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The Bergsonian Moment: Science and Spirit in France, 1874-1907

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The Bergsonian Moment: Science and Spirit in France, 1874-1907 THE BERGSONIAN MOMENT: SCIENCE AND SPIRIT IN FRANCE, 1874-1907 by Larry Sommer McGrath A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland June, 2014 © 2014 Larry Sommer McGrath All Rights Reserved Intended to be blank ii Abstract My dissertation is an intellectual and cultural history of a distinct movement in modern Europe that I call “scientific spiritualism.” I argue that the philosopher Henri Bergson emerged from this movement as its most celebrated spokesman. From the 1874 publication of Émile Boutroux’s The Contingency of the Laws of Nature to Bergson’s 1907 Creative Evolution, a wave of heterodox thinkers, including Maurice Blondel, Alfred Fouillée, Jean-Marie Guyau, Pierre Janet, and Édouard Le Roy, gave shape to scientific spiritualism. These thinkers staged a rapprochement between two disparate formations: on the one hand, the rich heritage of French spiritualism, extending from the sixteenth- and seventeeth-century polymaths Michel de Montaigne and René Descartes to the nineteenth-century philosophes Maine de Biran and Victor Cousin; and on the other hand, transnational developments in the emergent natural and human sciences, especially in the nascent experimental psychology and evolutionary biology. I trace the influx of these developments into Paris, where scientific spiritualists collaboratively rejuvenated the philosophical and religious study of consciousness on the basis of the very sciences that threatened the authority of philosophy and religion. Using original materials gathered in French and Belgian archives, I argue that new reading communities formed around scientific journals, the explosion of research institutes, and the secularization of the French education system, brought about this significant, though heretofore neglected wave of thought. The Bergsonian Moment reframes the formative role of science in the fin de siècle. Following France’s defeat to Germany in The War of 1870, French Republicans iii invoked science as a wellspring of national regeneration, precipitating a crisis that historians have framed as society’s moral anxiety in the face of materialism and as intellectuals’ disillusionment in the promise of reason. I interpret the period, to the contrary, as a historical opening seized to transform the meaning and scope of science. Far from having led a revolt against positivism, as a long-standing historiographical narrative holds, Bergson drew on the natural and human sciences to expand the bounds of reason, and led to an enduring reconsideration of the place and value of memory, time, and experience in modern Europe. Readers Prof. Warren Breckman, History (University of Pennsylvania) Prof. Ruth Leys, Humanities Center and History Prof. Paola Marrati, Humanities Center and Philosophy Prof. Todd Shepard, History Prof. Gabrielle Spiegel, History iv Acknowledgments I am grateful to the numerous people who made the three years that I spent researching and writing The Bergsonian Moment, from spring of 2011 to 2014, an invigorating and hardly solitary experience. To begin, I am lucky to have such supportive advisors. Ruth Leys has been an intellectual beacon orienting my thought and scholarship around the problems and arguments at stake in intellectual history. She has offered an exemplary model both for setting philosophers in conversation with their scientific interlocutors, and most importantly, for writing a critical history of the present. Her meticulous criticism and moral encouragement, so essential to my budding academic career, have provided guidance, which, as she would readily confirm, is to be continued. Warren Breckman generously welcomed me to the University of Pennsylvania where he illuminated a productive eclecticism that expanded my understanding of intellectual history and the field’s methodological horizons. It is perhaps fitting that Victor Cousin’s complacent eclecticism, by contrast, is one of the dissertation’s central points of resistance. Paola Marrati has been a companion both in Baltimore in Paris. I am fortunate to have examined the rigor of Bergson’s work with someone of such uncompromising philosophical commitment. Gabrielle Spiegel has helped me explore the methodological nuances at the heart of historiographical debates over the past three decades. Her precision as a thinker and reader has brought sweeping theoretical contestations into focus through detailed textual readings. Hent de Vries has been a masterful teacher of the history of philosophy, assiduously demonstrating the intractability of metaphysical v problems. Our conversations have been a resourceful and experimental forum to discuss