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Valentine Moulard-Leonard
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To cite this article: Valentine Moulard-Leonard (2006) The Sublime and the
Intellectual Effort: The Imagination In Bergson and Kant, Journal of the British
Society for Phenomenology, 37:2, 138-151, DOI: 10.1080/00071773.2006.11006577
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2006.11006577
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Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 37, No. 2, May 2006
Either metaphysics is only this game of ideas, or else, if it is to be a serious occupation of the
mind, it must transcend concepts to arrive at intuition.
Henri Bergson
virtual multiplicity, it is our point of contact with the vital order of evolution;
because evolution is creative, it involves a vital impulse which cannot be
reduced to material determinism. For Bergson, then, the relation between
thought and things cannot simply be accounted for in terms of the
understanding imposing its a priori categories on the real. More profoundly,
it must and can be traced to an intuition of the vital itself an intuition that
the understanding would analyze, translate and symbolize, but that would in
itself extend beyond the intellect. Ultimately, it is for the sake of this
affirmation of the reality of a supra-intellectual intuition (which nonetheless
remains continuous with sensible intuition) that Bergsonism repudiates
Transcendental Idealism. In short, while Transcendental Idealism is right to
claim that its access is limited to one aspect of the real, it is wrong to pretend
that this kind of experience is the only one we can have. I believe that it is
here, in their divergent conceptions of the relation between contingency and
necessity (or their respective positions on the status of intuition) that the most
significant point of diffraction between the two thinkers must be located; that
ultimately, it is from this difference that all their other conflicting
metaphysical and epistemological claims unfold.
2. The Sublime, the Abyss, and Reflective Judgment
Here, I would like to approach this issue of the divergence between Bergson
and Kant through the latters conception of aesthetic judgment. I contend that
the space Kant has reserved for reflective aesthetic judgment that space
between intuition (qua empirical perception) and understanding, where the
imagination is most free in fact coincides, for Bergson, with the space in
which all philosophy must be rooted. For if, as Bergson sees it, metaphysics
must be defined as going beyond the human condition a rigorous task that
his method of intuition aims to ensure then it appears that the Kantian
experience of the sublime precisely provides that milieu. I will therefore begin
this investigation with the specific case of the unbridgeable gap Kant sees
between apprehension and comprehension and that, in his view, is constitutive
of the experience of the mathematical sublime. In the Analytic of the
Sublime Kant writes,
Hence nature is sublime in those of its appearances whose [perceptions] carry with it the idea
of their infinity. But the only way for this to occur is through the inadequacy of even the
greatest effort of our imagination to estimate the objects magnitude. In the mathematical
estimation of magnitude, however, the imagination is equal to the task of providing, for any
object, a measure that will suffice for this estimation, because the understandings numerical
concepts can be used in a progression and so can make any measure adequate to any given
magnitude. Hence it must be the aesthetic estimation of magnitude where we feel that effort,
our imaginations effort to perform a progressive apprehension in a whole of intuition, and
where at the same time we perceive the inadequacy of the imagination [comprehension]
unbounded though it is as far as progressing is concerned for taking in and using, for the
estimation of magnitude, a basic measure that is suitable for this with the minimal expenditure
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on the part of the understanding. Now the proper unchangeable basic measure of nature is the
absolute whole of nature, which, in the case of nature as appearance, is infinity
comprehended. This basic measure, however, is a self-contradictory concept (because an
absolute totality of an endless progression is impossible). Hence that magnitude of a natural
object to which the imagination fruitlessly applies its entire ability to comprehend must lead
the concept of nature to a supersensible substrate (which underlies both nature and our ability
to think), a substrate that is large beyond any standard of sense and hence makes us judge as
sublime not so much the object as the mental attunement in which we find ourselves when
we estimate the object.9
It thus appears that, according to Kant, it is the gap between apprehension and
comprehension that allows for and indeed demands the sublime experience
as the necessary yet hopeless effort of the imagination to estimate the
magnitude of the sublime object (e.g., a tempest). In order to yield the only
concept adequate for a proper estimation of this apprehended magnitude
hence a successfully determinate judgment capable of producing knowledge
the intuitive comprehension of this object would also have to encompass the
absolute, unconditioned whole of nature. However, Kant adds, such a concept
of infinity comprehended is logically impossible, since the infinity of nature
implies at once the contradictory attributes of 1) an absolute, hence complete
totality; and 2) an open-ended progression or evolution. Therefore, he
concludes, the absolute whole of nature must be a supersensible concept,
pertaining to reason rather than the understanding. For Kant, then, this gap
between apprehension and comprehension is what makes it de jure impossible
for us to know the whole. Thus, from the point of view of the unconditioned
whole, knowledge is contingent.
