Moyaert Bergson and the Élan Riant A study in humor and metaphysics Hugh Desmond

7/27/2019 Moyaert Bergson and the lan Riant A study in humor and metaphysics Hugh Desmond

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Bergson and thelan RiantA study in humor and metaphysics

Promoter: Prof. dr. Moyaert A thesis presented in partialfulfillment of the requirements for

the degree of Master of Philosophy (MA)

By Hugh Desmond

Leuven, August 2010


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Acknowledgements

I thank Professor Moyaert profusely for guiding me showing me to work the material into

something presentable. His experience and long-term vision have more than onceprevented me from falling into an abyss. His encouragement while the work was in

progress is much appreciated.

I thank my family for their unfailing support.


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Table of Contents

PAGE

Introduction .................................................................................................................... 7

Chapter One Time, Life and Society in Bergson .................................................... 20

1.1 Duration ....................................................................................................... 201.2 lan vital: duration of life ......................................................................... 351.3 Matter and Memory: duration of man..................................................... 421.4 Obligation and Emotion: duration of society........................................... 53

Chapter Two Lifes Laughter: Laughter as Societal Instinct ................................ 58

2.1 The End of Laughter................................................................................... 592.2 The Subjective Process of Laughter.......................................................... 642.3 The Object of Laughter............................................................................... 742.4 The Source of Laughter .............................................................................. 82

Chapter Three Laughter beyond Life:lan riant.................................................... 86

3.1 Laughter and its intimate twin................................................................... 863.2 The Eternal Past............................................................................................ 903.3 lan riant ......................................................................................................... 943.4 Laughter beyond Duration ; Conclusion .................................................. 101

Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 105


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Detailed Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter One Time, Life and Society in Bergson1.1 Duration

Duration and Homogeneous Time:Experience of TimeDuration and SpaceMethodIntuition

Ontological Duration:Present and PastContraction and Relaxation

1.2 lan vital: duration in lifeMatterLife:

IndividualsEvolution

Awakening of ConsciousnessInstinct and IntelligenceIntellect and Intuition

1.3 Matter and Memory: duration in manPerception:

Matter as ImageMemoryChoice of ImagesPure perception

AffectionImagination

1.4 Obligation and Emotion: duration in societyObligation and the Closed SocietyAppeal and the Open Society


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Chapter Two Lifes laughter: laughter as societal instinct2.1 The End of Laughter

Social CorrectionDisinterestedness

2.2 The Subjective Process of LaughterRelaxation:

Affection,Imagination

art and life - comic logic - the absurd and dreamsContraction:

AffectionImagination

2.3 The Objects of LaughterThe Method of the Dynamical Scheme

HumansForms Movements Situations and Words Character

2.4 The Source of LaughterSocietyBeyond the Plane of Society?

Chapter Three Laughter beyond life: lan riant3.1 Laughter and its intimate twin

The Intimate Self and Outer Persona

Between showing and not-showing

3.2 The Eternal Past3.3 lan riant

Laughter beyond contractionDistance

Freedom Shame BlasphemyDiscontinuity

Laughter beyond relaxation

3.4 Laughter beyond Duration

Bibliography


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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Works by Henri Bergson

TFW Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, George

Allen and Unwin, 1910. Translated by F. L. Pogson fromEssai sur les donnesimmdiates de la conscience (1889).

MM Matter and Memory, George Allen and Unwin, 1911. Translated by Nancy

Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer fromMatire et mmoire: Essai sur larelation du corps avec lesprit(1896).

L Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, Macmillan, 1911. Translated

by Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell fromLe Rire (1900).

ITM An Introduction to Metaphysics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Translated by T.E.

Hulme fromIntroduction la Mtaphysique (1903)

CE Creative Evolution, Macmillan, 1911. Translated by Arthur Mitchell from

LEvolution cratrice (1907).

ME Mind-Energy: Lectures and Essays, Greenwood Press, 1975. Translated by H.

Wildon Carr fromLEnergie Spirituelle: Essais et conferences (1919).

DS Duration and Simultaneity, with Reference to Einsteins Theory, Bobbs-Merrill,1965. Translated by Leon Jacobsen, fromDure et simultaneit: A Propos de laThorie dEinstein (1923).

TSMR The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, Notre Dame Press, 1977. Translated

by R. Ashley Audra and Cloudesley Brereton, fromLes Deux sources de la

morale et de la religion (1932).

CM The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, Philosophical Library, 1946.

Translated by Mabelle L. Andison, fromLa pense et le mouvement: Essais et

conferences (1934).


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Introduction

Laughter is both ubiquitous and mysterious. Even though we laugh all the time,

we do not understand why, and if we seek a solution that explains exhaustively why we

laugh we are often frustrated. Nonetheless, laughter remains a fascinating topic and in

this thesis, with special reference to the thought of Henri Bergson, we will explore the

question: why do we laugh?

Laughter raises a number of important philosophical issues. When we laugh, do

we have a practical purpose we have in mind? Our mouths open, we squint our eyes, our

diaphragm contracts rhythmically and we emit whooping sounds: it is hard to see how

these movements would achieve any definite goal. Described in this way, laughter sounds

slightly grotesque. When we reduce laughter to a series of mechanical movements, the

laughing face mutates into a contorted face, an ugly face. Laughter is reduced to a waste

of energy that might otherwise be used for practical purposes. Is anything of utilitarian

value expressed by laughter? It might seem better to eliminate all laughter, and flex our

facial muscles only when we want to say something but this seems absurd somehow.

What then is achieved by laughing, if anything?

In some religious orders laughter is frowned on, as it is not considered to be true

to the religious spirit and earnest subservience to God and humanity. Perhaps there is

some truth to this. Laughter sometimes is clearly inappropriate, and can be a sign either

of callousness, or stupidity. Some things are simply too intimate and too delicate to be

laughed at, and every community seems to determine implicitly what may be

appropriately laughed at, if anything at all. More sinisterly, society also determines which

individuals are derided if they depart from the norm. What are the conditions that deem

something appropriate for laughter, or derision? What is the relation between laughter

and society?These conditions shaping laughter do not only vary from society to society, but

also from person to person. A man drives over a cat and laughs at the crushed body;

another might cry and bury the body. Both are members of the same society, both are in

the same objective situation, so it seems difference must lie in the inner processes of the

mind. What goes on inside our minds to evoke these different reactions even while


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perception remains the same? What does laughter reveal about the emotional experience

of an individual?

And by its very nature laughter seems to be intricately intertwined with a persons

conscious perceptions. What distinguishes professional comedians from the rest of

human beings is not only their ability to act or to tell a joke, but primarily their

imaginative perception of the world. They see things differently. Imagination thus seems

to play an important role in the humorous perception: humor seems to involve some kind

of gestalt-switch in which a situation suddenly takes on a new character. Thus an

important question is the relation between imagination and laughter.

