Henri Bergson

Em sua última obra, As Duas Fontes da Moral e da Religião, Henri Bergson investiga as origens, o desenvolvimento e a manutenção da sociedade humana por meio da distinção entre a sociedade fechada, baseada nos instintos primitivos de conservação da vida, e a sociedade aberta, fundada sobre a aspiração que impulsiona o homem à construção de uma vida em sociedade mais harmoniosa. Segundo o autor, os ideais democráticos são frutos da abertura de que as sociedades necessitam para seu progresso, o (...) qual, aos poucos, abrandaria a pressão das exigências impostas pela natureza para a conservação da vida em sociedade e possibilitaria aos homens conviverem mais livremente e mais afetuosamente com vistas a uma sociedade mais justa e sem tantos conflitos e mortes. Contudo, como escapar às determinações que a natureza impôs para que a vida em sociedade se mantivesse e conseguir que os homens se abram a outro tipo de vivência em conjunto? É esta a questão que o presente artigo procura investigar. Palavras-chave: Bergson, moral, política, mística. (shrink)

« Percevoir, dit Bergson, finit par n'être plus qu'une occasion de se souvenir. » De se souvenir ou de réfléchir? De Descartes à Bergson, toute la différence est là. Et, dans le fond, les deux doctrines sont si proches que l'une ne tarde pas à nous paraître comme la variation de l'autre. Qu'on réfléchisse ou que l'on se souvienne, la perception se fait comme un oubli de ce que l'on perçoit. Mais, tôt ou tard, il faut bien que les choses (...) reviennent et qu'on en tienne compte: cela se voit au bout du souvenir, chez Bergson, au bout de cinq méditations, chez Descartes. Et, rétablies dans leur juridiction, elles nous forcent de penser d'autre façon ce que l'intelligence seule imaginait de concevoir. Du côté de Descartes comme dans celui de Bergson, la philosophie se présente alors comme l'effort pour composer un équilibre entre ces deux postulations adverses, celle de la perception et celle de la réflexion. « Endlich, sagt Bergson, ist die Wahrnehmung nur eine Gelegenheit zurückzudenken. » Zurück- oder nachzudenken? Darin besteht, zwischen Descartes und Bergson, die ganze Verschiedenheit. Und im Grunde genommen, sind die zwei Lehrgebäude so nahe verwandt, daß nicht viel daran fehlt, die eine als eine Veränderung der anderen erscheinen zu lassen. Ob man nun nachdenkt, oder sich erinnert, so stellt sich die Wahrnehmung als ein Vergessen dessen dar, was man vernimmt. Über kurz oder lang aber, müssen die Sachen wiederkommen und darauf muß man Wert legen: das geschieht, bei Bergson, am Ende der Erinnerung, bei Descartes, am Ende von fünf Meditationen. Und in ihrer Gerichtsbarkeit wiederhergestellt, zwingen sie (d. h. die Sachen) uns auf eine andere Weise zu denken was der Verstand allein zu fassen ersonnen hat. Seitens Descartes, sowie seitens Bergson, stellt sich die Philosophie dar als die Anstrengung ein Gleichgewicht zu bilden, zwischen jene zwei gegensätzlichen Forderungen, die der Wahrnehmung und die der Überlegung. (shrink)

Recent philosophy has witnessed a renewed interest in the works and ideas of Henri Bergson (1859–1941). But while contemporary scholarship has sought to rehabilitate Bergson’s insights on time, memory, consciousness, and human freedom, comparatively little attention has been paid to Bergson’s relationship to pantheism. By revisiting the ‘pantheism’ controversy surrounding Bergsonian philosophy during Bergson’s lifetime, this article argues that the panentheistic notion of ‘being-in-God’ can serve as an illuminating framework for the interpretation of Bergson’s philosophy. By examining the ‘pantheist’ readings (...) of Bergson and comparing and contrasting Bergson’s philosophy of life with Spinoza’s panentheistic metaphysics, this paper shows that an account of ‘being-in-Life’ is key to Bergson’s metaphysical outlook as well as his account of philosophy as a practice of ‘intuitive’ thinking. In so doing, this paper highlights some of the implicit religious motifs not only in Bergson’s metaphysical outlook but also in his conception of the task of philosophy. (shrink)