the scientific and political implications of European and American philosophy. Teachers and colleagues in Baltimore, Berkeley, and Paris have offered extraordinary advice and direction. I am indebted to Michael Fried for having lit the initial spark of my dissertation when he suggested that I read Maine de Biran and Félix Ravaisson. Stefanos Geroulanos selflessly offered his time to read drafts. He has been a formidable guide ever since I entered the Humanities Center. It was thanks to Nancy Weston that I pursued intellectual history. Before embarking on this project, she counseled me not to fill a slot in the field, but to create an unforeseen demand for the history of metaphysics. Much is owed to Daniel Coffeen as well, who introduced me to Bergson’s Matter and Memory in 2007. Frédéric Worms hospitably welcomed me into to a Parisian community of Bergsonniennes while I conducted research at the École normale supérieure. I am also thankful for the incisive comments from readers, including Giuseppe Bianco, Jennifer Ratner Rosenhagen, and Todd Shepard. Much of the research took place in Paris with the support of funding from the Humanities Center. While there, I benefited from the help of archivists who navigated me through initially daunting archival territories: Françoise Dauphragne of the École normale supérieure; Jean Leclercq of the Université Catholique de Louvain; Mireille Pastoureau, conservateur général of the Biblithèque de l’Institut de France; and Serge Sollogoub of the Institut Catholique de Paris. I could not have successfully synthesized the materials that I collected without the additional support from the Johns Hopkins Program for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, and from the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Teaching Fellowship. Special thanks is also due to Marva Philip whose vi attentive and tireless administrative assistance cleared the way for me to complete this project. As Bergson wrote in his 1902 essay “Intellectual Effort,” the inventive work of consciousness has to “begin over and over again, each time fixing the partial result obtained.” Thanks to exchanges, arguments, and conversations with several close friends, I was able to begin inventing this dissertation over and over again. These encouraging and thoughtful people include: Claudia Bicen, Shikha Bhattacharjee, Tony Chiarito, Tarek Dika, Petey Gil-Montllor, Hirsh Jain, Matt Kelly, Will Leiter, Jacob Levi, Adwait Parker, Dan Sheehan, Martin Shuster, Max Stevens, and Fabien Thayamballi. Finally, I owe a debt of immense gratitude to Loumia Ferhat, my most challenging critic and ardent supporter. And my parents, Carolyn and Larry Craig McGrath, inculcated a work ethic and intellectual passion that fueled this project. vii List of Figures 139. “Weber’s Law vs. Fechner’s Analysis.” 200. “Pure Memory, Memory Image, Perception,” from Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 170. 250. “Diagram of vertical brain section,” from Paul Janet, Traité élémentaire de philosophie à l’usage des classes (Paris: Delagrave, 1879), 21. 251. “Diagram of lateral brain section,” from Ibid., 22. 253. “Diagram of autonomic nervous system,” from Abel Rey, Leçons élémentaires de psychologie et de philosophie (Paris: Édouard Cornély, 1903), 29. 254. “Diagram of sensory-motor cerebral localizations,” from Ibid., 144. viii Table of Contents Abstract iii Acknowledgments v List of Figures viii Introduction 1 Part I From Motility to Contingency The Emergence of French Spiritualism 39 1. Maine de Biran, Victor Cousin, and the Contest Over the Meaning of Spiritualism 42 2. Nature, Contingency, and Felix Ravaisson’s Spiritualist Positivism 85 Part II From Contingency to Pragmatism The Consolidation of Scientific Spiritualism 113 3. Measuring Consciousness 119 4. Locating Consciousness 172 Part III Science and Society In the Third Republic 215 5. The Young Bergson as Lycée Professor 216 6. Édouard Le Roy, Maurice Blondel, and Catholic Modernism 266 Conclusion: 1907 311 Epilogue Bergson Today Historical Experience and the Neurosciences 320 Bibliography 368 Curriculum Vitae 387 ix Intended to be blank x Introduction Philosopher, statesman, mathematician, celebrity, Henri Bergson was a towering figure of the fin de siècle. He achieved world-historical fame for having inventively articulated the dynamic contours of consciousness – or spirit, from the French l’esprit. Bergson’s thought, and the late nineteenth-century period it defined, remain two of the most celebrated yet misunderstood moments in the intellectual and cultural history of modern Europe. Unlike many philosophers who safeguarded their trade from scientific intrusion, for fear that the ascendant demands of experimentation and quantification would threaten philosophy’s metaphysical territory,
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