These questions pertain to the structure of the human being and society, and to the

end which laughter might serve. But even if these questions could be answered, it might

still be suggested that we have not completely explained laughter. The factof laughter

would still remain a mystery: why do we laugh at all, instead of being serious all the

time? Is laughters existence accidental, or is it necessarily implied in existence itself?

Can a world be imagined which is entirely lacking in the phenomenon of laughter?

There are some hints that the existence of laughter has profound ontological

implications. Laughter seems to suggest a hidden force of which we are mostly unaware,

but that nevertheless flows through us every time we laugh. This force pertains to a

certain flow of time, in which the past is torn away from the present, and yet is ever so

tenuously implied in it. Laughter points to a certain discontinuity, a certain disunity, but

without any absolute difference between the elements. What this could mean we will

explore later, but in any case this suggests that laughter may be a potent witness to some

metaphysical order we are often unaware of.

These are the main questions that we will be exploring in this thesis. Basically,

they concern the end of laughter, its internal subjective processes and its originating

sources. In this way we will attempt a synoptic view of laughter, and try to give

consideration to society, the human mind and their metaphysical groundings. In this way

we hope to suggest that laughter is not merely some curiosity in human existence, but

somehow reveals something very profound in it, and that philosophy should in fact take

laughter seriously.


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Our guiding perspective in all this will be that of Bergsons philosophy. Why

Bergson? Unlike most accounts of laughter, Bergsons lends itself naturally to such a

synoptic view. On the one hand he has a rich and complex account of laughter and on the

other he offers the philosophical resources to place laughter in a broader context. We will

connect both of these sides of his account in the first two chapters, and in the third see

then how certain instabilities in Bergsons account suggest a more profound source of

laughter. Other theories of laughter will be referred to as extensively as is relevant to our

discussion, although it will not be possible to give exhaustive attention to other theories,

since our concern is to delve as deeply as possible into Bergsons theory. We are not

looking for a particular theory that fits all empirical cases; rather, we are trying to

uncover what laughter can reveal about an essential dimension of human existence as a

whole. In this way the thesis attempts to be both thematic and author-centered at the same

time.

Bergsons theory of laughter is rooted in his whole philosophy, so a short account

of his work is appropriate here. Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was a vitalist philosopher

from France, and is most famous for his work on evolution, Evolution Cratrice (1911),

in which he describes evolution as powered by a vital impulse which he calls the lan

vital. In the debate concerning evolution around the turn of the century he adopted a

position contrary to finalistic theories such as those of Lamarck, and to mechanistic

theories such as those of Darwin. He argued that finalism could not explain the apparent

disorganization and purposeless of evolution, and that for mechanism it was a mystery

why living beings should have evolved at all beyond the unicellular stage. Instead

evolution is like an explosion, driven by the impulse of lan vital without any definite

goal. Evolution Cratrice, the book articulating this insight, is the one that definitively

established Bergsons reputation, earning him a Noble Prize for literature in 1928.

Many of these ideas find an echo in Le Rire, his monograph on laughter written a

decade later, and the main text to be examined here. In it Bergson treats the purpose of

laughter, its relation to society, and its relation to the psychology of man: just the

questions we have set out for consideration in our thesis. For Bergson laughter is an

instinct that enforces social adaptation in others: when certain members of society adopt


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connect society and life, and to be able to understand how society can be understood as a

living organism with certain internal pressures that hold its members in place. This

cannot be found in Bergsons Laughter, but rather in his late work Two Sources of

Morality and Religion. We mentioned that laughter is some kind of instinct, which is

perhaps a surprising way of looking at it; there in that late work we will see how this

perspective is in fact an offspring of Bergsons understanding of life and society.

The other questions that we set out for this thesis concern the connection between

laughter and the structure of the human mind. What does laughter reveal about emotion,

about perception, and about imagination? In Laughter Bergson makes emotional

indifference a necessary precondition for any laughter:

It seems as though the comic could not produce its disturbing effect unless it fell,

so to say, on the surface of a soul that is thoroughly calm and unruffled.Indifference is its natural environment, for laughter has no greater foe thanemotion. () To produce the whole of its effect, then, the comic demands

something like a momentary anesthesia of the heart. Its appeal is to intelligence,

pure and simple. (L, p. 10-11.)

Why is this so? What is the nature of emotion? Bergson suggests that the emotion we feel

for another person is the manifestation of some prior social bond:

Comedy can only begin at the point where our neighbors personality ceases to

affect us. It begins, in fact, with what might be called a growing callousness to

social life. (L, p. 134.)

But emotion is more than this: it is intertwined with the nature of consciousness itself.

What is this connection, and why does it have an effect on comic perception? Why, when

emotionally affected, are we often unable to imagine the object to be something

mechanical encrusted on the living?

In fact, Bergson himself gives us the philosophical resources to tackle these

questions, but they cannot be found inLaughteritself, but rather in his other works. In his

first two books, Time and Free Will and especiallyMatter and Memory, he explores the

nature of human consciousness, and its relation to the body and to memory. Many

questions concerning grounding concepts remain unanswered in Laughter, and for these

we must look to other works. There is the connection with society, which leads us to the

Two Sources of Morality and Religion, and there is the connection with consciousness

and the human mind, which leads us to Matter and Memory. How then indeed link


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consciousness and society? For example, in Laughter he writes A comic character is

generally comic in proportion to his ignorance of himself. The comic person is

unconscious. (L, p. 16.) What has consciousness to do with life and mechanism? This

question leads us deeper into the heart of Bergsons philosophy. For Bergson,

consciousness is not merely subjective: it is an ontological force. Each of us has an

individual consciousness, but we are not absolutely autonomous individuals; our

consciousness participates in a wider consciousness which is life itself. This wider

consciousness is the lan vital mentioned earlier.

Is Bergson thus introducing some mystical entity that determines who we are?

Where is human freedom if we are subsumed in the broader ontological force of lan

vital? In fact, it is not a question of a choice between autonomy and heteronomy, to put it

in Kantian terms. Bergson might say that autonomy and heteronomy are perhaps not the

right concepts to use in approaching the question. They are too rigid to capture the

fluidity of human freedom. But to understand why, we need to go deeper yet into

Bergsons philosophy, to its very core: his notion of duration. Duration is an

understanding of time that is closest to the subjective experience of it. We often think of

this subjective experience as illusory, and that the real nature of time is that given by the

clock: objective time. Bergson argues that in fact objective time masks the true nature of

time. Duration is a continuous movement, a single unity made up of an infinitude of

varying points; only afterwards do we extract the points from the movement and quantify

time.

This will be explained more fully later, but it is enough to note here that Bergson

grounds consciousness itself in duration. This may perhaps seem like a strange move, but

one must remember that Bergson is reacting to Kant, for whom time was an a priori

structure of the mind that, together with space, determined the form of our perception.

Although Bergson has a different understanding of time, he will still make it constitutive

of the nature of consciousness. In fact, inMatter and Memory and in Creative Evolution,

wherehe explores the ontological character of duration, he makes duration constitutive of

life itself, and thus in a way Bergsons duration is Kants ding-an-sich. For Kant this

cannot be known, only thought, and in a reminiscent move Bergson begins the

Introduction to Metaphysics by distinguishing between two different types of knowledge:


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The first implies that we move around the object; the second that we enter into it.