This book connects the philosophy of Henri Bergson to contemporary debates in metaphysics and analytic philosophy of religion. More specifically, the book demonstrates how Bergson’s philosophy of time can respond to the problem of foreknowledge and free will. The question of how humans can be free if God knows everything has been a perennial issue of debate in analytic philosophy of religion. The solution to this problem relies heavily on what one thinks about time. The problem of time is central (...) to Bergson’s philosophical system. In this book, the author offers a systematic application of Bergson’s thought to the freedom and foreknowledge problem. The first chapter presents a discussion of Bergson’s central concept of la durée (duration). The subsequent two chapters link la durée to the relation of time and space. Here the author provides a Bergsonian response to McTaggart’s argument for the unreality of time and develops a novel theory of time connected to Bergson’s analysis of temporal experience. The last three chapters explore the relation between free will, determinism, and divine foreknowledge. The author reconstructs Bergson’s theory of freedom and shows how it undermines the underlying dogmas of contemporary free-will theories. The author then argues that Bergson’s philosophy can be used to resolve the free will and foreknowledge problem in philosophy of religion. The monograph concludes by opening avenues for new research into Bergson and analytic philosophy of religion, such as the philosophy of religious language, the relation between God and modality, religious experience, and religious pluralism. (shrink)

L'actualité de la pensée de Bergson serait liée non pas à un ensemble de thèses mais à l'insistance d'une interrogation qu'il aurait formulée pour la première fois dans sa radicalité. Cette interrogation est celle qui met à jour la difficulté d'un commencement proprement et seulement humain de la réflexion. The current importance of Bergson's thought is not due to any set of theorems, but to the urgency of an inquiry, whose radical nature he would have been the first to consider, (...) and which remains pressing to day. This inquiry brings to light the difficulty of a beginning of a reflexion wich is rightfully and solely human. (shrink)

La rencontre entre Bergson et Einstein en 1922 est souvent présentée comme un cas exemplaire d’incompréhension réciproque entre le philosophe et le physicien. Pourtant, la même année, Bergson publiait _Durée et simultanéité_, analyse et interprétation de cette même Relativité. Il serait erroné de présenter Bergson comme le philosophe ignorant des sciences dures. Entre le texte de 1922 de _Durée et simultanéité_ et celui de 1934 du _Nouvel Esprit Scientifique_, il n’y a pas passage d’une interprétation erronée de la Relativité à (...) une intelligence philosophique de ses enjeux. Bergson avait parfaitement compris la Relativité, tout du moins autant que cela se pouvait pour quelqu’un qui n’était pas un physicien et peut-être autant que certains physiciens à la même époque. Si erreurs il y a dans _Durée et simultanéité_, elles reposent sur la démarche philosophique plutôt que sur la non-maîtrise des éléments de physique. Par conséquent, le passage de Bergson à Bachelard, en ce domaine, est bien un renversement dans la démarche philosophique. C’est ce renversement philosophique qu’il s’agit d’expliciter. (shrink)

Resenha do curso ministrado por Henri Bergson no Collège de France, no ano universitário de 1901-1902. Tradução Débora Cristina Morato Pinto. Editora da Unesp 2022.

In the selections that follow, Grace Neal Dolson offers a critical reading of experience, intuition, and duration in Bergson’s thought.

Levinas is almost solely studied from the perspective of phenomenology, and this is evidently quite justifiable by the fact that the philosopher claims to be Husserl’s heir, although it is very importante to consider other influences for a deeper understanding of his thought, such as talmudism and Russian literature. But, in general, an important reference remains forgotten that Levinas never fails to mention in his interviews and even in the preface to the German edition (1987) of his important book Totalité (...) et infini: Bergson’s philosophy. Our objective is to seek the elements of this approach, often mentioned but little explored, between the ethical intuitions of Levinas and Bergson. Although it is not the work Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion that Levinas likes to remember when referring to Bergson, it is what we will evoke to suggest an intuitive communication that connects the bergsonian concept of open and the levinasian concept of the infinite. Levinas takes a step beyond phenomenology when he elaborates one of his fundamental concepts, that of visage, and it is he himself who admits in the conversation with Philippe Nemo entitled Éthique et infini (1984), but we should be surprised if the most important notion of Levinas ethics, that of infinity, would reveal what is most essential in Bergson’s ethics, the sense of openness through which unlimited, in other words, unconditional, responsibility is announced? (shrink)

Bergson a toujours voulu séparer science et philosophie soulignant que chacune suit une méthode radicalement différente de l’autre. Bachelard, critiquant les concepts fondamentaux de la philosophie de Bergson, voit dans cette séparation un danger très grave tant pour la science que pour la philosophie. Il faut montrer selon lui les faiblesses du bergsonisme afin d’empêcher que la philosophie ait le dernier mot sur ce qu’est la réalité et le temps. On verra donc, mot par mot, comment les deux philosophes traitent (...) le temps, la durée, la multiplicité, la continuité et la discontinuité. On aboutira ainsi à une sorte de dialogue entre sourds, analogue à celui qui eut lieu entre Bergson et Einstein en 1922. (shrink)

In this article, Marjorie Silliman Harris offers a critical reading of Henri Bergson’s view of freedom as a creative act by the fundamental self.

