060 - Bergson, Duration, Time, and Hegel

It is said that French philosopher Henri Bergson was the best known philosopher in his day during the early 20th century.  In fact, when giving a lecture in New York City, he caused the first traffic jam the city had ever seen.  

Although presently he is less prominent, there was much reason for his positive perception back then in philosophy circles. His concepts of duration, intuition, élan vital, and memory took on the established determinism of the day.  And Bergsonism is just as relevant as ever, as unfortunately naturalistic materialism remains the solidly entrenched dominant position.  

He was even one of the very few philosophers bold enough to broach the subject of comedy (Hegel also bravely ventured into this territory as well).  

All this is reviewed in the current episode.  Plus some thoughts on Bergson by my comedian daughter Jacqueline. 

Transcript

Gregory Novak 0:00

Hello, this is Gregory Nowak. This is the cunning of Geist. Episode 60. Welcome back. The purpose of this podcast is to present a way of looking at the world that is different from the materialistic conception. So many people have today. There is no stone left unturned here at the cunning of guys podcast. We explore philosophy science and psychology. Try to stay as up-to-date as possible with the goal that to show that we have minds that. Mine's are ultimately connected that minded matter form one hole for all time. And that there is purpose in the universe. Not that the end is known, but the continual climb continues for greater freedom and consciousness of spirit. And this particular episode, I will be exploring the philosophy of Henri. Bergson the. French philosopher. And I hope to show how his work is brilliantly original and has direct correspondence to so much that we've been talking about here in the podcast regarding Hagle young. Charles Pearson. So many others. Berkson provides a very unique view of the reality of our existence and what it means to be alive. And specifically in reviewing Bergson's work, I was struck by how much, his philosophy concurs with all that I've been saying here for, for the last 59 episodes. His concepts of duration intuition. Towel and memory lead us productively into many areas we have covered before, including left-brain right-brain dichotomy. Hay goes for That creativity is inherent in the universe. All I hate going That the core feature of the universe is that it is alive and creative. And that becoming an evolving creative process is the central fundamental aspect of being itself. Interestingly, Berkson also wrote an important essay in comedy and showed how comedy is an interruption of the real into the autonomous rigid patterns of daily existence. And I'll be getting into this at the end of the episode as well. But first some background. From my previous work and the problems associated with time, I was not really knowledgeable of his philosophy to any great extent. I, uh, was reading him before I began studying Hagle. This is over 10 years ago. And I would hear about Berkson now. And then I said, I bought one of his books. And I was particularly interested in his notion of duration, but I never really got into it. Until now in preparing for this episode. So. First. Let's provide some background on Henri Bergson. He was born in Paris in 1859 to Jewish parents. He originally trained in mathematics, but switched to philosophy. And it's funny, his math teacher was very disappointed with this and said, quote, you could have been a mathematician. You will be a mere philosopher and quote. His doctoral thesis is where he first outlined his theory of duration. This was published in 1889 under the title time and free will. Is Published book was matter in memory in 1896. This is followed by the, the, um, essays on comedy laughter an essay on the meaning of the comic in 1900. Then the book creative evolution in 1907. It's followed by duration and simultaneity with reference dine Stein's theory in 1922. And later the two sources of morality and religion. In 1932 and he passed away in 1941. Now. Many feel that in the early 20th century, he became probably the most famous philosopher around the William James was a big fan wrote about him. Bertrand Russell did as well. Although Russell did take some issue with his notion of intuition and we're going to be speaking about an intuition. I'm in a moment. In 1913. Berkson spoke at Columbia university in New York city. And he caused actually the first traffic jam ever seen on Broadway. As I said he was very popular. Back then. During world war one, he served diplomatic duties for France, working with American president Woodrow Wilson to help form the league of nations. And during this period, he became actually more famous for his political work. Then his philosophical work. as I said, he continued to publish the hope. Even after the war. I mentioned he did the book on Einstein. And speaking of his book on Einstein actually had the book. Uh, he sees publication of the book because he, he felt that his knowledge of mathematics was not really strong enough to counter Einstein's position adequately. However he did not mention that his book should not be published in his will. So