The first kind of knowledge may be said to stop at the relative; the second, inthose cases where it is possible, to attain the absolute. (IM, p.1.)

This absolute is duration. In this way duration will be a natural starting point for the

thesis, since it is the notion from which the other essential considerations grow.

Bizarrely, nowhere in Laughter does Bergson mention duration. The closest he

gets is the importance he places on absentmindedness.

Absentmindedness, indeed, is not perhaps the actual fountain-head of the comic,

but surely it is contiguous to a certain stream of facts and fancies which flows

straight from the fountain-head. (L, p. 12.)

Thus he seems to attribute a central importance to absentmindedness, and implies that in

a certain way, all forms of the comic are a form of absentmindedness or are in someimportant way related to it. Why is this so? Bergson does not explain in Laughter, but

perhaps if we link absentmindedness to the flow of time, this might become clear.

In any case, in order to understand laughter we must peel away the different

layers involved, and delve increasingly deeply, first into political philosophy, philosophy

of mind, and ultimately into metaphysics. However, the danger of over-analysis is lurking

here. In the cathedral of Bergsons philosophy, laughter is something of an ornament, and

duration is the foundation. In showing how the ornament is supported by the foundation

we risk focusing too much on the foundation, thus missing the playfulness of the

ornament. It seems inappropriate when speaking of laughter to analyze the issue wholly

in terms of space and time; to do so would be like describing the gracious gestures of

dancers by the physical movements of the atoms in their bodies. When showing how the

part relates to the whole, one must let go of a consciousness fixated on the part and be

open to taking in the whole more synoptically. Perhaps then it is no coincidence that

Bergson does not mention duration inLaughter. Laughter is astonishingly beautiful --

almost too beautiful for philosophical analysis. We will try not to fix our gaze on the

minutiae of the metaphysics of duration, out of fear this philosophical Medusa might turn

us into stone, but merely show how it grounds the intermediary notions of matter, life,

consciousness, and society.


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Roland Breeur describes as the singular that somehow escapes duration. He makes the

point clear in a comparison between Proust and Bergson:

De Recherche van Proust heet niet toevallig een Recherche du temps perdu. De

tijd is altijd al verloren tijd. () Vandaar enkele frappante tegenstelligen met

Bergson: de tijd is niet continuteit maar discontinuteit. (...) Voor Proust is hetsinguliere iets in mij dat zich aan mijn greep, mijn duur en mijn innerlijkheid

onttrekt.1

What is then the relation between this singularity to the particular discontinuities

in life? Perhaps we can imagine that this is somehow intimated when we fall in love,

harbour bitter disappointments, or are given unimaginable joys. Yet one cannot really say

that it is a particular object that is responsible for these experiences for it could be looked

at with a cool scientific eye. However, sometimes we do not react so rationally. It seems

as if what Bergson understands as contraction cannot bring this particular experience into

the continuous whole of our life. Why? One could perhaps say that this singularity is like

an Eternal Past that we somehow become aware of. The object becomes a kind of

symbol for something that transcends time, and in the process becomes discontinuous

with the rest of life.

The Eternal Past sparks our most intense emotions, and perhaps it plays an

essential role in laughter as well, for laughter breaks up the flow of duration. It introduces

a discontinuous element. As we shall see, it contains a movement of contraction followed

by relaxation, a build-up of tension and then a sudden relaxation: something mechanical

encrusted on the living. The suggestion here is that Bergson makes the right moves, but

interprets them wrongly. He makes this sudden relaxation accidental, since it is part of

the larger movement of social correction; we will suggest that it is essential. It is in order

to make sense of how it is essential that we introduce the Eternal Past. When we laugh we

are able to distance ourselves from the living thing, not in a scientific way, but in such a

way that the Eternal Past is somehow suggested. When we laugh we somehow realize

that nothing in life is of ultimate importance, that there is something else that transcends

duration, and that therefore we do not need to take life too seriously.

1Roland Breeur, Bergson: het zuivere bewustzijn als moi profond in Vrijheid en bewustzijn: essays

over Descartes, Bergson en Sartre, Peeters, 2002: p. 112-3.


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Laughter is thus somehow beyond our control. We cannot help but desire it, and

furthermore, when we are laughing we are often swept up in it. Do we not often find

everything funny when in a cheerful mood? And when caught by a fit of laughing, do we

often not find it difficult to make the transition back to seriousness? One could almost

imagine some force taking hold of us, causing us to laugh. We are not responsible for our

own laughter; something else laughs through us, and we are only a medium. We only

have to relax, to open ourselves up to this force and soon we are laughing. Soon we are in

the tribunes of the Eternal Past, watching life unfold itself and enjoying the spectacle.

There is a force flowing from the Eternal Past to the present, but it is not that of

contraction, nor that of the lan vital: it is the lan riant.

How then is laughter a particular way we have of dealing with materiality?

Laughter is a way of taking a distance from finitude, and opening ourselves up to the

Eternal Past. We are seized by the lan riant, and this force somehow mediates how we

relate to materiality. We are not entirely indifferent to it, as we would be to an

instrument, but neither do we take it entirely seriously, as if it were a great work of art.

Laughter is love with a smile. It is a way of freeing the object of laughter and ourselves,

under the auspices of the Eternal Past. With some imagination perhaps, one could say that

this is the most fundamental reason why we laugh.

In this way laughter totters at the brink of duration and points to something

beyond. The David of laughter fells the Goliath of duration, as it were. It is astonishing

how something as mundane as laughter can have such deep sources perhaps its ubiquity

arises precisely from the depth of its sources. But before dealing with laughter at this

abstract remove, its mechanisms should be examined, namely its societal function, and its

ontological source, and duration.


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Chapter One

Time, Life and Society in Bergson

1.1DurationAt the heart of Bergsons philosophy is his conception of time, which he calls duration.

In fact, it is the notion on which his entire philosophy rests, both in content and in

method, and therefore it is essential to give it the consideration it deserves. We will first

explain what is meant by duration, which is most easily done by showing the connection

with the subjective experience of duration. Having outlined the nature of duration, we

will then be in a position to show its metaphysical and ontological significance, and to

show how it is not confined to the subject alone. Following this discussion of duration,

we can then move on to evolution, the human mind and human society, as these

considerations are of crucial importance in our treatment of Bergsons account of

laughter. However, before exploring the ontological significance of duration, we will

focus first on Bergsons notion of duration itself by opposing it to its counterparts in

space and homogeneous time.

Duration and Homogeneous Time

The Experience of Time

How do we usually think of time? We are often not conscious of the flow of time

as such, but only of the events that delineate time. The passage of time cannot be seen,

cannot be heard, cannot be felt, and we only are awoken to an awareness of time when

some event grabs our attention and reminds us that time has passed. Have we not all been

so engrossed in something that we completely forgot about the time? Psychology has

labeled this phenomenon asflow2and one of its main characteristics seems to be a lack of

2Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, New York: Harper and Row,

1990.


