hinges on privileging a metaphysic central to the human experience.
However, these points aside, this work was core to developing the way we think about media theory and offered a scaffolding for a metaphysical philosophy that would not have existed without Bergson pushing back against dominant metaphysical theory that had existed long before. Affect theory and new materialism owes a lot to Bergson because of this work.
rheckner's review against another edition
3.0
This is a strange, dense, challenging book that left me more confuses about Bergson’s beliefs than before reading it. I will stick to secondary source on Bergson for now.
epictetsocrate's review against another edition
4.0
Vom presupune pentru o clipă că nu ştim nimic despre teoriile asupra materiei şi asupra spiritului, despre discuţiile asupra realităţii sau idealităţii lumii exterioare.
Iată-ne în faţa unor imagini, în sensul cel mai larg al cuvântului, perceptibile numai prin simţuri, imperceptibile în afara lor. Toate aceste imagini acţionează şi reacţionează unele asupra altora în toate părţile lor elementare conform unor legi constante, numite legi ale naturii. Întrucî t cunoaşterea perfectă a acestor legi ne-ar permite să calculăm şi să anticipăm ceea ce se va petrece în fiecare din aceste imagini, ar trebui ca viitorul imaginilor să fie cuprins în prezentul lor şi să nu mai aducă nimic nou. Există însă o imagine care contrastează cu toate celelalte prin faptul că o cunoaştem nu doar din afară, prin percepţie, ci şi dinlăuntru, prin afecte: este corpul nostru. Să verificăm condiţiile în care se produc aceste afecte. Se pare că ele se interpun întotdeauna între stimulii pe care îi primim din afară şi mişcările pe care le vom executa, ca şi cum ar trebui să exercite o influenţă nedeterminată asupra demersului final. Să trecem în revistă câteva din aceste afecte. Credem că fiecare conţine, în acelaşi timp, o invitaţie la mişcare şi permisiunea de aştepta sau chiar de a nu face nimic. Privim mai de aproape: descoperim mişcări începute, dar neduse până la capăt, urme ale unei hotărâri mai mult sau mai puţin utile, dar nu şi constrângerea care exclude posibilitatea de a alege. Evocăm şi ne comparăm amintirile: ne aducem aminte că, pretutindeni în lumea organizată, ni se părea că aceeaşi sensibilitate se ivea exact în clipa în care, după ce i-a oferit fiinţei vii capacitatea de a se mişca în spaţiu, natura îi semnalează speciei, prin senzaţii, pericolele generale care o ameninţă şi îl lasă pe individ să-şi ia măsuri de precauţie pentru a scăpa de ele. În fine, ne întrebăm conştiinţa ce rol îşi atribuie în afecţiune: ne răspunde că asistă, sub forma sentimentelor sau a senzaţiilor, la toate demersurile pe care credem că le iniţiem, că dimpotrivă, se eclipsează şi dispare în momentul când o activitate, devenind automată, decide că nu mai are nevoie de ea. Ori toate aparenţele sunt înşelătoare, ori actul la care ajunge starea afectivă nu se numără printre cele care pot fi deduse cu rigurozitate din fenomenele anterioare, ca o mişcare decurgând din alta. Din această clipă, el aduce într-adevăr ceva nou universului şi istoriei lui. Să rămânem la aparenţe; vom formula pur şi simplu ceea ce vedem şi simţim. Totul se petrece ca şi cum, în această totalitate de imagini pe care o numim univers, nu ar mai putea apărea nimic nou cu adevărat, decât prin intermediul anumitor imagini, al căror tip ne este oferit de corpul nostru.
Iată-ne în faţa unor imagini, în sensul cel mai larg al cuvântului, perceptibile numai prin simţuri, imperceptibile în afara lor. Toate aceste imagini acţionează şi reacţionează unele asupra altora în toate părţile lor elementare conform unor legi constante, numite legi ale naturii. Întrucî t cunoaşterea perfectă a acestor legi ne-ar permite să calculăm şi să anticipăm ceea ce se va petrece în fiecare din aceste imagini, ar trebui ca viitorul imaginilor să fie cuprins în prezentul lor şi să nu mai aducă nimic nou. Există însă o imagine care contrastează cu toate celelalte prin faptul că o cunoaştem nu doar din afară, prin percepţie, ci şi dinlăuntru, prin afecte: este corpul nostru. Să verificăm condiţiile în care se produc aceste afecte. Se pare că ele se interpun întotdeauna între stimulii pe care îi primim din afară şi mişcările pe care le vom executa, ca şi cum ar trebui să exercite o influenţă nedeterminată asupra demersului final. Să trecem în revistă câteva din aceste afecte. Credem că fiecare conţine, în acelaşi timp, o invitaţie la mişcare şi permisiunea de aştepta sau chiar de a nu face nimic. Privim mai de aproape: descoperim mişcări începute, dar neduse până la capăt, urme ale unei hotărâri mai mult sau mai puţin utile, dar nu şi constrângerea care exclude posibilitatea de a alege. Evocăm şi ne comparăm amintirile: ne aducem aminte că, pretutindeni în lumea organizată, ni se părea că aceeaşi sensibilitate se ivea exact în clipa în care, după ce i-a oferit fiinţei vii capacitatea de a se mişca în spaţiu, natura îi semnalează speciei, prin senzaţii, pericolele generale care o ameninţă şi îl lasă pe individ să-şi ia măsuri de precauţie pentru a scăpa de ele. În fine, ne întrebăm conştiinţa ce rol îşi atribuie în afecţiune: ne răspunde că asistă, sub forma sentimentelor sau a senzaţiilor, la toate demersurile pe care credem că le iniţiem, că dimpotrivă, se eclipsează şi dispare în momentul când o activitate, devenind automată, decide că nu mai are nevoie de ea. Ori toate aparenţele sunt înşelătoare, ori actul la care ajunge starea afectivă nu se numără printre cele care pot fi deduse cu rigurozitate din fenomenele anterioare, ca o mişcare decurgând din alta. Din această clipă, el aduce într-adevăr ceva nou universului şi istoriei lui. Să rămânem la aparenţe; vom formula pur şi simplu ceea ce vedem şi simţim. Totul se petrece ca şi cum, în această totalitate de imagini pe care o numim univers, nu ar mai putea apărea nimic nou cu adevărat, decât prin intermediul anumitor imagini, al căror tip ne este oferit de corpul nostru.
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