Bergson and Phenomenology This page intentionally left blank Bergson and Phenomenology Edited by Michael R. Kelly Department of Philosophy, Boston College, USA palgrave macmillan Selection and editorial matter © Michael R. Kelly 2010 Chapters © their individual authors 2010 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-20238-2 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-30045-7 ISBN 978-0-230-28299-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230282995 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bergson and phenomenology / edited by Michael R. Kelly. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-349-30045-7 1. Bergson, Henri, 1859–1941. 2. Phenomenology. I. Kelly, Michael R., 1974– B2430.B43B4215 2010 194—dc22 2010010812 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Contents Acknowledgements vii Notes on Contributors ix Introduction: Bergson’s Phenomenological Reception: the Spirit of a Dialogue of Self-Resistance 1 Michael R. Kelly Part I Reading Bergson Anew: a Foundation for the Bergson/Phenomenology Debate 1 Intuition and Duration: an Introduction to Bergson’s ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’ 25 Leonard Lawlor 2 Bergson on the Driven Force of Consciousness and Life 42 Rudolf Bernet 3 Bergson and Merleau-Ponty on Experience and Science 63 Gary Gutting 4 Man Falls Down: Art, Life and Finitude in Bergson’s Essay on Laughter 78 Stephen Crocker Part II Intersections: the Bergson/Phenomenology Debate 5 Intuition and Freedom: Bergson, Husserl and the Movement of Philosophy 101 Hanne Jacobs and Trevor Perri 6 Life, Thinking and Phenomenology in the Early Bergson 118 Dan Zahavi 7 A Criticism of Sartre’s Concept of Time 134 Pete A.Y. Gunter 8 Life as Vision: Bergson and the Future of Seeing Differently 148 Alia Al-Saji 9 Miracles of Creation: Bergson and Levinas 174 Nicolas de Warren 10 The Psycho-Physics of Phenomenology: Bergson and Henry 201 John Mullarkey v 9780230202382_01_prexii.indd v 6/7/2010 3:00:37 PM vi Contents Part III Life-World and Life: the Fundament of the Bergson/Phenomenology Debate 11 From the World of Life to the Life-World 223 Pierre Kerszberg 12 Consciousness or Life? Bergson between Phenomenology and Metaphysics 245 Frédéric Worms 13 The Failure of Bergsonism 258 Renaud Barbaras Index 273 Acknowledgements Many people in many ways contributed to the production of this collec- tion and made it a more manageable and pleasant undertaking. Priyanka Gibbons remained committed to a project that she inherited when she came to Palgrave, and I am very grateful for her kind support and contin- ued endorsement. I also want to thank Dee Mortensen and Anne Roeckline at Indiana University Press for patiently and understandingly guiding me through the acquisition of rights for Renaud Barbaras’s essay reproduced herein. Trevor Perri offered his time and provided a careful eye in reviewing the consistency of my proofing, formatting and copy-editing of the volume. He carried out this task diligently. Any errors that remain are mine and surely have been minimized thanks to his generous efforts. I also want to thank Bob Vallier (with John Nale), Mark Sentesy and Joe Spadula for their care- ful translations of essays by Renaud Barbaras, Frédéric Worms and Pierre Kerszberg, respectively. And Renaud Barbaras is owed thanks for patiently and professionally working with me on his contribution to the volume. Two people perhaps on slightly different sides of the Bergson/Phenom- enology debate played integral roles in the volume at a very early stage, Rudolf Bernet and Leonard Lawlor. Rudolf backed the project by lending his name to my invitation to contributors. His well-earned authority in the world of continental philosophy surely reinforced the importance of this kind of philosophical dialogue and very likely inspired other phenomenologically minded contributors to participate. Len backed the project in many ways throughout, and my greatest debt of gratitude is to him. Like Rudolf, Len agreed to back the project from the time that I circulated invitations. I believe that if he had not put his name and very fine reputation behind my invitation, I probably would not (and certainly would not easily) have secured the contributions from Bergsonists. Len put me contact with the people at Palgrave, and his support greatly reduced the stress and uncertainty of convincing a press of the value of this project. In a specific regard, Len charitably and enthusiastically facilitated my contact with Renaud Barbaras, acquired on my behalf a translator for Renaud’s contribution, and put me in contact with Dee Mortensen at Indiana University Press when it came time to work through copyright matters. His commitment to the importance of not letting Bergson’s thought once again go neglected, I think, prompted him to remain very present in, but very qui- etly behind, this project. From start to finish, this volume depends deeply and in large part on Len’s generosity of time and spirit. vii 9780230202382_01_prexii.indd vii 6/7/2010 3:00:37 PM viii Acknowledgements I also must thank Indiana University Press (with Vrin) for allowing me to reproduce in this volume a translation of a chapter from Renaud Barbaras’s Introduction to the Phenomenology of Life and Presses Universitaires de France for allowing me to reproduce in translation the essay from Frédéric Worms. Finally, I thank my wife, Sabrina, for her love and support throughout the process. She lives graciously with me, even when I am working; she lives apart from me, so that I can work in a different city. I realize that these are not always easy ways to live, and I am more grateful to her than I likely express. Acknowledgment is due to Indiana University Press for permission to print Renaud Barbaras, ‘The Failure of Bergsonism,’ which will appear in Renaud Barbaras, Introduction to a Phenomenology of Life (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, forthcoming) and originally appeared in Introduction à une phénoménologie de la vie (Paris: Vrin, 2008), 141–55, for which translation Indiana University Press owns the rights. Acknowledgement is also due to Presses Universitaires de France for per- mission to print in translation Frédéric Worms, ‘La conscience ou la vie? Bergson entre phénomenologie et métaphysique,’ which first appeared in Annales Bergsoniennes II: Bergson, Deleuze, La Phénoménologie, ed. Frédéric Worms (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004), 191–206. Notes on Contributors Alia Al-Saji is Associate Professor of Philosophy at McGill University, Canada. Her research explores questions of embodiment, memory and intersubjectivity. In her published work, she seeks to develop an account of the temporality of the lived body and of perception, drawing on the works of Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. She has also written on time in Husserl, Bergson and Deleuze and on the appropriations of Bergson by Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. In addition to several anthologies, her articles have appeared in such journals as the Southern Journal of Philosophy, Research in Phenomenology, Continental Philosophy Review and Philosophy Today. Her current work interrogates the critical and ethical potential of vision through a feminist and phenomenological lens. Renaud Barbaras is Professor of Contemporary Philosophy at l’université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France. Among his ten published books are De l’être du phénomène – Sur l’ontologie de Merleau-Ponty (1991; Prix d’Aumale de l’Académie des Sciences morales et politiques, 1992, reprinted in 2001, and translated into English by L. Lawlor and T. Toadvine (2003)); Le désir et la distance – Introduction à une phénoménologie de la perception (1999, reprinted in 2006, and translated into English by Paul Milan (2005) and Czech by Josef Fulka (2005)); Le mouvement de l’existence. Etudes sur la phénoménologie de Jan Patocˇka (2007); Introduction à une phénoménologie de la vie (2008) with an English translation by Robert Vallier forthcoming. Rudolf Bernet is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leuven, Belgium, and President of the Husserl Archives. He has studied at the uni- versities of Louvain/Leuven and Heidelberg and has been the President of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für phänomenologische Forschung. He is on the editorial board of numerous philosophical and psychoanalytic journals. As a guest professor he taught at the universities of Nice, Copenhagen, Rome, Boston College, State University of New York at Stony Brook and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.