Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

An Important Early Work Of Twentieth Century Philosophy

I wanted to reread Henri Bergson's "Creative Evolution" after reading William James. Although best known for his development of pragmatism, James had a highly speculative side late in his career, and he praised Bergson highly in his book, "A Pluralistic Universe." Although they have serious differences, both Bergson and James share an emphasis on a stream of consciousness view of the mind, and on the importance of freedom, chance, and indeterminacy.

Bergson wrote "Creative Evolution" in 1907. At James' urging it was translated into English in 1911 in the still standard translation of Arthur Mitchell. James died before he could write the introduction he contemplated to the book. The book is one of the relatively rare works of philosophy that received a large and enthusiastic popular reception. Bergson became internationally famous and highly sought out as a lecturer for some years following its publication. In 1927, Bergson received the Nobel Prize for literature, a rarity for a writer whose only publications were in philosophy. By the 1940's, however, the book had become little noticed by professional philosophers and lay readers alike. Of late, there have been scholarly efforts to look again at Bergson.

In one sense the early popularity of "Creative Evolution" is puzzling as sections of the book are notoriously difficult and obscure. The book left me cold when I first read it some years ago, but a second reading, after reading James, helped me understand where the book was going. Besides the lengthy technical discussions of matters ranging from biology to mathematics to the history of philosophy, Bergson was a master of allusion and analogy and of beautifully clear writing which pressed home his conclusions where his argumentation was dense and foggy. The writing is brilliant and poetic but makes use of loose metaphors and obscure thinking which lessens its value.

Part of the difficulty I and many modern readers have with the book lies in its approach to the nature of philosophy and its relationship to science. As the title indicates, "Creative Evolution" is in part about Darwinism and evolutionary theory. Bergson wants to show that there is more to human life and to human evolution that can be accounted for by what he terms mechanism. In the process of developing his position, Bergson spends a great deal of space with Darwinian theory and, in places, with his objections to it. Most of his objections, especially with further developments in biology, appear not well taken and outside the scope of how philosophy should be developing its questions and making its arguments. If philosophy is concerned with meaning and with reflections on science rather than with the substance of science, Bergson in many places steps over the line. Much of the book appears to be based on a willy-nilly combination of philosophical reflection with scientific issues which lessens its appeal and which contributed to the eclipse of the book after its early popular reception.

There remains much of interest in "Creative Evolution" to the extent that the book can be read as a reflection on the findings of science and on the possible limitations of science rather than as a critique of scientific findings. Bergson tries to find a way between a scientific philosophy of mechanism on the one hand and a teleological philosophy based upon ends and final causes on the other hand. Bergson develops a philosophy based upon duration and change -- the felt experience of the passage of time, which Bergson argues eloquently, cannot be explained either mechanistically or teleologically. Bergson argues that human endeavor and conduct cannot be fully explained by the methods of the natural sciences or, indeed, by any science as indeterminacy and freedom are at their core. He finds biological development for human beings was in the direction of freedom and intelligence. Intelligence, he argues, is basically pragmatic and related to physical, geometrical objects but does not exhaust human creativity. Bergson finds the source of creativity and change in time through a mysterious intuitive ability that tends to be covered over by practical intelligence. Here again, many modern readers, lay and philosophical, will demur to intuitionism. Bergson sees life as in its essential spiritual part as consisting in constant change and development in a direction that cannot be predicted in advance. In fact, every individual's development is unique.

Here is a lengthy paragraph from near the middle of Bergson's book that captures something of his thought, his writing, and his concept of philosophy as both individual and communal. Other passages could be cited as well. Bergson writes (pp 209-210)

"Human intelligence, as we represent it, is not at all what Plato taught in the allegory of the cave. Its function is not to look at passing shadows nor yet to turn itself round and contemplate the glaring sun. It has something else to do. Harnessed, like yoked oxen, to a heavy task, we feel the play of our muscles and joints, the weight of the plow and the resistance of the soil. To act and to know that we are acting, to come into touch with reality and even to live it, but only in the measure in which it concerns the work that is being accomplished and the furrow that is being plowed, such is the function of human intelligence. Yet a beneficent fluid bathes us, whence we draw the very force to labor and to live. From this ocean of life, in which we are immersed, we are continually drawing something, and we feel that our being, or at least the intellect that guides it, has been formed therein by a kind of local concentration. Philosophy can only be an attempt to dissolve again into the Whole. Intelligence, reabsorbed into its principle, may thus live back again its own genesis. But the enterprise cannot be achieved in one stroke: it is necessarily collective and progressive. It consists in an interchange of impressions which, correcting and adding to each other, will end by expanding the humanity in us and making us even transcend it."

In its approach, "Creative Evolution" is outside the mainstream of philosophy in the United States and in Europe and is something of a throw-back to German romanticism. The philosophical issues it raises, however, remain much alive. This is a frustrating, difficult book to read with valuable thought and insight intertwined with some unfathomable writing. It was a quirk that "Creative Evolution" became for a brief time a popular book. Readers who want to struggle with a difficult and in part outmoded work, may still find the effort worthwhile.

Robin Friedman