Cent ans après sa parution, il est possible de lire le livre de Bergson sur la relativité de façon moins polémique qu’à l’époque. La maturation et la stabilisation de la théorie d’Einstein, devenue une composante banale de l’arsenal des physiciens, permettent une évaluation précise des méprises commises par Bergson dans son exégèse, en même temps qu’elles amènent à reconnaître leur intérêt épistémologique. Nous entendons ici réfléchir sur cette lecture bergsonienne de la Rélativité einsteinienne.

By referring to H. Bergson's theory about the evolutionary process, this article reflects on the antinomic character of the two fundamental tendencies of the vital movement, which are pure time and materiality. Starting from the importance of the image in this philosophy, it focuses on the Bergsonian ontology, questioning the notion of vital elan and how matter comes and the real-time is inscribed in it. By highlighting the ambiguity of the role played by materiality in the tensioning of vital forces, (...) the discussion explains that the original impulse establishes its antipode. Thus, it reveals the dramatic character that permeates the movement intrinsic to the history of life, in which effort and struggle are correlated to the limits of the impulse that moves it - and inevitable questions for the creative act that defines it. (shrink)

O presente ensaio se insere no âmbito da Filosofia Moderna (séculos XVII-XX), com ênfase numa problemática compartilhada pela Metafísica da mente e pela Filosofia da Física. De um ponto de vista histórico-conceitual, trata-se de retomar a contribuição de Henri Bergson para a compreensão do significado filosófico da Física moderna. Para tanto, projeta-se aqui (i) reconstituir, por uma abordagem histórico-conceptual, a mudança operada no conceito de matéria quando da ruptura entre a Filosofia Natural Clássica e a Filosofia Natural Moderna; (ii) indicar (...) como a prioridade ou o abandono do conceito de matéria ocasionou uma cisão interna na Filosofia Natural Moderna; (iii) mostrar que, segundo Bergson, o problema mente-corpo se origina da concepção cartesiana de matéria e dos desdobramentos desta em outras filosofias; (iv) examinar como Bergson assume criticamente uma concepção de matéria familiar as de J. Maxwell, J. Thomson e M. Faraday; (v) mostrar assim que a originalidade de Bergson consiste em estabelecer a distinção entre dois tipos de “extensão” (“_l’étendue_” e “_l’extension_”), que, se estiverem amparadas na experiência como se espera, suprimem as contradições dos dualismos e autorizam afirmar tanto a realidade da matéria quanto a do “espírito”. (shrink)

Bergsonian philosophy is not generally regarded as a true philosophy of biology. Bergson’s rejection of Darwinism, his silence on incipient genetics, and his unfortunate comparison of the movement of the élan vital with the duration of consciousness led Bergson to be considered at best an outdated philosopher, at worst an enemy of science. However, if there is one thing that Bergson’s Creative Evolution grasped, and offered to biology, it is an understanding of the processual nature of evolution and of its (...) consequences to conceive a causality that considers the efficacy of time in evolution. The aim of this chapter is to reassess Bergson’s philosophy of evolution to demonstrate its relevance for contemporary biology. First, I will study the relevance of Bergson’s epistemological critique of the theories of evolution under debate in his time. Then, I will provide an analysis of the concept of élan vital that will show its topicality to address some of the problems of contemporary biology. Finally, I will indicate the lessons that can be drawn from the élan vital for thinking of the causality at work in evolution. My purpose in this chapter is not only to show that the Bergsonian philosophy of life is not completely outdated, but it is to revaluate its importance in the history of biology and the philosophy of biology, while exploring the contemporary extensions of Bergsonian insights. (shrink)

