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‘A History of
Problems’: Bergson
and the French
Epistemological
Tradition
a
Elie During
a
Paris X-Nanterre
Published online: 21 Oct 2014.

To cite this article: Elie During (2004) ‘A History of Problems’:

Bergson and the French Epistemological Tradition, Journal
of the British Society for Phenomenology, 35:1, 4-23, DOI:
10.1080/00071773.2004.11007419

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 Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 35, No. I, January 2004

'A HISTORY OF PROBLEMS': BERGSON AND THE

FRENCH EPISTEMOLOGICAL TRADITION
ELIEDURING

The rather unstable historical configuration which came to be known as

the 'French epistemological tradition' seems to owe much of its specificity
to a distinctive anti-Bergsonian stand. It is nonetheless possible, as we shall
argue, to trace a number of Bergsonian patterns in the basic assumptions of
what was sometimes identified as an 'anti-positivist' view of the history of
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ideas. Thus the notion of problem for instance, a fundamental category in

Bergson's philosophy, underlies several themes and procedures that seem
essential to the self-definition of an 'anti-positivist' epistemology. The idea
that problems, even more than theories and concepts, are the genetic
element in the development of thought, keeps coming back in Bergson's
works, suggesting the stronger claim that his philosophy, more than any
other in the beginning of the twentieth century, may provide the
philosophical grounds for a non-positivist conception of problems
themselves.
What follows is probably closer to an ideal reconstruction or thought
experiment than to a historical investigation in the traditional sense. For the
claim is not really a historical one. If one sets aside Merleau-Ponty,
Canguilhem and the Ecole des Annales, it is difficult to find any direct
acknowledgement of Bergson's influence upon the actors involved in this
rather entangled plot. Quite the contrary, Bergson generally played the role
of a scapegoat or obtrusive mentor, and the overthrowing of his ideas proved
a most efficient rallying theme for the generation that reached philosophical
maturity in the 1930s or in the immediate post-war period. Accordingly, the
idea of an unavowed Bergsonian heritage expressing itself in a thread of
thinkers running from Bachelard to Foucault seems at best counter-intuitive
or far-fetched. Challenging the obviousness of what appears as a major topos
in the history of French philosophy requires a preliminary examination of the
philosophical implications of the so-called 'anti-positivist' epistemological
tradition. In order to understand exactly in what sense it is supposed to part
with Bergson's theory and practice, it is useful to start with Foucault's
famous statement about two conflicting orientations in twentieth century
French philosophy.

Two Traditions?
In an homage to Georges Canguilhem which was originally meant to
serve as a preface to the English translation of The Normal and the

4
 Pathological, Michel Foucault observed that 'a dividing line' ran through
many philosophical and ideological oppositions in the French post-war
intellectual landscape: 'the one that separates a philosophy of experience, of
meaning, of the subject, and a philosophy of knowledge, of rationality, and
of the concept. On one side, a filiation which is that of Jean-Paul Sartre and
Maurice Merleau-Ponty ; and then another, which is that of Jean Cavailles,
Gaston Bachelard, Alexandre Koyre, and Canguilhem.' (Foucault 1998:
466). In the original version of this text, written in 1978, Foucault was
content with underlining 'two strains that remained profoundly
heterogeneous' (Foucault 1994-1: 430). He traced back this cleavage to an
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original discrepancy regarding the interpretation of Husserl's Cartesian

Meditations (1929, published in 1931). Bluntly stated, there is Sartre on the
one hand, with The Transcendence of the Ego, and Cavailles on the other,
with his two theses on the axiomatic method and set theory. Curiously, in the
1985 revised version of the same paper, published in French in the Revue de
Metaphysique et de Morale (probably the last article Foucault published
during his lifetime), the genealogy of this tension within French philosophy
leads Foucault much further down the timeline, as if the divergent readings
of phenomenology were only the symptom of a deeper fracture: 'Doubtless
this cleavage comes from afar, and one could trace it back through the
nineteenth century: Henri Bergson and Henri Poincare, Jules Lachelier and
Louis Couturat, Pierre Maine de Biran and Auguste Comte.' (Foucault 1994-
2: 764). It is through this series of oppositions, which Foucault somewhat
dramatically describes as deeply-rooted ('well established') as early as the
turn of the century, that phenomenology itself is thought to have been
filtered and eventually 'admitted' into France.
It is striking that in spite of the rhetorical power of Foucault's assemblage
(a genuine historical 'montage', as it is), it is not quite clear, when one thinks
of it, why Bergson should naturally fit in the first category, that of the
philosophers 'of experience, of meaning, of the subject'. At any rate, this
piece of philosophical doxa accounts for an important aspect of the prevalent
perception of 'Bergsonism' - a perception that often obscures the exact
nature of Bergson's philosophical achievement.
However, one may favour an opposite reading of the dividing lines of this
philosophical Kampfplatz. It is not stretching things too far to argue that
Bergson in fact provided a genuine philosophy of the concept, although not
exactly the kind that Cavailles had in mind when he said that 'it is not a
philosophy of consciousness, but a philosophy of the concept that will
provide a doctrine of science.' (Cavailles 1960: 78). Cavailles' 'dialectics'
amounts to an immanent dynamism, a developmental process of concepts or
'empiricism of thought in action'. Bergson finds the 'generating necessity' of
science in 'an activity,' and that of philosophy in a 'superior empiricism,'

