Bergson ,Time and the world we live in.

Bergson ,Time and the world we live in.

Rahul Karavadra N0215613

The central theme in Bergson’s philosophy was that of time. In Time and Freewill Bergson discusses two forms of time. The first being spacialized and segmented resulting in Mathematical time, which is mechanistic, measurable, has units: seconds, minuets, days, months, years. Bergson suggests that we impose spatial concepts onto time[1]. The second was Pure time, for Bergson is that which is indivisible, is infinite, has no beginning or end, is creative, it is real time or what he called Duration[2]

Due to society being subjected to spacialization and segmentation, we humans have also segmented time. For example we impose units onto time: days, months, years. Thus creating a past, present and future, in other words it has created linear time. This organization of time has resulted in the human being to remove itself from being able to experience true time.

The breakup of society has caused society to become machine like, we have also become machine like. One could mention René Descartes notion of the clock[3] or in fact Fordism where life has become a production line obsessed with efficiency. Our daily lives and perceptions have been altered due to the quantification of time.

For Bergson this Mathematical time is false. It is created by humans to operate efficiently. Real time is qualitative, it flows, contracts, relaxes, stretches, above all creative. Bergson calls it Durée, Einstein’s effortlessly describes what Bergson terms as Durée. Einstein’s quote beautifully unfolds us to the true nature of time and how we experience it in a way in which mathematical time cannot explain.

‘When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour.’[4]

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[1]http://www.philosophynow.org/issues/48/Henri_Bergson_and_the_Perception_of_Time last visited 28/02/2012

[2] Henri Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, Author's Preface.

[3] Descartes, Treatise on Man, p.108

[4] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins100656.html last visited 28/02/2012.

Henri Bergson: Time and the calculation of life.

How many people have a life plan thought out in stages; College…University…a graduate job perhaps followed by marriage and then children?

The necessity to calculate our lives into a series of stages is an unavoidable symptom of the modern condition. For Henri Bergson this thought process may reflect the relationship our consciousness has with time.

For Bergson human life has a dimension beyond purely biological or mathematical explanations. His concept of vitalism is creative and forever becoming, a fragmentation of time in this manner provides a threat to Bergson’s illumination of value. 

Bergson makes a distinction between two comprehensions of time; what may be seen as ‘mathematical’ time and ‘creative’ time.

Mathematical time is segmented; it is a divisible series of identical causal moments. This is a quantitative conception that ‘spatialize’s’ time, it is capable of being measured from one point to another, and is therefore pre-determined.  For this reason mathematical time is valueless in the sense that every moment is equal and indifferent.    

Creative time is a conception that relates to direct conscious experience. It is a flowing and diverse multitude of intensities, what might be seen as a continuous expansion and contraction of feeling. This means creative time has no point of reference; it is relative and fundamentally immeasurable. This liberates conscious experience from any form of calculation or determinism. Each moment is an evolving continuation of unique potential, but at the same time original as it is capable of difference. This is what Bergson means by ‘Duration’, he is absorbing time into lived experience denoting absolute reality.

The danger for Bergson is when we confuse the two conceptions of time and therefore spatialize it. Mathematical time is useful for measurement and manipulation, but devoid of emotion and value. Bergson believes problems occur when we do not realise this distinction, as we begin to determine ourselves. In today’s empirical society it is easy to begin to measure our own lives. Goals and aspirations are of course positive, but to imagine our lives as a linear accumulation of stages may be a diminishment of worthwhile experience.   

    

Tony Spence

N0292867

References:

Bergson, H. (1957). Time and Free Will. An Essay on the Immediate Data of Conciousness. Edinburgh. The Riverside Press. 