However, Kant continues, if this cannot be a case of an objective judgment
of cognition, it is nevertheless a case of a subjective judgment of reflection.
For, from the point of view of the limited power of the imagination and its
consequent inability to bridge the gap between sensible perception and
intellectual understanding by means of schematization, something positive
happens. From the point of view of the subjects limited sensibility, what
happens in this abyss is a certain mental attunement, a quickening or
enlivening of the faculties, which is experienced as a difficult yet pleasurable
effort. On the one hand, the feeling that arises from the imaginations inability
to match an idea of reason, such as the idea of the boundlessness of nature,
gives us a sense of our own inadequacy and is therefore frightening. On the
other hand, this same dwarfing feeling that arises from the realization of our
own inadequacy is highly and most nobly pleasurable. For this fruitless effort
is also, at the same time, a striving toward rational ideas; and this striving
toward rational ideas is still a law imposed on us by reason (CJ, Part I, Book
2, 27, p. 115). Thus, the feeling of the sublime is respect for our own
vocation, which is thinking. In short, the feeling of the sublime is none other
than the pleasure to think.
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what properly defines that experience is not so much the perception of matter
as it is the memory of matter.12
4. Memory and the Planes of Experience
In Time and Free Will, duration remains confined to the psychological
realm. It appears that a strict difference in kind between objective reality and
the subjective realm still holds. But Matter and Memory pushes the elementary
insight of the heterogeneous multiplicity further, so as to complete a
fundamental displacement of the subject-object distinction. There, Bergson
considers the possibility of extending duration to things Do things endure in
their own way? Creative Evolutions answer will be a definite yes. Put
otherwise, Bergson wants to uphold the reality of a spectrum of experience
ranging from material unconsciousness to human self-consciousness, and
from intent attention to life (or contraction) to intense dreaminess (relaxation).
The distinction between those different planes of consciousness must be
accounted for in terms of the essential function that memory, in its diverse
forms, plays in the constitution of experience.
Consciousness coincides with duration for in fact, there is for us nothing
that is instantaneous, since the very notion of instantaneity already requires
the work of memory, which prolongs into each other the abstractly discrete
moments of time (MM 72/69). For Bergson, then, subjectivity consists above
all in the import of memory, whose work consists mainly in contracting a
multiplicity of real moments of things into a simple moment of our
consciousness (ibid). Thus, memory coincides with the continuous and
heterogeneous multiplicity that defines duration. This ultimately implies that
the sensible qualities would be known in themselves, from within and not
from without, could we disengage from that particular rhythm of duration
which characterizes our consciousness (ibid). If pure perception was the
theoretical removal of duration from perception, pure intuition will consist in
the methodological disengagement from ones particular rhythm of duration so
as to access experiences or rhythms of duration other than our own. According
to Bergson, this is possible because as a continuous and heterogeneous
multiplicity, memory virtually contains the infinite whole of the past, and
eventually, of Nature as well.
Notice that here, with the introduction of the unconscious or virtual past,
Bergson is able to solve the Kantian dilemma rooted in the incompatibility
between apprehension and comprehension! As we noted above, Kant confines
the two dimensions of experience (namely, the at once comprehension and
the progressive, hence indefinitely open apprehension) to the same
homogeneous plane of mathematical logic; that is why he is necessarily
conduced to an irreducible incompatibility between them. Now, like the
transcendental, the virtual constitutes a ground for actual experience. But the
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the schema. Besides the development of spirit on one plane, along the surface, there is the
movement of spirit which goes from one plane to the other, in depth. Besides the mechanism
of association, there is the intellectual effort. The forces at work in these two cases do not
simply differ in their intensity; they differ in their directions (EI, 189).
In Bergsons view, both these directions are necessary for what he calls full
recognition as opposed to automatic recognition. Now, what is the
significance of this twofold movement of spirit? Ultimately, for Bergson, this
twofold movement of spirit testifies to a reciprocal adaptation of form and
matter. He suggests that nowhere is this twofold movement as clearly at play
as in the highest form of intellectual effort, namely, the effort of invention.