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awareness of time. The reason for this may possibly be that no single event stood out to

capture our attention, neither in our external perceptions or in our internal experience.

Not only do we experience the activity itself as a seamless whole, but we ourselves are

united with it, to the point of forgetting about ourselves. It is a paradoxical state: it is an

unconsciousness of self, and yet it is the highest degree of consciousness. In particular,

there is nothing to remind us about the passage of time because we cannot distinguish

between those events that might give us anchor points to keep track of time. Quite

probably,flow is not a clearly determinable state, but is more of a tendency that can be

more or less present in ones state of mind. We are always in danger of losing a sense of

time; this would explain why we rely on clocks, which produce clearly distinguishable

events at regular intervals, providing us with reliable anchor points in order to quantify

time.

If he were alive today, Bergson might say that this state offlow reveals something

about the true nature of time. We talk about losing the sense of time, but in fact we lose

merely quantitative or homogeneous time, and gain duration:

When I follow with my eyes on the dial of a clock the movement of the handwhich corresponds to the oscillations of the pendulum, I do not measure duration,

as seems to be thought; I merely count simultaneities, which is very different.

(TFW, p. 107-108.)

The quantitative time we ordinarily use in daily life is merely the surface of real time, for

it is reducible to a relationship between events that take place in space. In this way,

quantitative time arises from spatializing time: it is time that has been contaminated by

space, as it were. Quantity, extension these are properties that belong to space, but

duration is beyond extension, beyond quantity.

We get into the habit of setting up the same distinction between the successive

moments of our conscious life: the oscillations of the pendulum break it up, so to

speak, into parts external to one another: hence the mistaken idea of ahomogeneous inner duration, similar to space. (TFW, p. 109)


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Duration and Space

What is this inner duration of which Bergson speaks? How precisely does it differ

from space? What is space? It is interesting to note that Bergson originally came to the

notion of duration through a study of mechanics:

En ralit, la mtaphysique et mme la psychologie mattiraient beaucoup moins

que les recherches relatives la thorie des sciences, surtout la thorie desmathmatiques. Je me proposais, pour ma thse de doctorat, dtudier les concepts

fondamentaux de la mcanique. Cest ainsi que je fus conduit moccuper de

lide de temps. Je maperus, non sans surprise, quil nest jamais question dedure proprement dite en mcanique, ni mme en physique, et que le temps

dont on y parle est tout autre chose. Je me demandai alors o est la dure relle, et

ce quelle pouvait bien tre, et pourquoi notre mathmatique na pas de prise sur

elle. Cest ainsi que je fus amen graduellement du point de vue mathmatique etmcanistique o je mtais plac tout dabord, au point de vue psychologique. De

ces rflexions est sorti lEssai dur les donnes immdiates de la conscience ojessaie de pratiquer une introspection absolument directe et de saisir la durepure.3

Perhaps it is by reacting to the mechanistic conception of time that Bergson initially

places duration solely in the subject. He deals with this most fully in his first book, Time

and Free Will, where he contrasts duration with space.

The first characteristic of duration seems to be a ceaseless change, for we observe

a ceaseless change in our mental states:

I find, first of all, that I pass from state to state. I am warm or cold, I am merry orsad, I work or I do thinking, I look at what is around me or I think of somethingelse I change, then, without ceasing.(CE, p. 1)

Inner states are inextricably intertwined with the flow of time. They are never repeated,

for each later psychic state contains the memory of the earlier one. Thus duration is also

characterized by irreversibility:My mental state, as it advances on the road of time, is

continually swelling with the duration which it accumulates (CE, p. 2.)

Furthermore, each mental state cannot be separated from what precedes it, for

they interpenetrate:

We can thus conceive of succession without distinction, and think of it as a

mutual penetration, an interconnexion and organization of elements, each one of

3Henri Bergson, letter to Giovanni Papini, October 21, 1903, inMlanges, p. 604. Quoted in Arnaud

Franois, Bergson, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche:Volont et ralit, Presses Universitaires de France, 2008.


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which represents the whole, and cannot be distinguished or isolated from it except

by abstract thought. (TFW, p. 101.)

Thus we see here that the flow of time is a very particular succession, a continuous

succession, of which the elements cannot be clearly distinguished.

Bergson often describes these characteristics by means of metaphor. One he is

particular fond of is the movement of a hand. When I move my hand across space, I do

not endeavor to move my hand to this point and then to the next point, and so on, but

conceive of it and execute it as a single movement. Thus it is a continuous movement,

and in this respect a unity, but in another respect it is a multiplicity, since it traverses

ever-changing points in space. The movement describes an infinite succession of points

in space and yet is a single movement. InITMBergson describes a series of metaphors in

order to suggest the nature of duration, even though each is faulty in some way:

This inner life may be compared to the unrolling of a coil, for there is no living

being who does not feel himself coming gradually to the end of his role () But it

may just as well be compared to a continual rolling up, like that of a thread on aball, for our past follows us... (ITM, p. 8.)

However, every new moment is novel, duration is irreversible, and this is not something

the rolling coil conveys. The symbolic representation of duration must be always

different if it is to convey true duration. The metaphor for this would a myriad-tinted

spectrum, with its insensible gradations leading from one shade to another. (ITM, p. 8.)

In itself, this metaphor does not convey the nature of duration either, because the colors

of the spectrum are juxtaposed in space, whereas pure duration, on the contrary,

excludes all idea of juxtaposition, reciprocal externality and extension. (ITM, p. 9.)

Perhaps most basically, duration must be understood as a movement. A movement

in space has a beginning, middle and end, and can be represented by a set of points,

called the trajectory. . Now, the trajectory in this mathematical space can describe the

process, but it is not identical with the process. The trajectory is a symbolic

representation of the process; it consists of a succession of points. Each of those points is

defined as the point at which the process would halt if it were to stop. But the process

does not stop at that point, for if it did, it would no longer be a dynamic process but a

static point. For this reason, there is always an element of consciousnessbuilt into the

representation of a process by a trajectory:


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The division is the work of our imagination, of which indeed the office is to fix

the moving images of our ordinary experience, like the instantaneous flash whichilluminates a stormy landscape by night. (MM, p. 248.)

A process can be described by a trajectory, but a trajectory is a static representation, and

cannot describe the movement at the basis of the process. This was the mistake in Zenos

arguments that movement does not exist.

They all consist in making time and movement coincide with the line which

underlies them, in attributing to them the same subdivisions as to the line, in shortin treating them like that line. (MM, p. 250.)

Indeed, the movement is of another order: the movement is the source of the trajectory,

and therefore the latter can never be identical with the former. The movement itself is

indivisible.