A partir de las reflexiones de H. Bergson sobre la risa, nos preguntamos qué podría tener de específico el humor en la lógica populista de E. Laclau; cuáles son los vínculos afectivos que se construyen entre el líder y el pueblo a través de las estrategias cómicas; y en qué medida el humor podría ser utilizado como elemento movilizador para la construcción de un pueblo. Más que como atributos de una agencia política independiente, nos interesa pensar el humor como atributo (...) de la representación iconográfica en el sentido que le otorga E. Laclau. Si para H. Bergson la risa tiene una función social correctora, proponemos pensar la experiencia cómica desde una función intensificadora en la construcción de identidades colectivas. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that the French philosopher Henri Bergson was a hidden interlocutor in Susan Stebbing’s critique of Arthur Eddington in her Philosophy and the Physicists. First, we outline Stebbing’s critique of Eddington’s philosophical- physical writings with a particular emphasis on her case against Eddington’s account of the passage of time. Second, we provide evidence that Eddington’s philosophy is, at its core, Bergsonian and make the case that Eddington was directly influenced by Bergson’s philosophy of la durée. Third, (...) we lay out Stebbing’s critique of Bergsonism in her Pragmatism and French Voluntarism and identify important similarities with her critique of Eddington over twenty years later. In doing so, we show that it is Eddington’s Bergsonism that she is attacking. Finally, we situate Stebbing’s criticisms of both Eddington and Bergson within two wider conflicts that emerged in early twentieth century British philosophy: one between an objectively describable time of physics and subjective temporal experience, and the other between science and intuition. (shrink)

Resumo: Tendo como contexto as mudanças paradigmáticas da Atualidade, o objetivo deste artigo é refletir sobre os fundamentos filosóficos de uma educação com as diferenças a partir do conceito de duração desenvolvido por Henri Bergson. A teoria bergsoniana da duração instaura uma visão radical das diferenças humanas, baseada nos seguintes aspectos: a dimensão viva e pulsante das temporalidades dos diversos sujeitos; a irredutibilidade das diferentes temporalidades humanas a signos matemáticos; a totalização da temporalidade no âmbito da memória; e, enfim, seu (...) potencial de liberdade e criação. Partindo dos referidos fundamentos filosóficos, o artigo defende que uma educação com as diferenças precisa repensar a noção de sujeito ideal, as práticas de ensino e avaliação baseadas em quantificações e classificações, as lógicas fragmentadas e impessoais de produção de conhecimento e, finalmente, a ideia de formação para a liberdade e a responsabilidade ética. Palavras-chave: Duração; Henri Bergson; Educação; Diferenças. The duration in Henri Bergson: foundation of education with the differences: Taking the current paradigmatic changes as a context, the aim of this article is to reflect on the philosophical foundations of an education with the differences based on the concept of duration developed by Henri Bergson. The bergsonian theory of duration establishes a radical view of human differences, based on the following aspects: the living and pulsating dimension of the temporalities of the different subjects; the irreducibility of different human temporalities to mathematical signs; the totalization of temporality within the scope of memory; and, finally, its potential for freedom and creation. Based on these philosophical foundations, the article argues that education with the differences needs to rethink the notion of ideal subject, teaching and evaluation practices based on quantifications and classifications, fragmented and impersonal logics of knowledge production and, finally, the idea of formation for freedom and ethical responsibility. Key-words: Duration; Henri Bergson; Education; Differences. La duración en Henri Bergson: fundamento de la educación con las diferencias Resumen: Tomando como contexto los cambios paradigmáticos actuales, el objetivo de este artículo es reflexionar sobre los fundamentos filosóficos de una educación con las diferencias basada en el concepto de duración desarrollado por Henri Bergson. La teoría bergsoniana de la duración establece una visión radical de las diferencias humanas, basada en los siguientes aspectos: la dimensión viva y pulsante de las temporalidades de los diferentes sujetos; la irreductibilidad de diferentes temporalidades humanas a signos matemáticos; la totalización de la temporalidad en el ámbito de la memoria; y, finalmente, su potencial de libertad y creación. Con base en estos fundamentos filosóficos, el artículo sostiene que la educación con las diferencias necesita repensar la noción de sujeto ideal, prácticas de enseñanza y evaluación basadas en cuantificaciones y clasificaciones, lógicas fragmentadas e impersonales de producción de conocimiento y, finalmente, la idea de formación para la libertad y la responsabilidad ética. Palabras clave: Duración; Henri Bergson; Educación; Diferencias. Data de registro: 27/10/2021 Data de aceite: 19/01/2022. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Gaston Bachelard’s criticism of Henri Bergson’s employment of intuition as the specific method of philosophy, and as a reliable means of acquiring knowledge. I locate Bachelard’s criticism within the reception of Bergsonian intuition by rationalist philosophers who subscribed to the Third Republic’s ethos. I argue that the reasons of Bachelard’s rejection of Bergsonian intuition were not only epistemological, but also ethical and pedagogical. His view of knowledge as mediated, social, and historical, cannot be separated from (...) his conceptions of society, education, and the human being. (shrink)