There, he says, we have the neat feeling of a form of organization which may
be variable, but which must be prior to the elements to be organized; then the
elements themselves concur with one another; finally, if the invention
succeeds, we have the feeling of an equilibrium, which is the reciprocal
adaptation of form and matter (EI, 182).
Quoting Ribot, Bergson maintains that we must distinguish between two
forms of the creative imagination, the one intuitive and the other reflective.
The first goes from the unity to the details , the second proceeds from the
details to the vaguely entertained unity. It begins with a fragment which serves
as a primer, and then completes itself progressively (EI, 176). For Bergson,
this means that instead of a unique schema that one would give oneself a
priori, from the outset, and whose forms would remain immobile and stiff,
there can be an elastic or mobile schema, the contours of which spirit refuses
to ascertain, because it awaits its decisions from the very images that the
schema must attract in order to flesh itself out (ibid).13 I endeavoured to write
this paper on the basis of a strong yet vague idea as to how to think through
the difference between Bergson and Kant. The demanding, at times frustrating
but mostly pleasurable effort it took for me to actually write it testified to the
diversity of states my mind had to go through. According to Bergson, each of
those states corresponds to as many tentative strivings, on the part of some
specific images (i.e., confusing phrases and puzzling thoughts) to insert
themselves into that original schema. But also, in some cases, those states
corresponded to so many modifications accepted by the schema in order to
flesh itself out into distinct, and hopefully comprehensible words (EI, 177). I
believe everyone has had this experience of having a great idea that it took
them a lot of effort to actualize into a concrete piece of work; and that the end
result, especially when they found it successful, indeed surprised them in
many ways, precisely because the actualization of the idea necessitated
unpredictable transformations. In a word, it appears that the key to the success
of the intellectual effort lies in the elasticity of the schema. Finally, in
Bergsons account of the intellectual effort, unlike in Kants, the unity or
heterogeneous continuity of the idea becomes compatible with the quantitative
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Put otherwise, what is missing in Kant is the distinction that Ribot introduces,
and that Bergson appeals to (all the while insisting on their complementarity)
between intuitive imagination (which moves from the unity to the details) and
reflective imagination (which moves from the details to the unity). While it
could be argued that Kant, like Bergson, allows for a twofold movement
informing the experience of the intellectual effort, I contend that this
movement remains stifled by an impoverished conception of the imagination.
Because Kants imagination is at best reflective, its productivity never attains
the power of constituting ideas that it is ascribed in Bergson.14
6. Conclusion: Truth and Intuition
Ultimately, it is this creative power of the imagination that allows Bergson
to affirm the absoluteness of knowledge. In fact, this is reflected in his original
conception of Truth. In Bergson, Key Writings, Ansell-Pearson and Mullarkey
underline the many points of contact between William Jamess Radical
Empiricism and what I have been calling Bergsons Virtual Empiricism. But
they also point out a crucial difference between the two thinkers. This
difference lies in their respective conceptions of truth. In one of the many
letters he wrote to William James, Bergson writes,
I began to read your Pragmatism the moment I received it by post and I have not been able to
put it down before finishing it. It is the admirably drawn programme for the philosophy of the
future. When you say that for rationalism reality is ready-made and complete from all
eternity, while for pragmatism it is still in the making, you give the very formula of the
metaphysics which I am convinced we will come to, which we would have come to long ago
if we had not remained under the charm of Platonic idealism. Would I go so far as to affirm
with you that truth is mutable? I believe in the mutability of reality rather than that of truth.
If we can make our intuition accord with the mobility of the real, would not this accord be
something stable, and would not truth which can only be this accord itself participate in
this stability? (BKW, 362).15
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5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
Pearson and John Mullarkey, ed., New York and London: Continuum 2002, p. 12; hereafter
BKW. See also William James letter to Bergson dated December 14th, 1902 in Mlanges,
Paris: PUF 1972, p. 567).
Bergson, Introduction la mtaphysique in La pense et le mouvant, Paris : Librairie
Flix Alcan 1934, p. 255. Introduction to Metaphysics in The Creative Mind, trans.
Mabelle L. Andison, Totowa : Littlefield, Adams and Co 1975, p. 200.
Essai sur les donnes immdiates de la conscience, Paris: PUF 2001; Time and Free Will,
trans. F. L. Pogson, New York: Harper and Row 1960; hereafter referred to as TFW.
Lvolution cratrice, Paris: PUF 1998; Creative Evolution, trans. A. Mitchell, New York:
Random House 1944; hereafter referred to as CE.