In any case, we can thus get an idea of what Bergson means by duration. These

characteristics of continuity, irreversibility and perpetual change are unified in the

concept ofqualitative multiplicity. It is a multiplicity of which the elements cannot be

separated from the whole because there are qualities instead of quantities. This qualitative

multiplicity is most easily explained in contrast to a quantitative multiplicity. For this we

will explain what Bergson means by number, and in number we will see how space and

duration relate: Number may be defined in general as a collection of units, or, speaking

more exactly, as the synthesis of the one and the many. (TFW, p. 75.) However, what is

the connection between number and time? The notion of structure can help here. In a

Kantian vein, Bergson is also investigating the conditions of our experience, in which

time and space play a vital role by structuring our experience of the world. A structure is

both a whole and the sum of different parts. Number then is an abstract representation of

structure: it abstracts from the details of the structure and retains only the skeleton. The

opening motif of Beethovens Fifth Symphony can thus be represented by the number 4 =

1 + 1 + 1 + 1. The parts are taken to be identical and are replaced by unities; the relations

between the parts are also taken to be identical and the whole is replaced by the sum of

unities. Number thus involves the homogenization and quantification of structure.

Russell criticized Bergson for this conception of number in an article on

Bergsons philosophy:


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Bergson does not know what number is, and has himself no clear idea of it. There

are three entirely different things which are confused by Bergson in the abovestatements, namely: (1) number, the general concept applicable to the various

particular numbers; (2) the various particular numbers; (3) the various collections

to which the various particular numbers are applicable.4

Russell undoubtedly has a point here, for Bergson does not distinguish between these

different notions of number; however, what Bergson is trying to do is not to give a

detailed analysis of what number is, but to distinguish it from duration. The three notions

mentioned by Russell are perhaps not entirely different, for they all refer to some clearly

defined entity, with clear borders separating it from another number. This is precisely

Bergsons point.

How can numbers be distinguished? Let us assume that all the sheep in the flock

are identical; they differ at least by the position which they occupy in space, otherwise

they would not form a flock. (TFW, p. 77.) This means that space is a necessary

condition in order to conceive of a number. Without space we could not juxtapose the

various unities, and they would merge into single unity. Without space, there would only

be one number, the number one. And then there would be no number, because what is

unity if there is nothing to unify? There would be no longer anything to distinguish one

from zero; everything would turn into a homogeneous, confused and infinite mass, and

the world would collapse into utter unintelligibility. Thus we see how numbers

presuppose space. Like Kant, Bergson understands space as a mental structure ordering

experience. Numbers, as ordered by space, therefore are identical and distinguishable: in

this they differ from qualities. The collection of numbers is a numerical multiplicity, but

qualities, such as mental states, cannot be quantified. They belong to space, and not so

much to duration.

We see here that duration opposes space. Homogeneous time, the time we use in

our practical life, is in fact duration that has been spatialized:

Time, conceived under the form of an unbounded and homogeneous medium, is

nothing but the ghost of space haunting the reflective consciousness. (TFW, p. 99)

4Russell, Bertrand, The Philosophy of Bergson in The Monist, vol.22, 1912.


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Events in time, which actually relate to each other as in a qualitative multiplicity, thus are

conceived as forming a numerical multiplicity. This opposition between duration and

space is also one of subjectivity and objectivity:

We can understand that material objects, being exterior to one another and to

ourselves, derive both exteriorities from the homogeneity of a medium whichinserts intervals between them and sets off their outlines: but states of

consciousness, even when successive, permeate one another, and in the simplest

of them the whole soul can be reflected. (TFW, p. 98.)

Why do we thus confuse space and time? We do this for very good reasons, says

Bergson, for the opposition that takes place between duration and space, between

subjectivity and objectivity also is present within our own self:

Our ego comes in contact with the external world at its surface; our successive

sensations, although dissolving into one another, retain something of the mutualexternality which belongs to their objective causes. (TFW, p. 125)

We quantify time so that we have a hold on it, and can use it as a tool for structuring our

actions. This will be a recurrent theme throughout Bergsons work: quantification is

intrinsically connected with a practical frame of mind. Thus the quantification of time is

perhaps fundamental to any organization of daily life. Without it, we would be more

inclined to drift off in a subjective dream world, unaware of the world outside us.

Furthermore, social life takes place in space, and therefore this mixing of duration and

space is inevitable. Language consists of words, which are discrete entities, and so

therefore forms somewhat of a numerical multiplicity which will always remain

insufficient to convey the qualitative multiplicity of our inner states.

There is a deeper reason however why we confuse space and time, one that lies in

the nature of duration itself. Duration is never manifested as it is, but always needs the

materiality of space to be communicated. In itself, pure movement is invisible. Even

when we compare duration to a movement, we still rely on space to communicate

duration. Duration can only be expressed symbolically and thus needs space to manifest

itself.

This distinction between duration and space is absolutely crucial to the whole of

Bergsons philosophy. However, the distinction is not absolute, for we will show how in

fact space itself is a form of duration. Duration therefore is not confined to the interior of


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the subject, but also has an objective aspect as well. Before discussing this, let us

consider how the relation between space and duration is constitutive of his style of

thinking, of his method as it were, for whether he is discussing life, the human mind,

society or morality, the relation comes back again and again.

Method

In approaching philosophical problems Bergson often tends to split his thought

into two phases. In a first he establishes a dualism between two different tendencies in a

situation, often corresponding to the superficial and profound, which is to say, to space

and duration. The first contains a succession of discontinuous solid elements; the second

forms a continuous ever-changing whole with overlapping parts which cannot be

separated from each other. Then in a second phase of his reasoning he reconciles these

two tendencies by showing them to be extremes constituting a continuum. Thus, in a

sense he shows both the discontinuous and continuous tendencies in a situation to be

manifestations of a deepercontinuity. However, in connecting the two points, the

continuum does not reduce them to sameness. Rather it shows how these two tendencies

can generate a qualititative multiplicity of phenomena, or to borrow a metaphor from the

Introduction to Metaphysics, a myriad-tinted spectrum, with its insensible gradations

leading from one shade to another. (ITM, p. 13.)

When Deleuze speaks about the Bergsonian method, with its two main aspects,

the one dualist, the other monist5, it is this approach that he has in mind: the movement

from difference to reconciliation of the difference without reducing one to the other. He

analyzes Bergsons method in three rules, the last two of which correspond roughly to the

two phases we have been speaking of here. Deleuzes second rule of Bergsonism is:

Struggle against illusion, rediscover the true differences in kind or articulations of the

real.6

This search for differences in kind rather than differences in degree, could be

reformulated as the first phase, in which one seeks to distinguish different tendencies.

Differences in degree reduce all to a single tendency, which then can differ in intensity;

however a difference in kind points to an irreducible difference. Or rather, it is a

5Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism, p. 73

6Ibid., p. 21.


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difference that cannot be resolved in terms of space alone, for when this difference is

analyzed in terms of time, the different tendencies do not seem absolutely different, but

rather like two isolated points at the extreme of a continuum. Thus Deleuzes third rule:

State problems and solve them in terms of time rather than of space.7

In this way

difference in kind between space and subjective duration is shown to be a continuum on

the line of ontological duration, as we will explain further on.