The similarities between William James’ Stream of Consciousness and Henri Bergson’s La durée réelle have often been noted. Both emphasize the fundamentally temporal nature of our conscious experience and its constant flow. However, in this article, I argue that despite surface similarities between the OP theories, they are fundamentally different. The ultimate reason for the differences between the theories is that James believed that we should reject psychological explanations that depend on synthesis within the mental sphere. This is because such (...) explanations are incompatible with empiricism. Instead, we should look to the physiological mechanisms underpinning mental states. In contrast, Bergson was an adamant defender of a form of mental processing which he called qualitative synthesis. Duration itself, for Bergson, is a form of qualitative synthesis. However, in 1906, less than five years before James died, Bergson convinced him to change his mind. This results in a huge shift in James’ thought. Unless we understand how far apart James and Bergson were prior to this shift, we will not have a proper picture of the full influence of Bergson on James’ thought, nor of the major changes to James’ philosophy that occurred near the end of his life. (shrink)

Deconstruction and duration are arguably the two most important theories of time to emerge from French philosophy in the twentieth century. Yet, despite the resurgence of interest in Bergson, scholars have ignored Derrida’s own discussions of Bergson, both positive and negative, throughout his career. This lack of attention obscures an important influence on Derrida’s early thought, and hampers our ability to understand the nature of Derrida’s relationship to fields such as new materialism, posthumanism, and affect studies, that frequently turn to (...) Bergson for inspiration. This paper addresses this gap by tracking Derrida’s readings of Bergson and comparing two related pairs of their concepts: duration and différance, and intuition and spacing. The paper concludes by arguing that Derrida’s critical engagement with Bergson leads to an anti-presentist model of life, which gains new relevance in the Anthropocene. (shrink)

This work aims to highlight the continuous game and the paradoxical relationship established between memory and forgetfulness based on the contributions of Friedrich Nietzsche and Henri Bergson. We will follow the hypothesis that the origin of memory and consciousness in Nietzsche is very close to that made by Bergson in Matter and Memory. I will try to expose how memory in Bergson arises in the interval between action and reaction, at the moment when man hesitates, organizes and selects the new (...) movement. The same hesitation movement occurs in Nietzsche, when man abandons the "animalistic" realm of the instant and begins to calculate and plan his actions. In the meantime, when man acquires the capacity to remember and distances himself from the instinctive animals, forgetfulness becomes vitally important, according to Nietzsche, since an excess of memory can resent and sadden the body. In Bergson, on the other hand, the brain mechanism - an organ of attention to life - also occupies a prominent place, from the moment it temporarily removes the totality of memories, and allows only some of them to become conscious. To this end, we will observe that what is behind this infinite game between memory and forgetfulness is the maintenance of a healthy body that does not get lost in excesses - of remembering too much or forgetting everything. A body that knows how to remember, but also how to forget in order to live. (shrink)

El presente trabajo explora la postura bergsoniana en torno a la imagen, toda vez que es constituida, de fondo, por la pregunta ¿qué se puede conocer? A propósito del tema Bergson se ubica en un punto intermedio entre el idealismo y el realismo, considera que la imagen es aquello que es más que una representación pero menos que la cosa en sí que el realismo pretende mostrar como objeto de conocimiento. La comprensión de la imagen no sólo lleva a escenarios (...) epistemológicos, también posibilita observar que ahí donde hay una perspectiva ocurre un enfoque interesado de cierto tema. De tal forma que la relación objeto-sujeto se ve trastocada por la implementación de la imagen, como disposición afectiva del mundo que rodea al humano. Si sólo se conocen imágenes, la pertinencia de las distintas ramas científicas cambia según estas estudien imágenes interiores o exteriores. Para nada la actividad mental, puede ser el propiciador de las imágenes mentales, únicamente es una imagen más del conjunto de imágenes. En lo subsecuente, habrá un desarrollo del conocimiento de las imágenes, una propuesta teórica que ofrece una posibilidad distinta a la científica, pero que no es contradictoria. Palabras clave: Bergson - Imagen - Conocimiento - Idealismo - Realismo - Percepción. (shrink)

The crisis of subjectivistic anthropocentrism makes a new interpretation of the weird category of the demonic feasible today. The demonic presents itself as the realm of influences, of connections, of the necessary hybridizations. The essay will try to indicate a path that leads to such hybridizations starting from the category of temporality, confronting itself with an active and subjectivistic interpretation, hybridized in the relationship between science and writing, such as that of Gaston Bachelard.