after he died, the publishers resumed publication of the, of the work on Einstein's theory. Now. Germany conquered France in 1940 in Berkson refuse to not identify as a Jew in Nazi controlled France. He also refused special treatment, offered him by the puppet French Vichy government. Rather than the tough Nazi antisemitic regulations. He died a year later. And asked his wife to burn all his notes and papers, which he complied with. The Stanford encyclopedia philosophy knows that this is one reason that his popularity dropped off, but there were other reasons. After world war II, a whole new group of philosophers emerged in particularly the existentialist, such as Sandra Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger and Derrida. These intellectuals had a powerful sway in post-war environment in Europe. However Bergson's reputation was revitalized by the French philosopher. Julie's Deleuze who summed up his admiration in a 1988 book entitled Berkson ism. And now as an aside, Deleuze was a big critic of Hagle and this might suggest that Berkson was as well. But some background We have discussed losing the Hagle study group on Facebook from many years, many times. And. Several people that have studied dilute and Hagle note that he does not really represent Hagle adequately. So that's sort of the common Of many of the people in the Hagle study group. And also to counter that several scholars have noted a clear connection at Berks into Hagle. Uh, and, uh, you can certainly look at Berkson through the lens of Hagle and see how we develop many of Hegel's core concepts. He wasn't working with that intention, but he nevertheless did. And offered fresh new insight and perspectives on many things that Hagle develop. For example, if you want to read more in this, there's a great paper. It's called miss slash reading. Berkson on time and life and matter by Suzanne Gurlack was published last year. And I also plan to show how Bergson's genius really incorporates so much of what Hagle had to say and what we've been covering in these podcasts. So let's get into his, his philosophy. First, I want to cover duration. Now, this is a subtle concept is different from what we've talked about here before, but I think you'll, you'll see what I'm talking about, how it relates to everything we've been covering. And hopefully it'll be somewhat easy for you. You all to understand. Berkson believed the time or change was an essential component of the universe. And it was separate from space. When somebody just looks at times as an abstract measure. They are missing the full picture. Yes time can be viewed that way. You can look at it as a fourth. Dimension is four dimensional space time. But what that doesn't do is contain the, the flow of the moments that are lived. Uh, that relate to each other and that are live. You can't just break time down into small bits, like one of Xenos paradoxes. It loses. Any meaning then, for example, I, there are several Xeno paradoxes. We've covered them before. One is that I cannot walk to the other side of the room. I'll never reach the other side of the room because before I get there, I have to go half white. And then once they get halfway to the other side, I have to go halfway again. And then I have to hit go halfway again and so on. And so, and And I'll never reach the other side. Of course you will. Duration. is what it means to live in experience. And of course, you'll get to the other side. And. Our conception of time. Shouldn't just be one distinct moment changing to the next distinct moment, but it should be viewed more as a flow. a good example is a movie. You can take a movie and you can look at it frame by frame, but this is not a movie. The movie must be seen as a flow duration. You can take the movie, the godfather and look at it one frame at a time, but that does not capture what the godfather film is all about. And the such pure determination. The belief that one thing causes another and this determination, pure determination covers all in everything. All man of stations. Well, Berkson believed that was a bogus concept. That there's a whole field of activity going on here, which includes, it's not saying there's no such thing as cause and effect, but it also includes creativity and free will. These are part of The field that's going on here and a degree of randomness. This is life itself. Now Bergson was contemporaneous to Einstein, as I've said, and he even held a debate with him. And he was aware that Einstein lumps space and time together and to space time. But as I mentioned, Einstein's universe is a four dimensional block universe. And as we've talked about here, this is a dead universe, dead like a stone. There's no freedom at all. That this is not the world that we sense around us. We can feel our freedom. We can feel alive. For Berkson duration was qualitative, not quantitative. And that's a big difference. It was a temporal heterogeneity in which he says, quote, several conscious states are organized into a hole and they permeate one another. And gradually gained a richer content and quote. Uh, he provides a very good, Picture of how to look at this concept of duration. Picture tools, two spools that are separated by a distance, say