This movement from difference to reconciliation has Hegelian overtones, but

unlike in Hegel the opposition is not mediated by an all-inclusive whole. Space remains

radically different from duration, even though there is a movement from the one to the

other. There is a mediated difference without reduction to sameness; if Hegelian dialectic

describes a circular movement, from Geistback onto itself, albeit in more inclusive form,

the Bergsonian method is an open-ended movement. The outcome of Hegelian dialectic

is not a qualitative multiplicity; this is the crucial difference with Bergson. As Deleuze

writes:

Bergsonisms incompatibility with Hegelianism, indeed with any dialectical

method, is also evident in these passages. [CE, p. 167] Bergson criticizes the

dialectic for being afalse movement, that is, a movement of the abstract concept,

which goes from one opposite to the other only by means of imprecision.8

Thus in Hegels dialectic the movement from one abstract concept to the other is in fact

not movement; all remains within Geist.

However, there may yet be a totalizing tendency here, albeit in a more subtle

form. Difference is not reduced to a mediated sameness in Bergsons philosophy since

the notion of duration contains in itself a multiplicity while being a unity at the same

time; yet one might wonder whether Bergson perhaps makes a reductive move of another

kind, and reduces discontinuity to continuity. Space and duration are both forms of a

deeper ontological duration, something we will discuss shortly, but one may wonder

whether Bergson does not reduce the discontinuous here. We will return to this

consideration in the third chapter, since it is a key consideration for the nature of

laughter.

7Ibid., p. 31.

8Ibid., p. 44.


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In any case, perhaps we can give some examples of this method. In Time and

Free Will, Bergson seeks to distinguish between two senses of the self, our social self

and fundamental self:

In other words, our perceptions, sensations, emotions and ideas occur under two

aspects: the one clear and precise, but impersonal; the other confused, everchanging, and inexpressible, because language cannot get hold of it without

arresting its mobility or fitting it into its common-place forms without making it

into public property. (TFW, p. 129.)

As we will discuss later, this dualism is a particular form of the dualism between space

and duration, and thus in a sense Time and Free Will is the articulation of the first phase

of Bergsons thought on the nature of the self. In his next book, Matter and Memory, he

moves on to the next phase, and reconciles these two senses of the self with the

connecting notions ofcontraction and extension, which show the continuity between

duration and space. Other examples would include the dualism between types of time

(duration and homogenous time), types of memory (spontaneous and habitual), types of

society (open and closed), and between instinct and intellect, matter and memory, past

and present, etc. In this way the distinction between duration and space plays a role not

only on the philosophical level, but also on the meta-philosophical level.

Intuition

The way a philosopher proceeds in tackling a subject usually reveals the beliefs

he holds about what true knowledge consists of; so too Bergsons method reveals his

epistemology. In his textIntroduction to Metaphysics Bergson distinguishes between

analysis and intuition: with the former we distinguish between discrete elements or

properties of a thing, and with the latter we grasp the essence or duration of a thing:

By intuition we mean the intellectual sympathy by which one places oneself

within an object in order to coincide with what is unique in it and consequentlyinexpressible.(ITM, p. 5.)

Intuition thus places itself in the depths of an object as it were. Analysis on the other

hand, remains on the surface:

Analysis, on the contrary, is the operation which reduces the object to elementsalready known, that is, to elements common to it and other objects. (ITM, p. 5.)


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Perhaps one could say that the first phase of Bergsonian thought is the more

analytical, the second more intuitive. Are these phases consecutive? Is analysis a

necessary prerequisite for intuition? Bergson in fact claims the opposite: it is possible to

go from intuition to analysis, from the depths to the surface, but the opposite movement

is impossible:

In its eternally unsatisfied desire to embrace the object around which it is

compelled to turn, analysis multiplies without end the number of its points of

view in order to complete its always incomplete representation () But intuition,if intuition is possible, is a simple act. (ITM, p. 6.)

Is Bergsonian intuition some kind of mysticism? Bergson has received much criticism on

this front, not least from Russell. However, the criticism does not seem entirely justified,

because Bergson does not negate the importance of analysis, but rather claims merely

claims that intuition must be prior to analysis. Analysis is used in order express the

intuition. Without analysis we remain in an opaque intuition, unable to distinguish

between discrete elements.

Yet in an important sense the process of intuition is inexpressible. The first phase

can be expressed in words; the second must be done in silence. The reason for this is due

to the nature of duration. As Mullarkey comments:

Whenever we philosophise about time we inevitably confuse this space with time

thinking and talking about time distorts it: We cannot measure time, we cannoteven talk about it, without spatializing it.9 (The latter quoted inDS, p. 150.)

We may look outside ourselves for useful concepts in order to grasp duration, but these

concepts in the end can only be suggestive of duration; without an accompanying effort

on our part we will never be able to grasp duration. Relying on concepts alone implies a

lack of effort to place oneself in the originary movement itself.

As alluded to in the introduction, here we see more explicitly how duration is

related to the Kantian ding-an-sich, the unknowable noumenal reality. As Mullarkey

writes: Kant characterized things-in-themselves as unknowable in virtue of what was for

Bergson his impoverished conception of understanding and the perception of space and

time.10

What Kant conceived of as understanding, Bergson might have called analysis,

9Mullarkey,Bergson and Philosophy,p. 150.

10Ibid, p. 170


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which deals with objects merely in their external manifestation. Kant grouped together

analysis and the a priori mental structures ordering experience, space and time, whereas

Bergson places time firmly beyond analysis. The reason for this, Bergson believed, was

that Kant underestimated the importance of time and placed it on the same level as space:

Kants great mistake was to take time as a homogeneous medium. (TFW, p. 232.) Time

is more than this, more than a subjective structure of the mind; contrary to what Kant

believed, duration is constitutive in an ontological sense as well, and because of its fluid

reality is inextricably linked with human freedom. The thing-in-itself is accessible, albeit

perhaps not in the way Kant imagined, and as Mullarkey writes:

If Kant banished metaphysics and with it the absolute, Bergson sees it as his task

to reinstate them both, only now in a newly redeemed understanding rather than in

the form in which Kant uncovered them.11

In this way we see how duration is not only at the ground of the method of Bergsons

thought, and the methods two phases, but also at the ground of Bergsons epistemology,

in which he distinguishes between analysis and intuition.

To conclude therefore, the opposition between duration and space, or between

real time and homogeneous time, cannot be absolute. It is a result of an analysis, a first

phase in the method. We will see now how homogeneous time and duration are not

wholly different, since the latter is the source of the former. Duration is not so much non-

objective as transobjective; it is the ontological force of all reality.

Ontological Duration

How can duration be at the basis of all reality? We will suggest here that two

elements and two movements are necessary to understand duration as an ontological

force: past and present, and extension (dtention) and contraction (tension).