5
 but such an activity cannot easily be identified either with the traditional
activity of judgement and its ensuing doctrine of faculties (in an
intellectualist vein still perceptible in Bachelard, a true heir of Brunschvicg
in this respect), or with the activity of a transcendental ego (in a
phenomenological way). In this respect it does not openly contradict
Cavailles' 'dialectics'. 1 Bergson's emphasis is on the particular ope rations
at play in scientific knowledge in general: scientific understanding parcels
out, arrests, quantifies and measures, whereas reality, as it is given to
immediate intuition, is an unfolding, continuous and essentially qualitative
process. This is so because, however disinterested it may have become
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today, science remains in close relation with the demands of our action. Yet
by the same token, science can be described to a certain extent without the
need of a subject of science - as an activity without a subject. Scientific
theories, with their apparatus of forms and principles, are still expressions of
life itself in its ability to use intelligence for its own purpose. In this regard,
Foucault's statement about the two traditions is perhaps most confusing in
the opposition it wishes to stress between Bergson and Poincare. The
former's view of science as rooted in practice is at times strikingly close to
the latter's so-called conventionalism, and it is no wonder that Leroy entered
the French philosophical scene by conflating Bergsonian philosophy with
Poincarean epistemology. Whereas Poincare firmly protested against what he
considered as a dubious manreuvre (see The Value of Science, published in
1905), Bergson did not mind being forced into an alliance with what some
described as a 'skeptical' trend in the philosophy of science (Boutroux,
Duhem, Milhaud, etc.; see 'La Philosophie fran9aise' in Bergson 1972:
1176-1179).
On the whole, it seems that Bergson cuts across the categories which his
name (rather than his actual philosophy) helps devising. As a consequence,
what Foucault says about Husserl could very well apply to Bergson himself:
he may be more aptly described as the point of bifurcation from which two
very different traditions emerge and start diverging. Sartre's first encounter
with philosophy, as he recalls, was the reading of Time and Free Will- it is
ironical, yet not surprising, that despite his harsh criticism of Bergson's
views about consciousness and freedom, he should find himself in his
company under the heading of 'philosophers of the subject'. Surely,
Cavailles, Bachelard (who wrote the Dialectics of Duration in 1936), and
above all Canguilhem (who published in 1943 a commentary of the third
chapter of Creative Evolution), had all read Bergson too, though more or less
carefully. Yet, as early as the 1930s, following the publication of Politzer' s
pamphlet, 'Bergsonism' had more or less become the target of almost every
innovative philosophical trend in France. The story is well known, and not
worth recounting again. It remains to be seen if the motivations underlying

6
 the rejection of Bergson are homogeneous. Tracing back diverging readings
of Bergson himself (Merleau-Ponty being a much more ambiguous example
than Sartre in this regard), 2 would probably reveal cleavages as profound
(although probably less apparent) as those Foucault identified in the history
of Husserl's reception.
Without going that far, it is interesting to bring the case of Foucault into
focus. His negative identification of Bergson as an inverted forerunner of the
line of thinkers to which he feels indebted, involves a retrospective scheme
which tells us a great deal about himself and the nature of his intellectual
formation in the heyday of existentialism, when phenomenology (or at least
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a certain interpretation of the phenomenological project) was the dominant

paradigm. It is doubtful that it tells much about Bergson, who is merely
presented through the lenses of the post-war situation. The rough opposition
drawn by Foucault naturally owes much to the special circumstances of the
'homage,' a genre which easily lends itself to a certain kind of 'monumental'
historiography (as Nietzsche would have it). The text that mentions Bergson
was written for a special issue of the Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale
devoted to Canguilhem. It is a tribute, and every tribute needs its 'villains'. It
is important to bear in mind similar and equally famous instances of this
academic ritual: tributes paid by Canguilhem to Cavailles, by Bachelard to
Brunschvicg, or by Merleau-Ponty to Bergson, etc. On other occasions,
Bergson is presented by Foucault as being chiefly responsible for a pervasive
tendency of contemporary philosophers to downplay space in favour of time:
in 1978, during an interview with Watanabe, he refers to 'a kind of latent
Bergsonism which dominated French philosophy' (Foucault 1994-1: 576),
cautiously qualifying his initial statement with a rather ambiguous remark: 'I
say Bergsonism, I'm not saying this was the actual Bergson, far from it.
There was a certain privilege of all temporal analyses over space, which was
held as something dead and inert.' In fact, it turns out that what Foucault
wishes to oppose is rather something like an existentialist or vulgarly
Marxist over-valorisation of historicity and historical consciousness at the
expense of the 'reactionary' categories of spatiality. The reference to 'a
Bergsonian valorisation of time' does not only function as a philosophical
cliche. It may in fact best be explained from an auto-biographical
perspective. It is with the academic primacy of Bergsonian time (or
Bergsonian primacy of time) that Foucault himself had to struggle in the
fifties and sixties, as he tried to foster a new form of investigation invested in
the constructions of space - sites, boundaries, thresholds, where power
inscribes its marks. Ironically, however,· similarly sweeping accounts of the
influence of Bergson on twentieth-century French thought lead other
commentators to radically divergent claims: Martin Jay, for example, traces
back the 'denigration of vision' in French philosophy to the Bergsonian

7
 critique of spatialisation as a specific mechanism of intellectual and social
control, a critique which is supposed to bear its effects everywhere, from
Luckacs (whose concept of reification owes much to 'spatialisation') and the
Marxist tradition, up to Foucault himself (Jay 1993: 191-208, 430).
This interpretative flip-flop hints at the fact that such totalizing views of
Bergson's position in the century are most often put to work for ideological
purposes. In the most recent Deleuzian literature, Bergson is often fancied as
the denied father of French postmodem philosophy (Douglass 1992). Once
again Bergson becomes an overarching figure casting its shadow on the
whole philosophical stage, over-determining every philosophical division.
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These 'grandes manoeuvres' may well revive Bergsonian studies, but as far
as the precise understanding of Bergson is concerned, they do not provide
much philosophical insight. Whether he is believed to be heralding what is
now known as a philosophy of difference (thus providing the groundwork for
the metaphysics of postmodernism), or whether one holds his
epistemological insights as a foreshadowing of the contemporary scientific
image (in modem physics, psychology, neurosciences, biology, theories of
human information-processing, etc.), in every case Bergson functions as a
dubious reference point - an origin. Pete Gunter at least warns us against
the shortcomings of such 'retrospective' readings, of which it is quite certain
that Bergson would have disapproved: 'it is no easy matter to specify what
amount of influence on, or degree of prophetic anticipation of, the course of
scientific thought would constitute a 'verification' of his philosophical
methods.' (Gunter 1969: 36)