a foot or so. And there's a tape running between them and the tape is coming from the spool on the right. And it's being wound up into the spool on the left. The important thing about this image. Is that the tape is continuous. There's not a bunch of separate bits. And we experienced the whole duration of the portion of the tape that we see. And this also brings us to an important concept of memory, which is symbolized by the spool on The spool on the right is the future. The tape we see is the present. And the spool on the left is the past. And it's the spool on the right. The future comes, pushes the tape. To the present and then into the past. But the key thing here is the spool on the right. The future is not written yet. We are actively determining what goes on the tape. We see that part of the duration that becomes part of the past. And, and this influences us And the choices we make now influence what comes at us from the spool on the right. So the spool and the right is open. It's open to what choices we make in the, in the durational moment. Uh, of the present. and also what, what has occurred in the past. Now another good example is the color wheel. You've all seen these color wheels, decorators use them. Color's can not really be separate and distinct. They all flow into each other. They all have a little bit more blue, a little bit more great. And from that, you know, thousands and millions of colors can be, can be generated. Yeah, you'll get one section of greens and then they slowly will morph into the next color. On a personal note Funny story. When I was in the first grade, we were being taught how to read and write. And one of the first things we had to do was learn how to write the names of the colors. And if you could write all seven colors down. When you would get a color crown. Which is a crown, which had the seven colors on them. Now I had a hard time with this because it wasn't that the reading and writing was so difficult. I had a hard time saying that there were actually seven different colors. I saw a spectrum of, of different shades. and the teacher was presenting them as absolute distinct entities with a name where I saw a flow, a gradual flow from one color to another. of course I didn't recognize that I didn't express it that way at the time, but I just sort of balked at the exercise because something inside of me was rebelling. Now as an adult and looking back, I see what the problem was. Time is the same way we experienced the flow, the whole gestalt. It never stops becoming, and this is central to Agalia aneurysm. As we know it. Hagle puts becoming at the center of the science of logic and further with is And for Stott hago shows the difference between left brain thinking and right brain reasoning. The left brain breaks things down into parts and misses the big picture, the right brain sees the whole, the duration. As the rolling stones, guitarist, Keith Richard says it's not just the rock. It's the role as well. And we did a whole episode on And for stunt last year, episode 21. So please check that out. If you haven't listened to it already. Music is another great example of duration. Speaking of the rolling stones. It is not just note by note, that makes a song. It is the duration of the melody, the harmony, the rhythm, the point counterpoint, the bridge that all fits together in the duration of the song. That's the song. We remember him. We will stick in her head and we'll sing. In the shower. Okay, let's move on to another key component of Bergson's philosophy and that is intuition. And by intuition here. Berkson believes that this is how one understands duration. He does not feel one can understand duration by immobile concepts or by a specific words put together. Intuition is normally things in themselves. It is right brain knowing it is not some abstraction of things. He uses an example of a city. You can look at pictures of the city. You can look at it. Map of the city. But you can never know the city until you go there and walk around, go to the restaurant, see people, et cetera, go to the shops. And I've used here before the example of the map and the territory, the left brain is the map. Whereas the right brain is walking around on the land, walking on the territory, experiencing the land. Eh, in, in, in reality. The right brain is intuitive wholeness. The left brain is detailed. The right brain is experienced. The left brain is analysis. As a reminder for more of right brain left brain dichotomy, please see episode 10, the divided brain and the unhappy consciousness. Now. Let's move to the third important concept. Uh, Bergson's that of Ilan Vitale. Well, or the creative in pulse. And this is essentially Bergson's reaction to blind, random Darwinism. And we've discussed my objection to this narrow view of evolution here before. Uh, I discussed this particularly in episode 26. Total teleology evolution, Aristotle and Hagle. And again, Eh, just like me Berkson is not rejecting Darwinism. But it just he's believes that there's more going on than blind, random mutation and survival as do I. And this is also a similar thing that happened with Bergson's debate with Einstein. He did not agree with any of the mathematics behind