Past and Present

Past and present represent a continuum. In fact there is no single past, nor any

single present. What we call the present is in fact already suffused with the past:

11Ibid., p. 115.


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The real, concrete, lie present that of which I speak when I speak of my present

perception that present necessarily occupies a duration. () The psychicalstate, then, that I call my present, must be both a perception of the immediate

past and a determination of the immediate future. (MM, p. 176.)

And the past in itself cannot exist without the present. If the past would not be in thepresent in some way, we would never be conscious of it, nor would the past even have

any effect on the present. Nevertheless it is useful to distinguish between the two.

The present is the realm ofmateriality:

Sensations and movements being localized at determined points of this extended

body, there can only be, at a given moment, a single system of movements and

sensations. That is why my present appears to me to be a thing absolutely

determined, and contrasting with my past. () Our present is the very materiality

of our existence.12

(MM, p. 178.)

The past on the other hand is immaterial, and is therefore powerless. It needs the present

in order to be actualized: thus for example a memory needs a perception in order to

become conscious:

Memory, on the contrary, powerless as long as it remains without utility, is pure

from all admixture of sensation, is without attachment to the present, and isconsequently unextended. (MM, p. 181.)

In this way the difference between the present and past is one of materiality. The present

takes place in space, where the elements are clearly defined and form a numerical

multiplicity. The past on the other hand forms an immaterial qualitative multiplicity.

Often we think spontaneously of the past as that which no longer exists; however,

Bergson disagrees with this. The past still exists, independently of any consciousness that

is able to remember it, and remains indefinitely, in the recesses of time, detached from

life. In fact, consciousness is identical with the present: we cannot be conscious of the

past. Therefore, what is past is what we are unconscious of, and the past can continue

independently of the subject:

If consciousness is but the characteristic note of thepresent, that is to say of the

actually lived, in short of the active, then that which does not act may cease to

belong to consciousness without therefore ceasing to exist in some manner. (MM,p. 181.)

12My emphasis.


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How to conceive of this survival of the past, independent of consciousness? Bergson says

it is completely identical with the survival of space independently of our consciousness.

Just as we know that the street outside our house still exists even though we do not

perceive it, whatever happened yesterday survives in the past even though we do not

remember it. Duration in this way gets an objective significance.

Contraction and Relaxation

Present and past relate by movements of contraction and relaxation.

Contraction is basically synonymous with consciousness for Bergson, even though

consciousness thus gets an ontological significance. Contraction can be best imagined as

some kind ofsynthesis. A passage from TFWis most illuminating:

Here [in the external perception] we certainly have a series of identical terms,since it is always the same moving body; but, on the other hand, the synthesis

carried out by our consciousness between the actual position and what ourmemory calls the former positions, causes these images to permeate, complete,

and, so to speak, continue one another. (TFW, p. 124.)

In this way a multiplicity of points are gathered together into a single movement. Each

and every single point is a quantity, yet by an act of synthesis they are contracted into a

movement, which is a qualitative unity. He gives another example in MM:

Thus the sensation of red light, experienced by us in the course of a second,corresponds in itself to a succession of phenomena which, separately

distinguished in our duration with the greatest possible exonomy of time, would

occupy more than 250 centuries of our history.( ) Then, to perceive consists incondensing enormous periods of an infinitely diluted existence into a few more

differentiated moments of an intenser life. (MM, p. 273, 274)

Thus contraction gathers discrete points in the past, and inserts them in the present. For

this reason we will use the phrase contracting the past into the present to describe the

movement of duration.

When past is not contracted into the present, duration is in a state ofrelaxation.

This is basically space, and we can deduce the characteristics of space from this lack of

contraction. The elements of space are identical, as the past does not influence the present

and is therefore a repetition in the present. Each moment is created anew continually, and

there is no distinguishing factor between the moments. This means also that movements


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in space are reversible. Because the present is separated from the past, the elements of the

present will be present only as materiality, as solids. This means that they will be able to

be clearly distinguished from other elements.

Both contraction and relaxation can be described by the notion of a rhythm of

duration. A slower rhythm is a more extended or relaxed state; in a more tense state

duration will have a faster rhythm. Thus we see that subjective consciousness is a state

with a faster rhythm of duration, whereas a material object is in a state of a slow rhythm.

This variation in rhythm thus allows qualities to arise. Duration without rhythm would be

a pure multiplicity: the past would be disconnected from the present and there would be

no interaction between beings whatsoever. Duration with an infinite rhythm would be a

pure unity: past and present would be contracted into one whole. These however are

extremes and do not exist in pure form.

We can now revisit our discussion of number and show how duration and

contraction in fact also play a role in our conception of numbers. If there were no

duration, there would be no past, only a present. Then we could never conceive of a

succession of unities, because with every moment of duration we are presented with a

new unity, and we would have forgotten the old one. We would never be able to add 1

and 1 together, for we would have forgotten about the first 1 by the time we got to the

second. We could never add the past to the present, and we would only be able to

conceive of unity. There would be only one number, the number one. Duration thus plays

the role of unifying what is multiple in space.

These notions of past and present, contraction and relaxation are crucial in our

discussion of laughter and allow us to form a unity in understanding the phenomena of

laughter. However, laughter also has a relation to life, the human mind and society, and

we will now examine Bergsons understanding of these.


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1.2 lan vital: The Duration of life

Life can be understood as a particular organization of past and present. Matter is a form

of duration in which the past plays a far less important role. As we will discuss later,

Bergson understands laughter as arising from something mechanical encrusted on the

living, so an explanation of both matter and life is in order here.

Matter

As mentioned above, matter is extended duration, that is, duration with a slow

rhythm. Therefore matters past is usually unnecessary in order to understand its present,

because it has no effect on it. To predict matters next movements in space, it suffices

only to know its immediate past.

The present state of an unorganized body depends exclusively on what happened

at the previous instant; and likewise the position of the material points of a systemdefined and isolated by science is determined by the position of these same points

at the moment immediately before. In other words, the laws that govern

unorganized matter are expressible, in principle, by differential equationsinwhich time (in the sense in which the mathematician takes this word) would play

the role of independent variable. (CE, p. 19.)

Matters past is therefore detached from its present, and we can go about understanding

matter by means of analysis, which cuts up movements into different points. We will see

later how laughter mimics this detachment of past from present. Science also mimics this

detachment, since it constructs quantitative laws governing matters movements in space;

perhaps it differs from laughter in that it believes it has understood the world, whereas

laughter revels in its ignorance.

Yet, despite this detachment, even matter is not completely detached from its past.

There are physical processes which are irreversible, and which seem to be governed by a

movement of duration instead of mere objective time. This is the second law of

thermodynamics (See CE, p. 243.)

Why should matter evolve in this way? Why does the universe age? Why do our

bodies age? For Bergson this fact does not need explaining: it is the very nature of matter

to tend in this direction:


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The order which reigns there, and which is manifested by the laws of nature, is an

order which must be born of itself when the inverse order is suppressed; adetension [sic] of the will would produce precisely this suppression. Lastly, we

find that the direction, which this reality takes, suggests to us the idea of a thing

unmaking itself; such, no doubt, is one of the essential characters of materiality.