Mikhail Bakhtin’s 1926 essay, “Contemporary Vitalism,” includes Bergson alongside Driesch in a short list of “the most published representatives of vitalism in Western Europe,” and, indeed, Bakhtin’s critique of Driesch is intended to undermine what he calls the “conceptual framework” of “contemporary vitalism” as a whole (The crisis of modernism: Bergson and the vitalist controversy. Eds. Frederick Burwick and Paul Douglass. Cambridge University Press, New York, 1992, p 81). The conceptual framework that Driesch and Bergson are supposed to have shared (...) in common consists at bottom, for Bakhtin, in the ontological commitment to the autonomy of life, “its independence, its disconnectedness from physical-chemical phenomena” (81). This has long been understood as the defining mark of vitalism, at least in the mind of its critics: the contention that matter and the mechanical models that track it are insufficient to the reality of biological forms, and that the explanation of life therefore requires the postulation of a non-mechanical, possibly immaterial, uniquely vital principle, force, substance, or property. Recent scholarship has made considerable headway in complicating these pictures by attending to earlier and subtler forms of materialism, and by distinguishing between different types of vitalism and drawing out the heuristic or scientific utility of some of them (Wolfe, Eidos 14: 212–235, 2011, Antropol Exp 17(13): 215–224, 2017; cf. Wolfe and Normandin, Vitalism and the scientific image in post-enlightenment life science, 1800–2010. Springer, Dordrecht, 2013). The focus of some of this work has been on the critical revaluation of Driesch himself (Bognon et al., Kairos J Philos Sci 20(1): 113–140, 2018). Yet the status of Bergson’s commitment to the existence of a vital principle remains underdeveloped. In the midst of what some are calling a “Bergson renaissance,” I think that it calls for the same kind of critical reappraisal (Ansell-Pearson, Bergson: thinking beyond the human condition. Bloomsbury, New York, 2018: 1; cf. Lundy, Deleuze’s Bergsonism. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, p 5, 2018). The aim of this paper is to attempt the outline of an answer to that call. I begin with a brief summary of Driesch’s vitalism, then I reconstruct Bergson’s underappreciated critique of internal finality, or what Kant called inner purposiveness, and locate in it a subterranean criticism of vital principles of the Drieschian variety as well. Two consequences follow: first, if Bergson is to be considered a vitalist, it cannot be in the Drieschian sense and we are therefore wrong to associate the two; and second, if Bergson is to be considered a vitalist, then his vitalism has to be understood—somewhat counterintuitively, and certainly contra Driesch—on the basis of a principle external to the ostensible individuality of biological forms. (shrink)

Abstract In Creative Evolution (1907/1911), a pivotal discussion is the extreme complexity of instinctual behavior. As one of many examples, a member of the Hymenoptera “knows” precisely the three locations of motor-neuron complexes at which to sting a cricket such that it is paralyzed, yet remains fully alive for the wasp’s larvae. Two points: a) This behavior is as much an “irreducible” complex of acts as the structural organization of the wasp’s body, and just as inexplicably formed by natural selection, (...) and, b) the instinctual behavior is actually at the same level as the vital processes of the organism. This is to say that any theory of evolution, be it selection, self-assembly or self-organization, is equally bound to address not only the origin-problem of an organism’s structure, but the correlated functional problem of instinct. Instinct, however, was Bergson’s prime source for holding, firstly, that we must see Consciousness as the impetus behind evolution and secondly, that it is only by utilizing the essence of instinct, conjoined with intellect – his “intuition” – that mind and science can penetrate these mysterious evolutionary processes. This double thesis of the role of Consciousness and the role of intuition likely helped to cause Bergson’s neglect in the biological world, but subsequently there has emerged the current sharp awareness of the “Hard Problem” of Consciousness (Chalmers, 1995). The ongoing failure on a solution to this problem – its very, very unresolved status – should give us pause. In fact, integral to the argument of Creative Evolution, though always only obliquely referenced, was Matter and Memory (1896/1912), and in this work was a remarkable solution to the Hard Problem – when understood, an amazing feat of “intuition.” This, we will see, casts Bergson’s view of the role of Consciousness in evolution, and the nature of instinct as one of evolution’s lines of development, in a new light. (shrink)