'Positivism'
Bergson's metaphysical stance involved maintaining as a guiding
principle the possibility of an intuitive, immediate grasp of reality,
undercutting the interplay of concepts and symbols to which common-sense
and science have accustomed us. A rather paradoxical consequence of this
central claim is that he was repeatedly charged with being a hidden
'positivist.' Politzer criticized Bergson's notion of duration as substantial,
and so did Bachelard when he indicted duration as a massive, positive
plenum. Sartre reproached him for confusing the self-transparency of
consciousness with the opaque presence of a thing. Bergson, a 'positivist'?
The accusation may well be misplaced, and yet the concern for immediacy,
combined with the praise of a 'positive metaphysics' (in the line of
Ravaisson) and a 'superior empiricism,' for all their ambiguity
('metaphysics' and 'superior' being of course essential qualifications here),
made Bergson seem like a good candidate for the label.
As a matter of fact, some of Bergson's critics have been described as the
proponents of a form of 'radical and deliberate non-positivism' (Lecourt

8
 1972: 7), though in a sense that brings another twist to the very notion of
positivism. It is Canguilhem who first remarked that Bachelard, having
realized that science reformed itself through epistemological breaks,
gradually formed 'a conception of the relations between science and the
history of science that in itself constituted such a break: a non-positivist
conception.' (Canguilhem 1970: 186; see Canguilhem 1994: 31-35).
The trademark 'positivism' was recently endorsed by Pete Gunter in
relation to Bergson. This clever move was chiefly motivated by the desire to
blur the lines drawn by the dominantly positivist Anglo-American
epistemology, but it is rather unfortunate from the standpoint of the French
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context, considering the negative connotations of the term. Of course,

describing Bergson as a 'positivist' because intuitionism must run the
gauntlet of observation and experiment, because 'the statements drawn from
our intuitions definitely satisfy the requirement that, to be factually
meaningful, it 'must be possible that experience render them probable - or
improbable' (Gunter 1987: 9), is partly a matter of words. If our definition of
'positivism' is modelled after a weakened or more 'pragmatic, biocentric'
(Gunter 1987: 6) version of the verificationist principle upheld by the Vienna
Circle, it may well be argued that Bergson was indeed a 'positivist' in his
own way, at least to the extent that he 'limited factual statements to
empirical statements and empirically meaningful statements to those capable
of being empirically verified or diversified.' (Gunter 1987: 3). But this
reallocation of Bergson's epistemological legacy within the philosophical
scene is misleading in yet another, more important respect.
For if 'anti-positivism' is indeed the rallying point of the kind of
epistemology that developed around Bachelard and Canguilhem, and whose
effects can still be traced in Althusser, Foucault and Bourdieu, it does not
chiefly imply a reaction against the given or the immediate (even if it often
takes this form in the most psychologically-driven, least philosophically
interesting writings of Bachelard). Its philosophical grounds are not
primarily a reaction against the tyranny of empirically verifiable statements,
the verdict of experience. What anti-positivism fundamentally protests
against is a static, non-problematic view of concepts themselves, and the
plainly linear view of the development of science that is derived from such a
view.
The uses of 'positivism' in the French epistemological tradition are
naturally far from homogeneous. Just as the uses of 'Bergsonism,' they are
certainly loaded with many prejudices and prone to many
misunderstandings. Nonetheless, if we were tempted to indulge in the kind of
monumental genealogy sketched by Foucault, we would probably have to
admit that the overarching figure of the whole scene is Auguste Comte, with
his positivist conception of the history of the sciences. And yet, paradoxical

9
 as it may seem, in the specific sense of 'positivism' that is now under
scrutiny, Auguste Comte would actually count as an anti-positivist. For as
Pierre Macherey reminds us, 'he creates the concept of a philosophical
history of sciences: a history of problems and concepts, rather than a history
of solutions and 'theories,' in other words a rational and reasoned history,
rather than an empirical, descriptive history ... ' (Macherey 1989: 95). And he
adds in a footnote: 'this view has greatly inspired the historical epistemology
of G. Bachelard and G. Canguilhem.' As a matter of fact, Bachelard has
never kept secret his admiration for Comte: 'there is no scientific culture', he
says, 'that does not fulfil the obligations of positivism' (Bachelard 1949:
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104). This rather unexpected filiation wouldn't make sense if we forgot that
Comte was precisely not a 'positivist' regarding concepts, even if his
definition of the scientific method as a mixture of observation and induction
leaves us with a rather weak concept of science.
Despite the ambivalent character of their Comtian origin, the uses of
'positivism' seem to converge in the definition provided by Canguilhem as a
preliminary to the understanding of the true task of the historian of sciences:
'positivism, a philosophy of history based on a generalization of the notion
that theory ineluctably succeeds theory as the true supplants the false.'
(Canguilhem 1994: 42). What is remarkable in Canguilhem's definition is
first of all that the dividing line cuts through different conceptions of history,
and not primarily different metaphysics or even epistemological stances.
'Positivism' does not imply an a-historical vision of things (the one that
would take the universal or natural character of the given for granted) ; it is
itself a particular view of history, a 'philosophy of history.' The distinctive
mark of this philosophy is that it presents concepts as the more or less
adequate replica of verified facts, supplying truths according to which
theories must be judged and eventually vindicated or overthrown.