Einstein's theory. I wasn't trying to prove Einstein's mathematics or physics wrong. It just, he felt there was much more going on. then, then what Einstein was proposing and he got into the thing of simultaneity and. you know, the fact that time slows down when you're traveling faster toward the speed of light, et cetera. So it wasn't just a naive. Review of Einstein. It was very detailed. Now by Alon Vitaly. Towel Berkson claims that there's an initial impulse, a life force, a vital life force that exists in the universe. And while he does not use this term, it is similar to Hegel's Geist. He believes in this concept because a purely mechanical view would offer no real positive change. It would just be a reorganization of existing parts. it's hard to explain how we would get here. Ourselves. Through blind. Random mutation alone. And, Ilan the Tao. Is a, is a way to, to explain this. Eh, Charles Pierce also held a similar view. And what's importantly though, that. Although the sounds like purposeful. It's not like there's some end. state that that is visualized by some foreign entity. It? No, it's just that there is pure creativity in the present moment. And. The the T loss of life. Berkson contends is in the origin, not in the end of life. To put this in, in Again, only in terms is for spirit to know itself. That's the purpose? That's the goal. That's the drive. That's just pushing us forward. and, um, It is this goal that is taken up and other than this goal, there is no ended ending imagined. It's not like, oh, we're going to all end up in heaven. And never die and never know there's not one end state. It's a continual process. And it's a continual process of, of a pursuit of greater freedom. And consciousness. Life is creation. This is fundamental for Hagle and for Bergson as well as Pierce. Berkson considers novelty as a result of pure uninhibited, undetermined creativity. This is his. Concept of Ilan. Vitel. Now let's move on to another important notion of his memory. Memory is a very important part of his philosophy. And it also ties into much of what we've been covering. Uh, over the last several years in this podcast. He wrote about memory in his second principle book matter and memory published in 1896. He identifies two types of memory. One is more the result of habit formation. This is more bodily muscle memory. If you will, the second is more transcendent and reaches into the past. And importantly, not only of the individual, but the pastor, the group, the species all the way back to the universe itself. Now the second type of memory. Is very consistent with what we had been discussing before. In particular Young's collective unconscious. We discussed the store as a memory in detail in episode 56. In that episode, I detailed how the collective memory is not just. Young's idea, but it was also embraced by Plato. And also more currently by sociologists Emile, Durkheim, and Maurice, how VAX. And philosopher Charles Pierce. And even the Eastern concept of reincarnation implies a storehouse of memory that exists as a reality. New age, thinking new age thinkers referred to it as the Akashic records. Rudolph Steiner and people like that. And we've also discussed your server times, contemporary biologist, Rupert Sheldrake and his notion of morphic resonance, that the memory is plays such an important role in this. And it's something we can all tap into. But back to Berkson. In matter in memory, Berkson use the image of an inverted cone. With the tip of the cone, touching a two dimensional plane. And the body of the cone rising above the plane and increasing in size. Now the plane represents our finite plane of existence. The cone represents the impact of memory on us in the present But it also shows them memories. We were able to access as we move deeper up the body of the cone. And of course the cone expands as the memories expand as we go deeper and deeper. Memories of her own life and that go beyond her own life Our species all life in the universe itself. Let me call it Simon Sullivan on this quote. This is a memory that is more neutral and ultimately a personal, we might even say inhuman, and then it is not selective or connected to the needs of the organism is the letter exists on the plane of matter. It has less memory as such then a general passiveness. Ultimately, there's also a species memory, or even a kind of cosmic memory of the universe. And then it extends far beyond the individual and quote. Again, this is similar to a lot of what we covered with, uh, Charles Pierce. Let me quote Berkson himself on this quote. For that or recollection should appear in consciousness. It is necessary that it should descend from the Heights of pure memory down to the precise point where action is taking place. In other words, it is from the present that the appeal to which memory spawns comes and is from the sensory motor elements of present action that a memory borrows, the warmth, which gives it life and quote. So as you can see. So much of Bergson's philosophy is in sync with the tenants presented in the podcast over the last few years. Now. One last point I want to cover, and this is on humor. Bergson is one of the very few philosophers who actually was brave