For a full elaboration of this claim, see Bergsons 1930 Le Possible et le Rel in La Pense
et le Mouvant, pp. 91-134; The Possible and the Real in The Creative Mind, pp. 91-107.
For example, Bergson writes, If we leave aside the closed systems, subjected to purely
mathematical laws, isolable because duration does not act upon them, if we consider the
totality of concrete reality or simply the world of life, and still more that of consciousness,
we find there is more and not less in the possibility of each successive state than in their
reality. For the possible is only the real with the addition of an act of mind which throws its
image back into the past, once it has been enacted. But that is what our intellectual habits
prevent us from seeing (126-127/99-100).
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar, Indianapolis/Cambridge:
Hackett Publishing Company 1987, Part I, Book 2, 26, p.112, my emphases; from now on
referred to as CJ.
In their introduction to Bergson, Key Writings, Ansell-Pearson and Mullarkey note that
although the use of the term multiplicity refers to Riemannian geometry, Bergson wants to
show that time that is, life or change is psychical in essence; as such, it is not of a
mathematical or logical order. In fact, Bergson transforms the nature of the Riemannian
distinction, thereby challenging Russells thinking of time as well (pp. 7f).
We will come back to this point below, as I argue that it is the core of the divergence between
Bergson and Kant.
See Leonard Lawlor and Valentine Moulards Bergson entry in the Stanford Encyclopaedia
of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson).
See also, The Introduction to Metaphysics. There, Bergson writes, [Metaphysics] is
strictly itself only when it goes beyond the concept, or at least when it frees itself of the
inflexible and ready-made concepts and creates others very different from those we usually
handle, I mean flexible, mobile, almost fluid representations, always ready to mould
themselves on the fleeting forms of intuition (The Creative Mind, 213/168).
As both James Williams and Frdric Worms astutely pointed out in response to this paper,
it would seem that my criticism of Kant fails to take into account the exceptional case of
genius. Kant defines it as follows: Genius is the mental predisposition (ingenium) through
which nature gives the rule to art (CJ Part I, Book II, 46). Thus, Kant continues, genius
is the talent for producing something for which no determinate rule can be given hence
the foremost property of genius must be originality (ibid). Here, it does seem as if Kant
were allowing for a case in which determination does not come from an already posited
form, rule, or schema. Still, I contend, this does not lead to a reconciliation between
transcendental idealism and virtual materialism. Some essential differences remain between
Kants account of genius and Bergsons account of the intellectual effort. Firstly, genius for
Kant can neither be taught, nor can it be copied: it must be innate (CJ Part I, Book II, par.
47). This suggests that for Kant, no effort, however intent, can ever yield a situation in which
a new rule is created. Not so for Bergson. Although in his view, it is certainly not the case
that anyone can be called a genius, he does show that through effort, we can all, to some
extent, create new forms and new rules. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, I firmly
believe that, even if Kant does allow for the increased creativity of the imagination in the
case of genius, he does not go as far as allowing for the elasticity of the schema which, for
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Bergson, necessarily entails the mutual determination of form and matter. Rather, Kant
writes, Genius can only provide rich material for products of fine art; processing this
material and giving it form requires a talent that is academically trained, so that it may be
used in a way that can stand the test of the power of judgment (ibid, my emphasis). In other
words, the creativity involved in genius must still, in the end, be submitted to the
understanding. And the understanding, we have shown, is itself always already determined
and negatively limited by the transcendental forms. Ultimately, then, I want to maintain that
Bergsons insistence on the mutual determination of form and matter displayed in the
intellectual effort and captured in his elaboration of the Virtual constitutes an innovation in
relation to and indeed, a progress over the Kantian transcendental.
15. Letter from Bergson to William James dated 27th June 1907. Mlanges, 726-7. Trans.
Melissa McMahon, BKW, 362.
16. See Bergsons powerful critique of the Kantian categorical imperative in the first chapter of
his 1932 The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, trans. R. Ashley Audra and Cloudesley
Brereton, Garden City: Doubleday & Company 1935. For example, In a word, an absolutely
categorical imperative is somnambulistic, enacted as such in a normal state, represented as
such if reflection is roused long enough to take form, not long enough to seek for reasons.
But then, is it not evident that, in a reasonable being, an imperative will tend to become
categorical in proportion as the activity brought into play, although intelligent, will tend to
become instinctive? But an activity which, starting as intelligent, progresses towards an
imitation of instinct is exactly what we call, in a man, a habit (20/26)?
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