What an 'Anti-Positivist' Epistemology Means

By contrast, the meaning of an anti-positivist type of epistemology
appears more clearly. It is a stance that must first be evaluated according to
its strategic effects on certain interpretative and constructive practices.
Canguilhem writes: 'To take as one's object of inquiry nothing other than
sources, inventions, influences, priorities, simultaneities, and successions is
at bottom to fail to distinguish between science and other aspects of culture.'
(Canguilhem 1988: 3)· It is interesting that this indictment of positivist
historiographical practices should be couched in quasi-Bergsonian terms.
'Sources' and 'influences' point to the 'retrospective illusion' ;
'simultaneities' and 'successions' are reminiscent of the spatial conception
of the historical time line. Canguilhem says elsewhere that 'A history of
results can never be anything more than a chronicle. The history of science

10
 concerns an axiological activity, the search for truth. This axiological
activity appears only at the level of questions, methods and concepts, and
nowhere else.' (Canguilhem 1994: 30). How this bears on the question of
historicity itself, and how 'the history of the relation of intelligence to truth
generates its own sense of time' (Canguilhem 1994: 31), is another question,
but it is a Bergsonian question as well.
It seems that we are now in a position to formulate the general principle of
anti-positivism: it consists in the belief that epistemology is not about facts
(neither scientific facts, nor historical facts uncovered by the history of
science), but about concepts. This means that its objects are always projects,
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and in the case of the history of sciences, 'the object of historical discourse
is, in effect, the historicity of scientific discourse.' (Canguilhem 1994: 26).
Yet again, the real problem with positivism is not so much that it strives at
some kind of immediate contact with the real: it is rather that this attitude
implies a very naive idea of what a concept is, in general. Hence the problem
is not so much to replace facts by concepts as the proper objects of inquiry,
but to reach an adequate understanding of the formation and functioning of
concepts in the first place. Whether the substitute for positivism is found in
dialectics or intuition, what is being criticized is always an abstract view of
concepts which considers them apart from their theoretical setting, the
network or system of notions to which they belong, their vital connections in
the web of thought (Canguilhem 1994: 50-51). In his study on the formation
of the concept of reflex movement in the seventeenth and eighteenth century,
Canguilhem emphasizes the necessity of studying conceptual filiations rather
than the succession of theories (Canguilhem 1994:181). Bachelard develops
a similar line of argument concerning Fizeau's experiment: we do not know
what we are talking about before 'the object of knowledge is replaced in a
problematic, situated in a discursive process of instruction.' (Bache lard
1949: 55). On this construal, the object becomes 'more than a historical fact,
more than a fact resulting from observation: it solves a problem.' (Bachelard
1949: 53)
Briefly stated, the kind of 'positivism' that is being discarded by the
French epistemological tradition under consideration is essentially one which
considers concepts in isolation from their variation in a problematic
configuration, one which proves incapable of engaging in what Canguilhem
calls the 'working of a concept' ('Dialectique et philosophie du Non chez
Gaston Bachelard,' in Canguilhem 1970: 206). Anti-positivism thus reverts
the ordinary direction of thought: instead of going from theories (and facts)
to concepts, it goes from concepts to theories (and problems), because to
define a concept is to formulate a problem. Through the succession of
theories, one must realize that a problem endures, even within the solutions
devised for solving it. Problems must be tracked, identified, properly recast

11
 and posed, even where scientists and thinkers themselves were not in a
position to do so, or believed they could do without it by simply stating the
solutions. To quote Bachelard once more
Above all one must know how to state problems. Whatever one may say, in scientific life,
problems do not arise by themselves. It is precisely this sense of problems which is the
distinctive mark of a genuine scientific mind. For a scientific mind, every piece of
knowledge is an answer to a question. If there is no question, there cannot be any scientific
knowledge. Nothing is granted. Nothing is given. Everything is constructed' (Bachelard
1938: 14).
And elsewhere: 'Scientific research does not need the bravado of universal
doubt, but the constitution of a problematic. It takes its departure in a
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problem, even if this problem is badly stated.' (Bachelard 1949: 51).

Needless to say, according to Bachelard, this sense of problems is a requisite
for the history of sciences, and a fortiori for any rigorous philosophy of
science.
These considerations bring us one step further in the understanding of
what an 'anti-positivist' epistemological stance should imply. For it seems
now that the proper object of an anti-positivist epistemology is not so much
facts, theories or even concepts themselves. Rigorously speaking, 'the
perpetual revision of contents by deeper investigation and by erasure' is only
a symptom of the constant recasting of a problem in various theoretical
fields. So the real objects of an anti-positivist epistemology are problems,
along with the conditions under which problems are formulated, posed, and
sometimes solved. The positivist image of truth is overturned only when one
realizes that thought does not primarily strive at knowing what reality really
is, but deals with its own problems as immanent, genetic functions.

Bergson's Project of a 'History of Problems'

The difficulty, once again, is that if this is a correct characterization of
anti-positivism, then anti-positivism seems to be the rallying point of both
Bergsonism and its opponents. This sounds like an odd thing to say only
because we have been trained to take for granted the narrative of the history
of philosophy designed by some of its actors. As early as 1899, in his
evaluation of Bergson's application to the College de France, Theodule
Ribot was already aware that Bergsonian philosophy offered a rather
unconventional perspective on the history of ideas, and of scientific ideas in
particular: 'Mr. Bergson, if he obtained the chair of modern philosophy,
would substitute for the classical method of the history of systems that of the
history of problems: for example the history of theories of induction, from
Bacon to now, or of the idea of matter from Galileo to the modem times.'
(quoted in Soulez and Worms 1997: 91-92). To substitute for the history of
systems (and of solutions) the history of problems (and of concepts): there is
no better definition, indeed, of a non-positivist historical epistemology.

