It is important for the theory of knowledge to understand the factors involved in the generation of the capacities of knowledge. In the history of modern philosophy, knowledge is generally held to originate in either one or two sources, and the debates about these sources between philosophers have concerned their existence, or legitimacy. Furthermore, some philosophers have advocated scepticism about the human capacity to understand the origins of knowledge altogether. However, the developmental aspects of knowledge have received relatively little attention (...) both by past philosophers and in current philosophical discussions. This dissertation provides a historical approach to this developmental problem of knowledge by interpreting the developmental theories of knowledge of Maine de Biran (1766–1824) and Henri Bergson (18591941) from the perspective of a theory of the ‘generative factors of knowledge.’ It first studies the philosophies of Maine de Biran and Bergson separately and then brings together and compares the metaphilosophical aims drawn from these philosophers. The dissertation’s novel analysis, provided by its theory and structure, has far-reaching consequences. From a wide point of view, it fills in considerable scholarly gaps and provides great opportunities for future research in the study of the history of philosophy. From more specific points of view, it provides its most decisive contributions in such metaphysical and epistemological topics as the nature of causality, self-generated activity, the role of effort in knowing and learning, the complementary relationship between philosophy and science, and the non-conceptual basis of knowledge. (shrink)

Physical processes manifest an objective order that science manages to discover. Commonly, it is considered that these processes obey the “laws of nature.” Bergson disputes this idea which ultimately constitutes a kind of Platonism. In contrast, he develops the idea that physical processes are a particular case of automatic behaviors. In this sense, they imply a motor memory immanent to matter, whose actions are triggered by some perceptions. This approach is obviously panpsychist. It gives matter a certain consciousness, even if (...) the latter is different in nature from our consciousness. In some respects, this approach is similar to contemporary panpsychism because it claims that the psychic is a fundamental characteristic of nature, causally active. But it is also original because it does not constitute a theory of the origin of mind in nature. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Deleuze’s treatment of the Nietzschean problem of nihilism. Of all the major figures in contemporary continental thought, Deleuze is at once one of the most luminous, and practically a lone voice in suggesting that nihilism may successfully be overcome. Whether or not he is correct on this point is thus a commanding question in relation to our understanding of the issue. Many commentators on Nietzsche have argued that his project of overcoming nihilism is destined to failure (...) because of the affinity between the problem of nihilism and the logic of negation. While Nietzsche wants an absolute affirmation of life, Spinoza’s principle that “all determination is negation,” as well as Hegel’s dialectical conception of negation, suggest that affirmation free of negation is not possible. However, some commentators indicate that Deleuze successfully shows how overcoming nihilism is possible because his “logic of difference” allows for an affirmation which is not dialectically reappropriated by negation. This paper argues that beyond such logical considerations, there are metaphysical and existential reasons why Deleuze’s interpretation of nihilism fails to show that it can be overcome. For Deleuze, the overcoming of nihilism hinges not just on a logic of difference, but on a radical interpretation of Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal return as “selective being.” Drawing on recent scholarship and on Nietzsche’s own writings I argue that this is not a tenable interpretation, and also, more importantly, that the metaphysical and existential implications of this understanding of eternal return reinstate nihilism at the very point where it is supposedly overcome. Moreover, I argue that there are attendant ethical and political dangers to Deleuze’s position on nihilism. (shrink)

According to What Is Philosophy?, all disciplines combat opinion, but art fights most effectively because art and opinion both pertain to sensibility. Yet, this common provenance also makes the line dividing art and opinion porous. The stakes of this porosity are perhaps most visible in the relation of art to life. Although art must avoid two forms of death, ‘chaos’ and ‘opinion’, Deleuze and Guattari don't treat chaos and opinion equally. The fundamental distinction between good death and bad death, between (...) death by chaos and death by opinion, has a number of problematic consequences. Perhaps the most consequential: opinion is deadlier than death itself. (shrink)

Partimos da perspectiva que nos convida a observar que a leitura que Bergson faz sobre Leibniz tanto nos seus cursos, quanto em Possível e o Real e em A Evolução Criadora participam da construção de um modelo de individuação no âmbito filosofia bergsoniana. No curso sobre o opúsculo De rerum natura originatione, Bergson propõe uma avaliação sobre o finalismo metafísico leibniziano a partir da noção do possível e sua relação com o princípio da harmonia pré-estabelecida. Neste artigo, pretende-se mostrar que (...) as implicações decorrentes da leitura de Leibniz são conservadas até as proposições sobre o elã vital e as tendências. (shrink)