enough to address the subject of Uh, he wrote this in a, in a book laughter an essay on the meaning of the comic published in 1900. Hagle was also one of the brave few. He discussed humor briefly. And I'm not going to get into it here, but I point you to a wonderful paper by Martin Donahoe entitled. Hey, Galean comedy. And which he states that Hagle, in fact, the anticipated. Berkson in terms of his view on what makes something But moving back to Berkson and comedy. As an interesting aside, as I was preparing for this episode, I recalled that my daughter Jacqueline. Comic herself. Had mentioned she had done some independent study of Berkson. So in, in preparation, I followed up with her. And after w what's your recall that Here's what you wrote back to me. And she asked that her words be taken is not formal. Quote. What I got from Berkson. What struck with me was that he suggests that people laugh when say the one person in the tribe is behaving in a way that's rigidly mechanical and unconscious In favor of consciously and adaptively. This is the key distinction. or duality, he considers rigidity slash mechanical versus conscious transcending and adaptiveness. He carries this idea through on all levels. Rigidity of movement, rigidity of ideas, and it can occur on the micro level within a single sentence or joke or on a macro level, the comedic concede of entire creative work or the humor of a character. He suggests that the greatness of humans lies in rising above and consciousness. Being able to adapt to scenarios and take conscious action accordingly. He says, that's why drama is made up of action. Well, comedy is made up of gesture. Gesture versus action is unconscious rigid in the sense that it repeats mechanically is the same each time. The body is of course more mechanical by nature than the spirit. And when attention is drawn toward the spirit is beautiful and serious. I eat ballet, but when one is suddenly made aware of the rigidity inherent in the body, it becomes comedic. And if you go from the spirit to the sudden attention drawn to the body, it will provoke the laugh. Berkson gives an example of a eulogy. If it has said he was virtuous and plump. It's funny because of that order. He points out that impressions are in. Funny because the moment we see an impressionist doing an impression of whomever. We suddenly realized the mechanical nature of the original person. And if all people. The fact that a series of repeatable gestures can call to mind the person in question reveals how mechanical they Many jokes functioned by the sudden reveal of her rigidity and thinking the logic and the setup is rigidly carried too far into the punchline. Comedian Mitch Hedberg jokes are great examples. Masterful such as. I like the escalator man, because the escalator can not break. It just becomes stairs. It reveals to us suddenly our rigidity and that we would look at what are perfectly good stairs and see only a broken escalator. Performance is relevant to, as the way something is said is itself a gesture and contributes to a sense of the particular type of unconscious thinking happening and quote. So that's some of what my daughter said. And I think this is a perfect example of right brain Vernon of creativity, freedom and flow breaking through to the left brain for stunt. Of rigidity. This is what creates a humorous situation, real life. Penetrates into the fixed and unreal. To me. Humor. Is a breakthrough of the right brain reasoning into the stubborn rigidity of left brain thinking. And we find it funny because it is real. So, let me summarize all that we've covered here. And I'm just really scratching the surface here. Maybe we'll visit Bergson again in the future, but Berkson was a brilliant philosopher, brought to light, many things we've been discussing in the podcast over the last few His notion of duration really captures the essence of how we perceive the passage of time, none to string together, a bunch of moments, but as a continuous flow, His notion of intuition corresponds directly to right brain reasoning, which we frequently covered. Is the land. Natalia is another word for Geist. The spirit that moves us all. His views on memory are consistent with all we've covered here in Young's collective unconscious. And it discussing humor. He shows her comedy comes from the right brain reasoning of real life. Interfering with our habitual left brain unconscious behaviors. Well, that's a wrap for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. You know, I've learned so much in preparing these episodes and hopefully some of it is rubbing off to your listeners as well. So thank you again for, for loyally. Staying with me. And please like, and follow the podcast. Facebook page at Cunningham Geist. I often post there, you know, every day or so. And I try to link in what other people have said on the topic of the most recent. Episode. You can also follow me on Twitter also at cunning of Geist. And I will be posting all reference incited here in the Facebook page. Shortly after this episode drops. And be sure to tell your like-minded friends about the cutting of guys' podcast, spread the word. So. This is Gregory Nowak. This is the cunning of Geist. See you next time.