Lawlor, L and Moulard, V. Henri Bergson. (Online). (2012). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 

Merleau-Ponty on Cartesian Dualism

Phenomenology of Perception represents Merleau-Ponty's reconciliation of contemporary philosophy's severance between Empiricist and Intellectualist conceptions of reality. The task is not renunciatory, rather it elicits awareness of each position's limitations. Explicitly acknowledging that reality can give rise to the claims of both perspectives; it is the ensuing Cartesian mind-body evisceration he contests. Each perspective has become paradigmatic. Each conscripting evidence of the bodily or spiritual to bolster their perspective, resulting in mutually exclusive versions of reality reified from their common genesis. Merleau-Ponty recaptures the forgotten origin amongst this melee – 'lived perception'. Understanding how human reality progenates such divergent claims necessitates a descent from abstraction to lived perception. For Merleau-Ponty human reality is not body or soul, it is that which gives rise to these dichotomous concepts: 'incarnate consciousness'. As the painting transcends its inanimate constituents, lived perception becomes the necessary condition for human truth. Evoking Heiddger's 'dasein', he reiterates 'being-in-the-world', extolling holistic appraisals focused on habit and body.

His arguments prolifically explore examples of anomalous perception. Similarly, I shall employ novel examples to convey this revelatory aspect of his discourse. Firstly, Held and Hein's (1963) study on two kitten groups raised in darkness, exposed to identical visual data. One group allowed to move around; the other kept passive. After two weeks the kittens were released. The active kittens explored normally. The passive kittens however bumped into objects as if blind, supporting Merleau-Ponty's renunciation of perception as a passive reception of visual-stimuli. Varela (1991) evaluates, 'objects are not seen by visual extraction of features, but rather by visual guidance of action.' Merleau-ponty accords that the body is integral for spatiality to the extent that he distinguishes the body as 'that by which there are objects'. It is by virtue of embodiment that one experiences objects as being up or down, inside or outside, near or far. Space is always in relation to the body as situated within the world, thus the body is not in space for it is the source of space.

Whereas the kittens lacked spatial comprehension, humans often perceive the empirically absent. Merleau-Ponty cites gestalt psychology; the propensity to perceive 'form'.    For example:

Lines or cube? Shifting orientation? Staring, the mind seems incapable of extricating shifting embodied perspective from perception. Sedimentary memories of spatial habituation are revealed through the subjective body filtering and constructing visual and embodied interactions attempting to comprehend the present stimuli. The sense of depth is not created by mind or body, but by both as unified within 'incarnate consciousness'. 'Depth is the most existential of all dimensions'. Concordantly, he espouses an existential phenomenology. Descartes dualism is reconciled.

The final example, however, addresses Merleau-Ponty's claim, 'reflection of the body upon itself always miscarries at the last minute', prompting a recollection of virtual out-of-body-experience studies, seemingly objectifying the body.

Is Merleau-Ponty's thesis refuted? I argue the alien sensation supports his subjective body thesis and posit that the temporarily deceptive separation of 'I' and 'body' could aid treatment of, for example, body-dismorphic disorders.

Held and Hein, Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 1963, Vol.56, No.5, 872-876, Movement-produced Stimulation in the Development of Visually Guided Behaviour.

Merleau-Ponty, M, 1962, ‘Phenomenology of perception’ Translated by Colin Smith., Routledge, London

Merleau-Ponty, M, 1969, The Visible and the Invisible (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) Northwestern University Press. p.9

Varela, Francisco J, Thompson, Evan; Rosch, Eleanor, The embodied mind:Cognitive science and human experience. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA. 1991. p.175

Jack Mallard - N0242276

I have a number of further interesting inter-disciplinary applications of Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology if anyone wishes to start a debate in that direction, can anyone else think of any?