This paper explores the influence of Henri Bergson’s (1859–1941) philosophy of time on three early twentieth-century British philosophers: Karin Costelloe-Stephen (1889–1953), Hilda Oakeley (1867–1950), and May Sinclair (1863–1946). I demonstrate that three central claims of Bergson’s account of temporal experience (novelty, memory, and indivisibility) were creatively incorporated into their accounts of time. All these philosophers place time at the centre of their philosophical systems, so this study of their views on time and temporality can deepen our understanding of their systems (...) more broadly. Further, this study helps us appreciate the reception of Bergson’s thought in British philosophy after it was ferociously attacked by Bertrand Russell in 1912, and can provide more detailed contours on the joint fortunes of temporal experience and Bergson's thought in the history of twentieth-century philosophy. I conclude by emphasizing reasons why contemporary philosophers should pay particular attention to the three figures’ treatment of Bergson. (shrink)

Despite the distance between the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and of Deleuze, it is possible to discover not only analogue complicity with regard to thecriticism addressed to Husserl. In the aesthetic, for example, we note that the last thoughtsof Merleau-Ponty, present mainly in The visible and the invisible, are a constant referencefor the works that Deleuze dedicates to the painter Francis Bacon. In the present researchwe expect to define the passages on account of the reading of Husserl, and to show thepoint (...) of contact between Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze. So, we hope to change the image of apparent indifference with regard to understanding their philosophies. (shrink)

This paper discusses the meaning of the concept of ‘second-order observation’ used by Niklas Luhmann. Luhmann identifies second-order observation as a defining characteristic of modern world society. According to Luhmann, all social systems construct a social reality on the basis of the observation of observations. Rating agencies in the economy or the peer-review process in the academic system are examples of social mechanisms manifesting second-order observation. Social media also represent organized second-order observation. The paper suggests that in a society based (...) on second-order observation, ‘genuine pretending’ is an adequate mode of existence. This notion is derived from the Daoist text Zhuangzi. It indicates a disassociation from social roles which allows their performers to exercise these roles with ease and, at the same time, maintain a state of sanity. (shrink)

Nos proponemos pensar una teoría de la acción implícita en la filosofía deleuziana del espacio. El concepto de profundidad, en el que se despliega el carácter de la intensidad como afirmación de la diferencia, funciona como presupuesto de esta teoría. A partir de dos textos de Ruyer y Simondon mencionados por Deleuze, los afectos aparecen como expresión de aquella dimensión espacial en el sujeto. La profundidad se articula a su vez con las síntesis temporales en un recorrido que encuentra en (...) la noción de pliegue el concepto adecuado para pensar un sujeto de la acción alternativo al yo sustancial. (shrink)

Se propone una lectura fenomenológica en torno al concepto bergsoniano de durée. Para esto, se revisa el registro y recepción de Bergson en la tradición fenomenológica. Al advertir la cercanía entre Bergson y la fenomenología, es analizable la durée fenomenológicamente. Es decir, la duración entendida como constitución de conciencia, de los objetos reales del mundo y de la relación entre la conciencia que aprehende y la experiencia aprehendida. Con ello, destaca el método de la intuición o simpatía intelectual en clave (...) de método de división, a la vez, la posibilidad de conocimiento objetivo y esencial respecto de la realidad. (shrink)

This paper deals with Parmenides of Elea’s way of inquiry about reality and the opposition emerging from it. In more detail, it analyses how Parmenides’ concepts of logos and doxa present some analogies with Bergson’s thoughts about duration and Time and how these theories influenced the understanding of visual media, especially the cinematographic camera. This survey will allow us to demonstrate that some scientific theories about space that accompanied the development of the cinematographic camera progressively allowed for the birth of (...) a new understanding of this device. In the last section of this study, we will then focus on the way through which the film camera - understood as an intelligent device - passes from the sphere of doxa to the sphere of logos. (shrink)

