BERGSON’S SYSTEM OF DOCTRINE
Chapter I
ONTOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY
My reason for coupling these two subjects in one heading is suggested by the following words quoted from the Introduction to Creative Evolution: “... theory of knowledge and theory of life seem to us inseparable.” For Bergson, reality is life; and knowledge, of course, is a function of life. “The fundamental character of Bergson’s philosophy,” writes H. Wildon Carr,[99] “is ... to emphasize the primary importance of the conception of life as giving the key to the nature of knowledge.”
All the essential principles of this metaphysics are contained in the first of Bergson’s philosophical books, Time and Free Will.[100] The two later books, Matter and Memory and Creative Evolution, have not modified it, and have hardly even developed it—in the sense, that is, that no vital corrections or additions to the principles of the Essai have been made.
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In discussing anti-intellectualistic philosophies, in the first part of the present essay, their suspicion and distrust of intellect was attributed to a logical illusion. The philosopher, finding life preeminently satisfactory in an intimate acquaintance with the qualitative aspect of experience, acquires an instinctive faith in the preeminent reality of quality, a faith which is the deepest root of his being. Now, this faith is absolutely justified, of course. It is only necessary that it should be understood. Illusion and error enter in with the neglect of the very preeminence of this character of reality. For evidently nothing can be preeminently real and at the same time real in any sense for which the adverb “preeminently” is either false or meaningless. The sense of “important” is a well accredited, proper meaning, in our language, of the word “real.” But it is a sense perfectly distinct from the metaphysical sense. Teleologically, anything is preeminently real according to circumstances. Teleologically, “real” is a synonym of “important,” a relative term capable of degree. Metaphysically, circumstances are irrelevant to the realness of anything. This is a different statement from the statement that circumstances are irrelevant to the nature of anything. It may be that there is nothing whose nature can be independent of, wholly undetermined by, circumstances. That is another question. We have nothing to do with it at present. For in either case, circumstances make it neither more nor less real. Metaphysically, then, “real” is an absolute term, incapable of degree, and the adverb “preeminently” has no meaning when applied to it. The very fitness of the adverb “preeminently” to the intuitionist’s meaning of the realness of quality determines this meaning as a teleological eulogism, and the ultimate significance of intuitionism is not the germination of a logical principle, but an instinctive propagandism in the direction of a favorite emphasis of living, an enthusiasm which has become involved in a logical illusion concerning its own foundation in the nature of things, an illusion which is clearly traceable, on analysis, to this ambiguity in the use of the word “real.”
Later in this study it will appear that Bergson’s interest centers, as the interest of French philosophy has centered ever since the Renaissance, in the problem of freedom. No doubt that very enthusiasm which motivates modern anti-intellectualism and gives it so positive a character, is a prime factor in its popular success. And in the case of Bergson, both the significance of his philosophy itself and the brilliant vogue it has achieved can be rightly appreciated only in the light of this central passion whose appeal to human nature is so universal and so profound. Anti-intellectualism and anti-determinism are one and the same thing. It will appear as we go on that a deep-lying tychism, a horror of determinism, is the specific trait of that motive (described above as a natural affinity for the qualitative aspect of reality, as distinguished from its relational aspect) which strenuously endeavors, in Bergson, to eliminate relation from reality, judgment from knowledge. He protests that freedom cannot be defined without converting it into necessity; for definition is determination. A would-be indeterminist theory of will is as futile as a determinist theory is false: on any theory, will is prejudged in favor of determinism. The nature of freedom cannot be known independently of the nature of will, and then attributed or denied to will, as one might attribute or deny redness to an apple. To say, Will is free, would be like saying, Will is voluntary, or, Freedom is free—not, indeed, an untruth, but without meaning and hence not a truth, either.