12
 Bergson was finally elected to the College de France at the turn of the
century. The titles of his courses confirm Ribot's remark: Sketches for a
history of the notion of time in its relation to systems (1902-1903), The
evolution of the theories of memory (1903-1904), Study of the evolution of
the problem offreedom (1904-1905) ....
Two claims remain to be examined: first, that Bergson's practice of the
history of ideas and problems actually conformed to the anti-positivist
principles; second and more interestingly, that Bergson provided the
philosophical underpinning of an anti-positivist view, not only of concepts or
knowledge in general, but of problems themselves.
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Bergson's History of Philosophy

How does Bergson concretely work towards the aim of a history of
problems? As far as the history of philosophy is concerned, an interesting
example is found in Bergson's lessons, at a time where he was still teaching
at the Lycee Henri IV. In a chapter compiled by Henri Hude on the theories
of the soul (Bergson 1995:247ff.), Bergson draws the outlines of what may
be called a problematic introduction to the history of systems. These are
notes from Bergson's pupils, which the professor, of course, never intended
for publication. But the controversy over the philosophical relevance of these
sources need not concern us here, as we are only interested in their value as
samples of the general method which governed Bergson's pedagogy. The
example is simple enough to be stated roughly. Examining theories of the
soul in Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza and Leibniz, Bergson manages to
isolate a structural bipolarity, or rather the entanglement of two different and
sometimes opposite tendencies: the concern for individuality, and the need
for a satisfying conceptual account of causality. The situation is rather
unstable, and Bergson identifies the reason for the constant shift from one
kind of system to the other. It has to do with the very question of causality.
The problem of the conciliation of causality with individuality takes a
different form depending on the notion of causality philosophers wish to
adopt. In Leibniz for example, 'parallelism' sacrifices freedom and
consequently individuality, in order to gain a better, less confused
understanding of the communication of substances. The formulation of the
problem avoids the obscure ideas of 'influence,' or 'reciprocal action'. While
acknowledging this Leibnizian 'tour de force,' Bergson claims that another
solution could have been explored, and the mind-body problem posed anew,
if instead of relying on a general and a priori notion of causality, one had set
out to examine the 'lines of fact' suggested by nature (as he would later say)
in order to challenge the assumption that causal relations necessarily occur
between terms of the same kind. Bergson's suggestion is that homogeneous
causal relations can be (and should be) dropped in favour of 'relations of

13
 derivation between heterogeneous terms' (Bergson 1995: 251). This
summary (or anticipation) of Matter and Memory is interesting in that it
provides a very striking instance of what it means, in practice, to replace a
history of theories with a history of problems. Theories of the soul are
indeed considered as so many systems of variation of a deeper, more relevant
problem, which needs to be extracted and stated in each specific case: the
problem of causal relations between substances or realities. What really
matters is exposing the problem that corresponds to a given concept or set of
concepts. In an interesting text on the question of how philosophers should
write, Bergson explains that if the same philosophical term ('reason,' for
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instance, or 'soul') sometimes stands for different concepts and solutions, it

is probably because it indicates the persistence of the same problem: 'indeed,
a term such as 'reason' does not so much refer to a thing as to a problem'
(Bergson 1997: 6). Thus the history of the concept of the soul, conceived as
a history of the theories of the soul or of the mind-body relation, is replaced
by the history of the transformations of a typically seventeenth-century
problematic configuration binding together the notion of causality and the
requirement of individuality.
Similar reconstructions of particular problematics can be found in
Bergson's later works. They tend to qualify the idea that Bergson's practice
of the history of philosophy is condemned to choose between two equally
unacceptable alternatives: on the one hand a sweeping but schematic account
of past philosophies that tends to reduce each of them to a mere reflection of
the state of scientific thought, on the other hand an intuitive approach that
strives to grasp the simple act from which every philosophy originates, at the
risk of losing the sense of how problems actually arise and get solved.
Gueroult admired Bergson's forceful genetic reconstruction of the illusion
that made past philosophers fail to recognize the reality of time and change,
but he could not be satisfied by an approach that directly aimed at the
backbone of systems, instead of exploring the details of their articulations.
The result, he believed, was a seductive 'phenomenology of metaphysics'
(Gueroult 1960: 19), unfortunately closer to a 'historical novel' (ibid., 22)
than a genuine analysis of the evolution of systems. He pointed out that this
overly philosophical view of the history of philosophy was in fact balanced
by Bergson's simultaneous insistence on the necessity of an intuitive grasp
of the absolutely unique and simple generating intuition refracted in every
facet a philosopher's system (ibid., 24-26). The first approach is too broad;
the second runs the risk of losing sight of the problematic nature of systems
in favour of mere matters of expression. Gueroult argues that the organic
elements which constitute the conditions of the stating of a problem are
overlooked as Bergson aims directly at the intuitive core of a 'vision'.
However, a third possibility can be discerned in the process described in

14
 'L'Effort intellectuel' (ibid., 31): Bergson, according to Gueroult, is at his
best when he tries to unpack the meaning of a problematic situation by
adjusting the focus, moving back and forth from a given system of concepts
to the dynamic scheme that engendered it, recapturing a problem and stating
it in a way that suggests the different threads one may follow in an attempt to
solve it. Such a process probably meets Bergson's purpose in studying the
history of philosophy: to get a clearer view of 'the unity of the problem
underlying the multiplicity of the solutions.' (Bergson 1997: 7).

