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The Problem of History in the Temporal Ethics of Henri Bergson

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The Problem of History in the Temporal Ethics of Henri Bergson The Problem of History in the Temporal Ethics of Henri Bergson, Emmanuel Levinas and Gilles Deleuze David Ventura Royal Holloway, University of London PhD in Philosophy Declaration of Authorship I, David Ventura, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: _______________________________ Date: 23/03/2020 2 Abstract This thesis explores the ethics of relating oneself to temporality that emerges in the philosophies of Henri Bergson, Emmanuel Levinas and Gilles Deleuze. Focusing on Bergson’s, Levinas’ and Deleuze’s respective suggestions as to how an ethical relation to a time of novelty is effectuated, this thesis argues that each of those ethical models retains a problematic relation to history, and that a potential resolution to this problem is only found in Deleuze and Guattari’s joint work. Starting with an exploration of Bergson’s metaphysical writings, this thesis argues that Bergson’s conception of intuition remains insufficiently attuned to that practice’s implication with the domain of history, and that this presents a problem for Bergson’s ethical philosophy. The thesis then turns to Bergson’s The Two Sources of Morality and Religion to argue that this text, despite seemingly historicising the intuition, in fact fails to provide a resolution to the problem of history that announces itself in Bergson’s metaphysical writings. Motivated by these failures in the Bergsonian oeuvre, this thesis then turns its attention to two self-professed Bergsonians, Levinas and Deleuze, to consider the extent to which their respective ethical philosophies can be said to provide a resolution to the Bergsonian problem of history. Exploring Levinas’ temporal ethics in Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, I argue that Levinas remains incapable of providing such a resolution, for his own ethical philosophy remains decidedly caught up in a problematic relation to history, and that despite Levinas’ explicit claims that his ethics transcends the historical. I then turn my attention to Deleuze, to argue that despite remaining (like Levinas) unable to resolve this problem in Difference and Repetition, Deleuze does indeed offer a potentially fruitful way of negotiating it in his joint work with Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus. 3 Table of contents Abbreviations ....................................................................................................................... 6 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 8 1. Context: Bergsonian openings ....................................................................................... 8 2. Aims and overview: temporal ethics and the problem of history .................................. 13 3. Terms: problems and histories ..................................................................................... 26 4. Theoretical contributions .............................................................................................. 29 1. Bergson I: the problem of history in Bergson’s metaphysical writings ................... 31 1.1. Time as duration ........................................................................................................ 34 1.2. The ‘method’ of intuition ............................................................................................ 42 1.3. The ethics and history of intuitive knowledge ............................................................ 52 1.4. Conclusion: the problem of history ............................................................................ 67 2. Bergson II: towards a historicisation of the intuition in The Two Sources? ............ 69 2.1. The first source of ethics: closed society ................................................................... 72 2.2. The second source of ethics: life ............................................................................... 77 2.3. Mysticism, static religion and mechanism ................................................................. 88 2.4. Conclusion: beyond Bergson .................................................................................. 104 3. Levinas I: the temporal ethics of alterity in Totality and Infinity ............................. 107 3.1. Time and the Other ................................................................................................. 109 3.2. The ontological conditions of the Other: interiority and fecundity ............................ 122 3.3. The problem of history in fecundity ......................................................................... 132 3.4. Conclusion: beyond fecundity ................................................................................. 146 4. Levinas II: the anarchic temporal ethics of Otherwise than Being ......................... 148 4.1. Time beyond being: language and proximity .......................................................... 150 4.2. The ethical ‘basis’ of proximity: substitution ............................................................ 162 4.3. History at the basis of proximity .............................................................................. 170 4 4.4. Conclusion: beyond Levinas ................................................................................... 180 5. Deleuze I: the intensive temporal ethics of Difference and Repetition ................... 182 5.1. Time as eternal return ............................................................................................. 184 5.2. How to affirm the eternal return ............................................................................... 195 5.3. Structures and machines ......................................................................................... 210 5.4. Conclusion: embracing the machine ....................................................................... 221 6. Deleuze II: the machinic temporal ethics of A Thousand Plateaus ......................... 223 6.1. Assemblages, strata and the plane of consistency ................................................. 225 6.2. Constructing the plane of consistency .................................................................... 240 6.3. Affirming becoming with history ............................................................................... 252 6.4 Conclusion: machinic chances ................................................................................. 262 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 264 Bibliography ..................................................................................................................... 270 5 Abbreviations This list of abbreviations only includes references to the standard English translations of the most frequently cited works in this thesis. All other works used (including additional texts by Bergson, Levinas and Deleuze) have been cited in the footnotes using the author-date system. Works by Henri Bergson: CE Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (New York: Dover Publications, 1998). CM The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Mabelle Andison (New York: Dover Publications, 2007). ME Mind-Energy, trans. Wildon Carr (London: Palgrave, 2007). MM Matter and Memory, trans. Nancy Paul and Scott Palmer (London: Zone Books, 1988). TFW Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, trans. F. L. Pogson (New York: Dover Publications, 2001). TSMR The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, trans. Ashley Audra and Cloudesley Bereton (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977). Works by Emmanuel Levinas: EE Existence and Existents, trans. Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1978). MSe “Meaning and Sense”, trans. Alphonso Lingis (ed.), Collected Philosophical Papers (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1987). OB Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1998). ON “The Old and the New”, trans. Richard A. Cohen, Time and the Other [and additional essays] (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987), pp. 121-138. S “Substitution”, in Adriaan Peperzak, Simon Critchley and Robert Bernasconi (eds.), Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), pp. 79-96. TI Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1979). 6 TO Time and the Other [and Other Essays], trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987). Works by Gilles Deleuze (including with Félix Guattari): AO Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983). ATP Capitalism and Schizophrenia: A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987). B Bergsonism, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (London: Zone Books, 1988). DR Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). HRS “How do we Recognise Structuralism”, trans. Michael Taormina, in Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953-1974 (New York: Semiotext(e), 2004), pp. 170- 192. LS The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester and Charles Stivale (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). NP Nietzsche and Philosophy, trans. Hugh Tomlinson
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