Using the work of philosopher Henri Bergson to examine the nature of movement and memory, this article contributes to recent research on the role of the body in learning mathematics. Our aim in this paper is to introduce the ideas of Bergson and to show how these ideas shed light on mathematics classroom activity. Bergson’s monist philosophy provides a framework for understanding the materiality of both bodies and mathematical concepts. We discuss two case studies of classrooms to show how the (...) mathematical concepts of number and function are themselves mobile and full of potentiality, open to deformation and the remapping of the possible. Bergson helps us look differently at mathematical activity in the classroom, not as a closed set of distinct interacting bodies groping after abstract concepts, but as a dynamic relational assemblage. (shrink)

Philosophers have thought more about the nature of thinking than about anything else. After Plato and Aristotle, philosophers’ main concern was to promote good, that is, correct, thinking. Because correct thinking was achieved best in propositional statements, thinking became a matter of logic, and logic became a discipline dealing with the formulation of true predicative sentences.In the twentieth century, many philosophers expressed their dissatisfaction with this view. Some, such as Heidegger, have pointed to the ontological presuppositions of a logic that (...) makes truth a matter of correspondence between predicative sentences and the reality of states of affairs. Other philosophers, such as Deleuze, have .. (shrink)

In Bergsonism, Deleuze refers to Bergson's concept of an ‘open society’, which would be a ‘society of creators’ who gain access to the ‘open creative totality’ through acting and creating. Deleuze and Guattari's political philosophy is oriented toward the goal of such an open society. This would be a democracy, but not in the sense of the rule of the actually existing people, but the rule of ‘the people to come,’ for in the actually existing situation, such a people is (...) ‘lacking’. When the people becomes a society of creators, the result is a society open to the future, creativity and the new. Their openness and creative freedom is the polar opposite of the conformism and ‘herd mentality’ condemned by Deleuze and Nietzsche, a mentality which is the basis of all narrow nationalisms. It is the freedom of creating and commanding, not the Kantian freedom to obey Reason and the State. This paper uses Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, and Deleuze and Guattari's Kafka: For a Minor Literature, A Thousand Plateaus and What is Philosophy? to sketch Deleuze and Guattari's conception of the open society and of a democracy that remains ‘to come’. (shrink)

It has gone largely unnoticed that when Deleuze opposes the “private thinker” to the “public professor,” he is invoking the existential thought of Lev Shestov. The public professor defends established values and preaches submission to the demands of reason and the State; the private thinker opposes thought to reason, “idiocy” to common sense, a people to come to what exists. Private thinkers are solitary, singular and untimely, forced to think against consensus and “the crowd.” Deleuze takes from Shestov and Kierkegaard (...) the idea that genuine thinking manifests itself in a thinking which rebels against rational necessity, a theme central to Shestov’s leading French interpreter, Benjamin Fondane. Although Deleuze at first expresses doubts as to whether Shestov’s critique of reason can overcome the legislative reason of Kant, or whether it is entirely free of ressentiment, I argue that Shestov and Fondane’s anti-rationalism is more radical than Deleuze sometimes admits, and show how Deleuze’s attitude toward Shestov became more unreservedly positive over the years. On the other hand, against Shestov and Fondane, I agree with Deleuze that the private thinker is in solidarity with the “strange powers” which can remake the world, and thus with “the people to come.” Nonetheless, I argue that Deleuze’s philosophy cannot form the basis of a politics of egalitarian consensus, but that “the people to come” can only be a “broken chain” of untimely and singular exceptions. (shrink)

Tässä artikkelissa käsittelen Henri Bergsonin (1859–1941) intuition käsitettä ja sen suhdetta hänen filosofiseen menetelmäänsä. Bergsonin on nähty tarkoittavan intuitiolla yhtäältä filosofian metodia ja toisaalta tiettyä älyyn verrattavaa filosofialle ainutlaatuista tiedon muotoa. Esitän, että Bergsonille intuitio on samanaikaisesti näitä molempia. Se on todellisuuden ajattelemista kestona, sisäistä jatkuvuuttamme muistuttavana liikkeenä. Intuitiossa tavoitetaan todellisuuden luonne sikäli kuin se on läsnä myös meissä itsessämme tällaisena jatkuvuutena. Metodologisesti se on todellisuuden tarkastelua ajallisuuden ja muutoksen perspektiivistä. Tiedon muotona se on välitöntä ymmärrystä tarkastelun kohteesta itsestään.