History of Science
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As far as the history of science is concerned, it is important to remark first

that Bergson conceived it as a 'history of systems' that needed to be entirely
recast in terms of the philosophical problem of the apprehension of change.
The most interesting Bergsonian text in this regard can be found in the fourth
chapter of Creative Evolution. Gueroult's criticism of the kind of global, all-
encompassing approach to the history of ideas that he thought typical of
Bergsonism, would naturally apply here. As a matter of fact, in Gueroult's
view, the reason why Bergson is finally drawn to a history of metaphysics
that lumps together all philosophical systems in a general classification of
historical 'mishaps,' is that he first chose to present the history of philosophy
as the mere 'epiphenomenon' (Gueroult 1960: 21) or 'reflection' (ibid., 22)
of the history of science. The evolution from Greek metaphysics to classical
and Kantian philosophy, on such a view, is only the by-product of the move
from Aristotle's physics to Galileo's. Yet, conversely, the evolution from
Greek science to modem science is retraced according to a certain number of
structural patterns which reveal at once the successive transformations of
certain scientific problems, and the persistence of the same philosophical
problem, specified in different ways.
Modern science dates from the day when mobility was set up as an independent reality. It
dates from the day when Galileo, setting a ball rolling down an inclined plane, firmly
resolved to study this movement from top to bottom for itself, in itself, instead of seeking its
principle in the concepts of high and low, two immobilities by which Aristotle believed he
could adequately explain mobility' (Bergson 1999: 54).
That is the real problem behind the scientific paradigm shift. The alleged
difference between a science that applies concepts (as the Greeks did) and a
science that seeks laws (constant relations between variable magnitudes), is
of secondary importance in this respect.
Now, how did the astronomical problem present itself to Kepler ? The question was,
knowing the respective positions of the planets at a given moment, how to calculate their
positions at any other moment. So the same question presented itself, henceforth, for every
material system. [... ] Let us conclude, then, that our science is not only distinguished from
ancient science in this, that it seeks laws, nor even in this, that its laws set forth relations
between magnitudes: we must add that the magnitude to which we wish to be able to relate
all others is time, and that modern science must be defined pre-eminently by its aspiration to

15
 take time as an independent variable. But with what time has it to do?' (Bergson 1944: 364-
365).
Thus Bergson displaces a rather conventional philosophical problem
(concepts versus laws), substituting for it a new one (time as an independent
variable), which he considers more apt to characterize a new range of
scientific problems (Kepler's). The same kind of operation is systematically
carried out in relation to different issues. It is, obviously, an essentially
problematic method.
Bachelard reproached Bergson for his outdated image of science. This
criticism was first formulated, by the mathematician Emile Borel in 1908
(Castelli 1998: 278). Whether it is justified or not, it seems to miss the
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point, for Bergson was not so much interested in the history of sciences for
its own sake (the 'evolution' of scientific theories, with their positive
contents and methods), as in the historicity of their problems. It is of course
typical of Bergson's method that he should bring out the historicity of
scientific problems by showing their relevance to certain philosophical
problems. Problems nevertheless imply by necessity a particular kind of
historical method. Bergson believes it is essential 'to confer some
importance on the (often contingent) order in which problems were stated.
In this respect, science would be contingent, in part at least, and the history
of science would be part and parcel of science itself.' ('Discussion a la
Societe Fran~aise de Philosophie, 18 decembre 1902,' in Bergson 1972:
568). Thus Bergson repeatedly criticized any teaching of science that would
not simultaneously deal with the history of science, and he strongly
supported the reinstallation of a program in the history of science at the
College de France in 1919 (Castelli 1998: 279). His view of the history of
science is remarkable in at least two respects: he approaches it as a history
of scientific problems (for example, the problems of classical mechanics, or
the problems raised and solved by mechanistic conceptions of the living),
and in relation to certain philosophical questions (the problem of change,
the problem of creation).

An Anti-Positivist View of Problems

Bergson was in effect committed to a history of problems, to an
essentially problematising practice of the history of ideas. Reaching the
intuitive core of conceptual constructions did not insidiously imply falling
back on the kind of positivist view which the French epistemological
tradition so strongly condemned. It is tempting to go one step further and
acknowledge that Bergson actually provided what has not been properly
stated so far, namely, an anti-positivist notion of problems themselves. For
the anti-positivist emphasis on the priority of problems over propositions and
solutions (facts and theories) would be of little consequence if it did not

16
 transform the very notion of problem. And yet it is a mark of the
philosophical limitations of the anti-positivist tradition that it has not devoted
much effort to the conceptual clarification of the problem as such. As we
shall try to argue, Bergson does precisely this, and in even clearer terms than
Bachelard or Canguilhem. 3
Anti-positivism, for its own part, always threatens to degenerate into a
positivist view of problems as 'historically given,' or merely deduced from
the examination of possible 'moves' in a given situation, i.e. what it is
possible to say within the limits of a certain system of propositions and
concepts. Structuralism had to struggle with a positivist conception of
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structures, and it is no accident that what Deleuze targeted in the Logic of

Sense ultimately came down to a certain misrepresentation of the nature of
problems themselves: a structure is indeed nothing but an 'objective' system
of problem positions.
Now how does Bergson manage to lay the foundations of an anti-
positivist conception of problems? In a letter to Floris Delattre, he writes:
I consider an amateur in philosophy, the one who accepts the terms of an ordinary
problem as they come, and holds the problem as definitively posed, merely choosing
between apparent solutions which necessarily precede [preexistent] preexist his choice.
This is how Butler rejects Darwin's solution in favour of Lamarck's. But philosophizing
for real should mean at once creating the position of a problem and creating the solution.
[... ] I consider an amateur the one who chooses between ready-made solutions, as one
decides to register as a member of this or that political party. But I consider a philosopher
the one who creates the necessarily unique solution of the problem which he has posed
anew by the very effort of trying to solve it ('Lettre a Floris Delattre, 1935' in Bergson
1972: I 528).