Lyotard, Knowledge

This theory of knowledge initially requires one to accept the hypothesis that objective knowledge is an unstable concept, due to it being seen in many different lights over the past few decades. That Lyotard claims that the status of knowledge has shifted since the end of World War II, most significantly through the advancements of computerized information and science, means accordingly that we are now living in a ‘postmodern age’, which involves human beings becoming instrumentalized – now just mere utilities in a series of functions set out through capitalism. This is essentially nihilistic and has clear fundamental suggestions that the human race is now caught within a downwards spiral of ‘knowledge as a commodity’. Lyotard’s argument that “Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange” (PC, ch1), implies that knowledge has essentially become something which nowadays originates merely from electronic devices with the sole intention and benefit of consumerist profit. This, as a result, to me suggests that the human being has no influence or control over their individual state of knowledge – it has become something completely regimented and therefore impersonal. This is a concept which I would argue against, as not only do all humans have their own individual minds and conscious awareness, but we have no means of measuring the intake or output of any type of knowledge in/from a human being. Despite agreeing that the status of knowledge has indeed shifted, I do not agree that human beings have become instrumentalized within recent years. As Lyotard proposes, in the most nihilistic terms the human is reduced to a mere ‘manipulandum’, which I understand as that we are totally under the confinements and certainly the influences of societal knowledge. However, contemporary philosophers since the 1950’s have shown that it is still possible to transform one’s existence to an extent, as much as was possible pre-World War II, which negates the proposition that human beings are simply ‘utilities’.

I would argue that Lyotard’s argument neglects the important point that knowledge is constantly being created everywhere, for everybody, but it is that we move forward as a race and society when we “produce” new vital knowledge of scientific expansion, and I agree with Lyotard that yes, this type of knowledge is then often placed into the cycle of capitalism and value.

Furthermore, Lyotard’s argument that “Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its ‘use-value’” (PC, ch1) pinpoints a crucial reality that we must face up to the commercialization of knowledge before experiencing such consequences as a suffering freedom and individualism.

Fiona Dawson N0275798

Lyotard, Jean-Francois, The Postmodern Condition (1979)

Creative Evolution

Creative Evolution

In Henri Bergson’s 1907 Book L’Evolution Creatice Bergson highlights the perceived flaws in Darwin’s theory of evolution. Bergson’s ultimate goal is to show that the fact of evolution must be seen as the product of a dynamic impulse namely the Élan Vital (or vital impulse) that is the principle of all life. This is the creative force within his early theory of Duration.

Bergson’s theory attacks the other two main contemporary theories of evolution; Mechanism and Finalism. Mechanism (for example Darwin’s theory) presents functionally unified structures (such as the eye) as the outcome of a multiplicity of small changes, each independent of each other but still leading to a functional result. Bergson points out that an immense number of variations are required for sight to be possible and even more improbable that the changes would be retained over eons to eventually become sight. Finalism suggests a final purpose and that life is following a blue print as the centuries pass, where our biology improves based on a predetermined path. The biggest problem that Bergson found with these two theories is that they share the idea that nature never produces anything new. The outcome of a biological process is always already present in the genetic material of the subject or imposed by a creator with a divine plan for example:

“reality appears to us as a uninterrupted surging of novelties, of which each has no sooner emerged in the present than it has fallen back into the past” (Bergson 1911)

Bergson held that change means growth, growth means creation and creation means freedom. This led him to develop his own theory. Bergson’s Élan Vital is a vital force that acts like the telos, except at the start of creation rather than the end. This explains where the additional genetic material is gained. For Bergson, evolution displays a form of progress, but not the gradual realisation of a divine plan.

The best way to explain Bergson’s evolution is, in own words, as more an explosion outward leading species down various paths rather than one grand progressive line.

Bibliography

Bergson H (1911) “Creative Evolution” Trans by Mitchell, A. Random House New York

Gutting G (2001) “French Philosophy in the Twentieth Century” Cambridge University press Cambridge

Felix Ravaisson: Of Habit in relation to morality

Habit was an important concept for Felix Ravaisson, so much so that his most notable piece of work was an essay concerning the phenomenon of habit (Essay De l'habitude 1838). To understand Ravaisson’s conception of habit it is important to make the distinction between two differing lines of thought on the subject. The first can be sourced back to the work of Immanuel Kant who saw habit as mere routine; Kant dismissed habit as being mechanistic. Habit by its very nature is seen as an inauthentic imitation of virtue. Kant therefore cuts any association with habit and human freedom. However the second school of thought on habit dates back to Aristotle and is built upon by Ravaisson; it opposes the Kantian view in that habit is seen as a ‘primary ontological phenomenon’, it is an ontological law. Habit is a way of being which is directly related to change and time:

For Ravaisson habit is a result of change (it is the ‘residue of repetition’) and because we are beings that are subject to change then we naturally inhabit the law of being (habit). Habit, for Ravaisson, works on a ‘double law’; this can be seen in the distinction between voluntary movement and the sensation of touch or in a more general sense through the difference in passivity and activity. Repeated sensation will weaken over time however repeated movement will strengthen. This can be transposed directly to the moral sphere; just as repeated sensation will fade so will the ‘feelings of the soul’ and in contrast as movement will strengthen, moral activity becomes more accessible and easier to the individual through habit.

Perhaps there is substance in the idea that habit, when correctly understood is the foundation behind our moral actions. Ravaisson was an Aristotelian and his ideas on habit were built upon the basis of virtue ethics in which Aristotle proposed in ‘Nicomachean ethics’; therefore it may remain that “Moral goodness is the child of habit, for we acquire the moral virtues by first exercising them.”  (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics)

Daniel Burden N0212236

References:

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 2, Chapter 1.

Ravaisson F, Of Habit (new translated edition), Continuum International Publishing, 2008.

Derrida and Structure

Structuralism begins with Saussure in 1915 and his conception of langue, the system of language which makes possible parole, the individual utterance. It is a semiotic conception that finds only an arbitrary relationship between the signifier ( for example, the word "dog") and the signified (the dog itself). The signifier "dog" only functions meaningfully within a complex system of other signifiers. Structuralism attempted to use this model of language to explicate the structures beneath discourse and practice. In Poststructuralism, it became clear that this did not take into account the instability of the system. Signifiers cannot be pinned down to conform to just one signified or necessarily have to conform to that signified, and the signifieds in question themselves become signifiers: the process repeats (unpredictably).

The Structuralist project effectively ended with Derrida's essay "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences". For Derrida, Structuralism, and indeed the entirety of Western Philosophy (perhaps barring the pre-socratics), had been working on the presupposition of a centre, or "transcendental signified" that lent a system or structure a degree of stability that limited what Derrida calls "free play", the constant shifting of meaning, continual displacement. What comes next is deconstruction - broadly, the exposing of metaphysical presupposition in discourse, and unfortunately quite indefinable.

There is what might be called an ethical dimension to deconstruction; in any discourse there is an opposition between the privileged and the marginal, and what the seismic effect of deconstruction does is to continually displace and demonstrate the instability of the privileged's place as the privileged and the marginal's place as the marginal. The problem I find here is the relationship between theory, the world of which deconstruction unquestionably transforms, and practice. Although I might not be placing enough emphasis on the overlapping nature of the world of theory and the world of practice I find it difficult to envision the deconstructive mode of thought penetrating everyday practice, the solidity of which seems necessary for it to work. I am also aware that my difficulty itself has not yet been deconstructed.

Tom Cumming n0276389


Bibliography: Derrida, Jacques, Writing and Difference (Routledge: London, 2001)

Blanchot and Defining Literature

As readers we often feel the need to attempt to define the literature that we read and comprehend it fully. There is a huge range of literary theory making demands of us to interpret texts in different ways. However, for Blanchot, our attempts to do so are futile.

Blanchot is not, however, altogether against the categorization of literature, for example the separation of texts in accordance to genre or form, but he does believe that the act of doing so ultimately manifests itself as a distraction from the experience of reading. For Blanchot, our failed attempts of comprehension are due to an opacity that belongs fundamentally and intrinsically to a piece of literature, obscuring what it is and allowing it to evade definition. The more we try to interpret a work the more opaque it seems to become.

Each text works singularly and it is this singularity that allows literature to resist definition and to stand alone and autonomously, with each text adapting literature for its own use. Thus, Blanchot comes to an ‘anti-theory’ of literature: the essence of a literary work is that it has no essence; there is nothing that allows us to know what it is and therefore we cannot define it. This lack of definition is not a problem for Blanchot, rather it enables his somewhat paradoxical definition.

