Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #153974 in Books
• Published on: 1991-01-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Synopsis
Examines the philosophy of Henri Bergson, explains his concepts of duration, memory, and elan vital, and discusses the influence of science on Bergson.

Customer Reviews

A worthy read
It is important to point out that Deleuze is a philosopher both expounding and commenting on Bergson's philosophy. In this book he attempts to connect together the important aspects of Bergson's work ranging from his very earliest treatise "Time and Free Will (TFW)", "Matter and Memory (MM)" to "Creative Evolution (CE)". These are the major texts but he also considers the others such as "Mind Energy", "The Creative Mind" and "The Two Sources of Morality and Religion".

The first of these introduces the concept of duration which is significantly different from the modern idea of time. It is Deleuze's task to join together Bergson's earliest idea of duration and to both see how this concept changes within each of the major texts as well as how it connects them. For example, the idea of duration firstly assumed a kind of psycholigical time or the time the human being actually experiences in his/her everyday life. This is duration in TFW. In MM, Bergson attempts to connect the mind and the body without necessarily letting go of these dualisms but by bypassing them. In CE, duration becomes something physical rather than purely subjective. Bergsonism attempts to connect these issues in a coherent framework linked to the idea of difference and virtuality. This means that there is not just a single duration, i.e. that of the subject, but matter itself also undergoes its own duration.

The concept of virtuality maintains its mystery throughout perhaps because the idea of wholeness only makes sense as long as it is never totally explicit. This comes out more clearly in Bortoft's "The Wholeness of Nature". In other words the virtual differentiates itself to become actual and so is very different from the possible. The virtual is in fact not directly related to the actual in any linear sense.

This is one of Deleuze's best books in the sense that it follows a plan elucidating the three main aspects of Bergson's philosophy: duration, memory and the elan vital. It also unifies them which was never something which stood out in Bergson's work. However Deleuze is a very different philosopher from Bergson, Bergson writes using his principles of philosophy, Deleuze's writing is far more complex although in this text it is remarkably lucid. Anyone not familiar with Bergson's work should read his three central works: TFW, MM and CE in that order, Deleuze's Bergsonism then becomes comprehensible. It also pays to re-read Deleuze's works e.g. this text and his essay on "Bergson's Conception of Difference" (in "The New Bergson", edited Mullarkey) several times in order to get used to the Deleuzian way of writing and the very non-intuitive ideas present therein (intuitive used in the common sense not Bergson's).

Deleuze's book succeeds in some ways but not in others, maybe this is the reason why he continues to elucidate his work in books such as "Difference and Repetition". Nonetheless a worthy read.