These remarks provide the simplest definition of what is implied in a

positivist view of problems. Positivism resurfaces whenever the problem is
pictured as the mere disjunction of ready-made solutions, on the model of
questions and answers. In such a view, problems are considered as given,
and yet as truly secondary to their solutions, because they are entirely
designed after them, like neutralized doubles of supposedly pre-existent
propositions which may or must serve as responses. On the contrary, posing
a problem anew implies creating the terms according to which it is to be
stated, and finding the solution in the same stroke.
The passage of Difference and Repetition in which Deleuze denounces
the process whereby problems are neutralized whenever they are conceived
on the model of interrogations, merely rephrases Bergson: 'problems and
questions must no longer be traced from the corresponding propositions
which serve, or can serve, as responses. We know the agent of this illusion;
it is interrogation which, within the framework of a community,
dismembers problems and questions, and reconstitutes them in accordance
with the propositions of the common empirical consciousness - in other

17
 words, according to the probable truth of a simple doxa' (Deleuze 1994:
157). 4
The positivist view of problems eventually comes down to the illusion
that pictures the problem as a phantomatic double of its solutions. This
illusion itself can be explained by reference to our tendency to give too much
importance to the activity of problem-solving, at the expense of problem-
stating. As Bergson says in the Creative Mind: 'The truth is that in
philosophy and even elsewhere it is a question of finding the problem and
hence of posing it even more than of solving it. For a speculative problem is
solved as soon as it is well posed' (Bergson 1934: 51).
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Disagreement
Bergson, whether we like it or not, shares a common concern with
Bachelard, Koyre, Canguilhem, Foucault, Althusser (and Deleuze, which
goes without saying): a concern for what has been called a history of
problems. Not only does Bergson's actual conceptual practice confirm this,
but his method (or theory of philosophical practice) provides all the
underpinnings for a non-positivist view of problems. He can be considered
as the true purveyor of the theory of problems implicit in the anti-positivists'
epistemological practice.
This fact was not always acknowledged by those who reproached
Bergson for his rigid conception of science, or who classified him as a
'philosopher of experience'. But common problematics paradoxically
manifest themselves most clearly through this kind of disagreement
(Ranciere 1999: xii), or differential of interpretations. A common
problematic need not be stated as such, it does not require that any common
problem be stated. In a truly anti-positivist manner, we may say that it does
not need to be stated by both parties in the same way, or even stated at all.
The real discrepancy is of course not between anti-intellectualism and
intellectualism, irrationality and rationality, not even experience and
knowledge, subject and concept. It runs deeper, which means that it cannot
be grasped anywhere else than within philosophical practices themselves
- not in the types of 'philosophies' that these rather 'ideological'
designations try to capture, but in the working of certain operations and
procedures, and in the interpretations that allow them to function,
sometimes on condition that they become invisible.
Now where do we stand? There is no superior viewpoint. We must install
ourselves within the interpretative differential, where contrasting
interpretations and procedures play off each other. After opening a pair of
pliers to their widest possible angle (Foucault's scenography), we squeeze
them back to their pressure point (a common anti-positivist stance).
Somewhere along the way, we find that interpretations start diverging: it is

18
 the point where differences are at once minimal and maximal, the point of
contradiction where contradictories oscillate around a centre, the smallest
angle. It is there that we have a chance to find what separates Bergson from
the French epistemological tradition, in their greatest proximity.
An easy way out, as we have seen, could be found in emphasizing that
Bergson is not a historian of science, nor an epistemologist, nor even a
philosopher of science. He is a metaphysician, and a metaphysician of a
specific kind: a metaphysician of intuition. He thinks that a direct
apprehension of reality is possible when one thinks sub specie durationis, in
duration, as Merleau-Ponty reminds us. This, indeed, is distinctive of
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Bergson - it suffices to set him aside from the 'philosophers of the

concept,' those who are interested in the immanent dynamics of concepts,
what Cavailles refers to a 'dialectics.' But it does not quite help us. It is still
too general an answer. One must ask: what does it mean, as far as problems
are concerned, to craft a philosophy of intuition ? It is not enough merely to
recast concepts and systems in order to understand to which problems they
answer, or even to realize that scientists and philosophers create
unprecedented concepts to pose and solve problems of their own devising. It
is a matter of understanding problems themselves in terms of the possibility
of this superior form of knowledge which 'intuition' stands for. This is
where the debunking of false problems reveals itself as an essential
component of Bergson's overall strategy.

False Problems
If we retrace our steps, the trajectory appears clearly:
1. the first point consisted in showing that the anti-positivist stance gives
priority to concepts over facts;
2. a deeper move was then identified: that of giving priority to problems
over concepts and theories;
3. this reversal of priority was grounded in a renewed conception of
problems themselves;
4. the last step consists in showing that it is essential to any consistent anti-
positivist view of problems that one should be able to account for the
possibility of pseudo-problems. And this is where Bergson's
philosophical strategy parts with the anti-positivist epistemological
tradition (to reverse the chronological order of things).
Bergson does not simply insist on the necessity of assessing problems
before the solutions that theories and systems provide. He develops, as Gilles
Deleuze rightly emphasized, a genuine method of intuition whose first rule
can be stated as follows: 'Apply the test of true and false to problems
themselves. Condemn false problems and reconcile truth and creation at the
level of problems.' (Deleuze 1991: 15).