The meaning of a text, for Blanchot, does not come from the author or from literary theory. Instead the meaning comes from the independence of the work. Ignorance is fixed in the experience of reading and we should not use the generalizing and sweeping statements of literary theory in order to comprehend what is written. Instead, Blanchot argues, we should allow literature to exist autonomously and accept its fluidity and evasion of definition. We should embrace the ignorance we are faced with when reading literature; something that is intrinsically separate from our world.

Amber Timson N0274440

Blanchot and the Literary Text

Maurice Blanchot tries to resist canonisation when discussing literature. This could be potentially difficult as the literary piece would have to be something that no one else has ever read before so as to not fit into a literary canon. Themes and ideas frequently circulate and are recycled and rejuvenated throughout different novels in different eras so it’s not very often that anything new ever gets produced. However, Blanchot argues to consider every text in a singular manor to get the full extent and meaning of the words and this meaning will then transcend time to mean something to the next generation. This is the only true way to be able to read a text, according to Blanchot, and regardless of whether an understanding is gained from the text or not. Blanchot illustrates texts a have many interpretations all of which are valid in spite of them being different.

Furthering this, Blanchot believed that a literary text is solely individual to its self. This becomes hard to understand when taking into consideration the mass production of books that we know have in the twenty first century. Does this then reduce the meaning literary texts have because they are so easily accessible? Should we go back to the times in which texts were only produced and sold do those deemed worthy to read them? If that is the case then who would be worthy enough to read them in our society?

The mass production of books is not something Blanchot dwells upon because it is not the production of the literature that is important but the quality of the message within. All this reduces down to the text itself. The book is not just the words written on the page or whether or the message on the page is conveyed to the person but whether the deeper meaning and significance is felt by the reader. The continuation of the meanings held within literature, for Blanchot, shows the power that it has to be able to continue through time to enlighten others.

Natasha Ekin N0266642

Foucault, Sexuality

During the medieval period sex and sexuality was liberated and celebrated. However, during the Victorian period an attempt was made to repress it and make it a taboo subject. Foucault blames the rise of the bourgeoisie for this attempt at the repression of sexuality. They were a class of individuals that had to work hard to achieve their place in society. They saw pleasure as frivolous and a waste of time that could be spent working hard to contribute to the expanding industrial society. Therefore sexual activity for pleasure became frowned upon. It was to be kept for the confines of marriage and primarily for the purpose of reproduction.

One of the key points in the “repressive hypothesis” is rather than the Bourgeoisie successfully repressing sexuality they made it more explicit. Their attempts to control the discourse about sex only intensified it. Confessions in the Church were always expected to include sexual deeds; however people were now expected to confess every sexual desire they felt, or dream that they had. Consequently they were being inadvertently encouraged to consistently think about sex and their own sexuality.

Sex became something of science. It was to be studied as a source of knowledge. This is an interesting point as in the “repressive hypothesis” language, knowledge and power are all closely linked. The Bourgeoisie attempted to use power in order to control the discourse on sex and sexuality; however the consequence of this was to drive sex out of hiding and create more sexual discourse than ever before. Thus supplying sex with power rather than achieving the repression they desired.

In today's contemporary society there is no doubt that individuals are more sexually aware than ever before. Sexual discourse has become a normal part of everyday life. It is particularly present in the use of advertising. There is far more knowledge and discourse of unusual sexual activity compared to the Victorian period. This can be seen as a consequence of the intensified discourse resultant from the attempts of repression. Individuals have learnt of each others experiments during sex through discourse and the desire for sexual scientific knowledge. Some may say that these activities were always present, but were kept behind closed doors. This may be so, however the increase in numbers of individuals partaking in such activities, can only have risen as a result of the access to knowledge through the intensified sexual discourse inadvertently created by the Victorian bourgeoisie.

Amy Sargent N0286490