Bergsonism, Chapter One

Intuition as Method

My notes on the first chapter of Deleuze’s Bergsonism. I planned to do notes on the rest of the book, and maybe I still will, but I’m about to start chapter three and this is all I’ve got, so here you go I guess. As usual, page numbers provided refer to the edition cited at the end; I haven’t cited every claim or paraphrase, only direct quotes, since all claims and paraphrases come from the book anyway

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Bergson’s philosophy is composed of the ideas of duration, memory, and élan vital; Deleuze aims to study the relations between them and the “progress they involve” (p. 13)

Bergson’s method is called intuition, but the term is used in a very specific sense; though this method relies on his idea of duration, intuition is so essential to Bergson that one must begin there

General methodological question: How is intuition (an immediate knowledge) capable of being a method (which requires mediation)? Bergson outlines three acts which determine the method’s three rules (two of which have one complementary rule each): the creation and statement of problems; the discovery of typological differences; the “apprehension of real time” (p. 14). These will provide the answer to this question

The first rule is that one must categorise problems themselves as true or false. The ability to do this is the ability (and freedom) to create new problems, which is more important than solving them, since the solution to every problem is contained within that problem. This inherent solution of problems is determined in part by the way the problem is stated; if a problem is stated differently, it’s a different problem, and has a different solution. Therefore, one must be cautious about how a problem is stated

How is a problem to be considered true or false? Not on the basis of whether it can be solved, but according to the structure of problems. A false problem, and this is the complementary rule, is of two types, either a non-existent problem or a badly stated question. A non-existent problem is one that confuses the ideas of less and more and thereby reverses the order of events (for example, the question of non-being assumes that it’s something less than being, whereas it’s actually the idea of being plus a total negation and a psychological motivation for that negation, which, through a projection backwards, causes one to assume non-being came before being); a badly stated question is one which assumes terms that are in fact composites of qualitatively different things. The non-existent problem actually rests on the badly stated problem, since the non-existent problem is one of “more” and “less”, ideas which inherently disregard typological distinction (“more or less being” disregards the different types of realities, instead considering them all as one “being”). The types of false problems are more profound errors than false solutions, as they show a tendency in thought which can only be reacted against by intuition

The second rule is that one must struggle against illusion, must discover the real differences in type. Intuition is a method of division. The only things that differ in type are tendencies, so the composite must be divided into tendencies (Deleuze says: “according to the qualitative and qualified tendencies, that is, according to the way in which it combines duration and extensity as they are defined as movements, directions of movements” (pp. 22-23), but I don’t know enough Bergson to understand that). Since every fact is a composite, intuition divides the composite into tendencies which exist only in principle; these are not the conditions of possible experience, but of real experience. There follows a lengthy example. Intuition takes the tendency and extends it (in much the same way as one might extend a curve on a graph), and thereby opens the possibility of taking philosophy beyond human experience without ever being abstract, of opening philosophy to the inhuman. One does not stop there, however, but takes the lines further, until eventually they intersect again at a different point; this is the virtual point, and, combined with the real point (the experience) gives us precision

The complementary rule is that the real, in addition to being what is “cut out” (p. 29) by differences in kind, is that which meets up again in the virtual. This is what allows Bergson to say that every problem has its own solution already contained within itself

The third rule is that all problems must be stated in terms of time (rather than space). This provides the fundamental meaning of intuition, and explains why it must rest on duration. For Bergson, all differences in kind must occur in duration, since it can be variable within itself, but all differences of quantity must occur in space, since it cannot. As such, the whole of the qualitative difference between duration and space is within duration (including the difference between a thing and itself). It is through intuition that we understand the existence of other things; Bergson has avoided the old Platonic problem (why is x on one side of the divide rather than the other?), and reconciled the mediate with the immediate. Differences in type are inevitably obscured (in favour of differences of degree) by the necessity of existing in space, of presenting things to view points. Differences in kind and of degree are the two types of difference, and difference is existence; each has their place

We have yet to determine how intuition relies on duration, which will be the subject of chapter two

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Citation:

Deleuze G (2018) Bergsonism (Tomlinson H and Habberjam B trans), Zone Books, New York, USA.