19
 There is an art of inventing problem positions that is assumed, yet never
taken up, in the works of the 'philosophers of the concept'. There is a
question they cannot really ask, because they lack a transcendental, truly
genetic conception of problem conditions, and this question is: 'how can this
constitutive power which resides in the problem be reconciled with a norm
of the true?' As Deleuze goes on: 'While it is relatively easy to define the
true and the false in relation to solutions whose problems have already been
stated, it seems much more difficult to say in what the true and the false
consist when applied to the process of stating problems.' (ibid., 16).
It will not do 'to define the truth or falsity of a problem by the possibility
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or impossibility of its being solved.' (ibid., 17). Insoluble or intractable

problems are often held as pseudo-problems. But this, of course, runs
contrary to the anti-positivist principle, for it reverts the proper order of
things by putting solutions (or their absence) first, thus resorting to a merely
extrinsic determination of problems. Yet how are we to reach the 'intrinsic
determination of the false in problems' (ibid.)? For Bachelard and
Canguilhem, for Althusser and even Foucault, there are no genuinely
insoluble problems (remember Marx: 'Humanity only sets itself problems
that it is capable of solving'). But there are indeed no false problems either:
there are only unstatable problems, the effect of which can be characterized
negatively as lacks, lapses, blanks, gaps, blindspots - and positively as
symptoms (Althusser 1968: 27).
This picture of things does not offer any grips for a genetic account of
false or badly stated problems. At best, general principles are invoked, to the
effect that epistemological problems should be 'corrected,' yet always in the
negative mode which consists in reaffirming the priority of problems over
solutions. Against the ideological question and its 'necessarily closed space,'
Althusser stresses the need 'to open up, in some other place, a new space -
the space required by a proper position of the problem, which does not
presuppose its solution.' (ibid., 63). But to carry out such a plan to the end,
up to the transcendental conditions of the problem, is precisely what a purely
critical theory cannot achieve. It does not make room for an art of stating
problems in their singularity, it does not teach how to debunk or undo
specific false problems. It is either too empirical or too abstract. Sooner or
later, it is bound to fall back on a positivist view of problems, since the only
criteria at hand are solutions themselves. One can only trace back problems,
or rather infer their existence on the basis of the concepts that are supposed
to express and distort them. There is no method for probing problems
themselves, no sounding in the depths of problems, to speak like Bergson.
Accordingly, there is no genuine criticism of problems, only a criticism of
solutions. There is no truly intrinsic determination of false and true in
problems themselves. Invention at the level of problem positions remains

20
 something inexplicable. The only authorized moves consist in demystifying,
unveiling and laying bare a problem that was never posed. But such a
problem, by definition, can never be false, it is at best unstatable (or at least
was so). And it can never be properly said to be invented either:
philosophy's role is merely to acknowledge its presence or absence.
Bergson, by contrast, is not satisfied with uncovering the problem:
[... ] I mean that its solution exists [as soon as it is well posed], although it may remain
hidden and, so to speak, covered up: the only thing left to do is to uncover it. But stating the
problem is not simply uncovering, it is inventing. Discovery, or uncovering, has to do with
what already exists, actually or virtually; it was therefore certain to happen sooner or later.
Invention gives being to what did not exist; it might never have happened (Bergson 1934:
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53).
The critical stance can only uncover, it is bound to remain uncreative. If false
problems are ever debunked, they cannot be explained - why this false
problem rather than that one? how is it that we have begged the question by
projecting the answer in the question? why precisely this question, and this
answer? why now? Curiously enough, it is often the alleged partisans of the
concept which display the most naive and psychologising view of problems.
Bachelard's 'dialectics,' for example, often sounds like an elaboration of the
Brunschvicgian 'activity' of reason, conceived on the model of judgement.
The criticism of problems amounts to drawing boundaries, refusing,
overthrowing. 'It is fruitless, says Bachelard, to put a false problem at the
origin of a real one, it is even absurd to compare alchemy with nuclear
physics. [... ] Science has nothing to gain from false continuities, where what
is at stake is frank dialectics.' (Bache lard 1953: 104 ). At best then, false
problems boil down to problems that could not be solved when they were
formulated, problems that needed to be dropped and replaced by the right
ones by means of an 'epistemological break'.
Spelling out all the implications of the Bergsonian critique of false
problems would require a systematic investigation of the interplay of
intuition and intelligence in the operations of problem-making: dismantling
and debunking, stating and posing, answering and solving. Bergson's own
philosophical practice provides glimpses of what an inventive art of problem
positions, as opposed to the mechanical techniques of problem-solving,
would look like. In the case of metaphysical false problems (nothingness,
disorder), it is as if intelligence, triggered by intuition, was folded back unto
itself and forced to undo its own constructions, thus providing the
'intellectual counterpart of the intellectualist illusion,' to quote from La
Pensee et le Mouvant (Bergson 1934: 69; During 2000). But only intuition
can expose the wrong gesture or false movement that caused the problem to
be badly posed in the first place.

21
 Conclusion
Carved out, so to speak, according to its natural articulations, the
disagreement between Bergson and the 'philosophers of the concept' has
taken a new shape. Only Bergson has managed to extend the anti-positivist
view of the positivity or priority of problems to a conception of their
intrinsic determination. This move, which Deleuze singled out as the main
characteristic of the method of intuition, necessarily involves probing
problems according to a norm of the true and the false, for this is really all
that is intrinsic about them. It also explains why Bergson cannot be captured
in Foucault's net: he is neither a philosopher of experience, nor a philosopher
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of the concept, he is a philosopher of the concept as experience whose taste

for more fluid and flexible concepts does not quite match the more familiar
ways of 'frank dialectics'.
Paris X-Nanterre

References
1. Cavailles' opposition runs between 'dialectics' and 'activity,' the latter being modelled
after a mainstream neo-Kantian philosophy.
2. See 'Bergson se faisant' ('Bergson in the making'), his tribute to Bergson, pronounced in
1959, with its dialectic of 'Bergson' and 'Bergsonism'.
3. A careful study of Canguilhem's 'Concept and Life' (Canguilhem, 1970: 335-364) would
qualify this statement. This text gives a very useful clue to the understanding of Bergson's
own theory of problems. Problems are described as an expression of life itself: it is in fact
life which poses problems about life, even if man alone is able to raise truly false
problems.
4. Also compare Deleuze 1994: 158 and Bergson 1934: 51. See During 2001: 67-69.

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