(CE, p. 245)

Matter appears as the detension of the will13

; because it is separated from the past, it

will become increasingly disorganized. Matter thus has the inverse inclination of

consciousness.

In this way, material organization seems to be associated with a movement of

contraction. In order to understand this, perhaps we could suggest notion of a material

memory. Such a memory would contain the past in the material organization of bodies.

Bergson does not speculate directly on this, but perhaps one could wonder if thedifference between organic and inorganic matter is not so much due to the absence of the

past in the present indeed, every kind of organization is due to the contraction of the

past into the present but rather due to the absence of a duration of the past in the

present. We are here going on a suggestion of Bergson:

The present state of an unorganized body depends exclusively no what happened

at the previous instant () [whereas it is] the fact that the present moment of a

living body does not find its explanation in the moment immediately before, thatall the past of the organism must be added to that moment, its heredity in fact,

the whole of a very long history. (CE19-20)

The organization of matter contracts specific points of time whereas a living body

contracts a duration of time. The living body contracts a stretch of the past into the

present, not merely discontinuous events. Thus the difference between organic and

inorganic matter is perhaps a gradual one, a gradual difference in rhythm of duration.

13The word detension here is used as a synonym for relaxation; both are the translation ofdetention.


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Life

Individuals

Only where the present meets the past does duration adopt a faster rhythm: this is

life, or consciousness. Note that Bergson attributes consciousness to every life form, not

only to humans. The latter possess consciousness in a narrow sense, but this narrow

consciousness participates in a wider consciousness which is life itself. Both

consciousness and life are basically the same: the contraction of the past into the present.

In life this contraction is called the lan vital. This vital impulse is an explosion,

for it gathers the energy of the past in order to unleash it in the present:

All life, animal and vegetable, seems in its essence like an effort to accumulate

energy and then to let it flow into flexible channels, changeable in shape, at the

end of which it will accomplish infinitely varied kinds of work. (CE, p. 253-254)

The difference between plant life and animal life is that the former is more focused on

accumulating energy by photosynthesis, while the latter specializes in expending it. Even

the human brain, in Bergsons analysis, is in fact a means for a more efficient expenditure

of energy. Not only does the brain coordinate the muscles, allowing for more effective

usage of energy, but the brain also fabricates tools, which are merely catalysts for the

expenditure of energy. Thus we merely have to put our foot on the gas pedal, and we

cause a much larger source of energy to be unleashed.

In what way is this accumulation and expenditure of energy a form of

contraction? If there is a movement from state A to state B by fixing the carbon atom of

carbonic acid and thus accumulating energy, state B somehow contains the memory of

state A. This memory is not something immaterial but is rather a material survival of the

past. It is not just a mechanical change because the process is irreversible. Solar energy is

needed to go from A to B, but if the carbon atom is unfixed (during an expenditure of

energy) it will not be the case that visible light is emitted, but electromagnetic radiation

of a longer wavelength. This is the second law of thermodynamics. Therefore

accumulating energy is an act of contraction, requiring a faster rhythm of duration that

that of matter. (See CE, p. 115-117)


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Evolution

This is the way in which the lan vital governs individual beings. However, it also

governs evolution as a whole. The lan vital thusrepresents a wide consciousness in

which the narrower consciousness of individual organisms take part.

Consciousness, or supra-consciousness, is the name for the rocket whose

extinguished fragments fall back as matter; consciousness, again, is the name forthat which subsists of the rocket itself, passing through the fragments and lighting

them up into organisms(CE, p. 261)

It is thus a supra-consciousness that grounds narrower consciousnesses. The

explosiveness of these narrower consciousnesses mimics the more powerful explosion of

evolution itself:

[Evolution] proceeds rather like a shell, which suddenly bursts into fragments,

which fragments, being themselves shells, burst in their turn into fragmentsdestined to burst again, and so on for a time incommensurably long. (CE, p. 98)

In this way evolution is governed neither by a mechanical causality, nor by afinality. It is

apurposeless explosion from within.

Evolution cannot be explained by a mechanism, such as natural selection.

Mechanism touches only upon the form of evolution, but not on the movement of

evolution itself. It explains how certain organisms evolved, but does not explain why they

evolved at all. Indeed, why did life evolve further from the unicellular stage?

The truth is that adaption explains the sinuosities of the movement of evolutionbut not its general directions, still less the movement itself. The road that leads to

the town is obliged to follow the ups and downs of the hills; it adapts itselfto the

accidents of the ground; but the accidents of the ground are not the cause of the

road, nor have they given it its direction. (CE, p. 102)

The hills are the circumstance of the road. It is like the clay with which the sculptor

moulds the figure: the clay is necessary for the work of art, but yet the artwork flows

beyond it in some way. It would be like explaining the history of philosophy as a series of

reactions and adaptations to previous generations of philosophers. This ignores the fact

we use other philosophers merely as dialogue partners to express a more profound

philosophical impulse. We borrow and modify thoughts from other philosophers, but

often only as a means of articulating our own thoughts, as a way of solidifying deeper but


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more vague intuitions. However, mechanism cannot explain why we philosophize at all;

it cannot explain why life has evolved at all.

Unicellular organisms are excellently adapted to the environment; there is no

reason to think that there is a necessity involved in the movement from unicellular to

multicellular organisms. In fact, this is how contemporary biology explains the motor of

evolution: what is called genetic drift produces a variety of organisms within a

population, and this variety is culled by natural selection, with successful varieties

eventually developing into new species. But what explains genetic drift itself? Nothing

but chance. However, what is chance? Is it not a name we give to something we cannot

determine any cause whatsoever for? It is as if chance is an entity that is invoked every

time that determinate scientific thinking reaches its limits. Does this suggest that the

cause of this variety, if there is a cause at all, cannot be a determinate cause and that it

must be beyond the mechanical order? While the spontaneous variety of life appears an

impenetrable unintelligibility to the analytic thinking of science, for Bergson the same

variety is an expression of the explosive force of the lan vital.

Neither can evolution be explained by finalism. Finalism, according to Bergson,

implies that life evolves according to a definite plan, but this cannot be the case for as

evolution progresses, it becomes increasingly complex: The discord between species

will go on increasing. (CE, p. 103.) The unity of life must be found not at the end, but in

the beginning, in the impetus that pushes it along the road of time (CE, p. 103.)

In the notion oflan vital Bergson thus combines the blindness of mechanism

with the unity of finalism. In fact the explosiveness of the lan vital is nothing but a

reformulation of the movement of duration in a biological context. The principle of life

relates to physical and chemical processes in the way time relates to life:

So likewise "vitality" is tangent, at any and every point, to physical and chemical

forces; but such points are, as a fact, only views taken by a mind which imaginesstops at various moments of the movement that generates the curve. (CE, p. 31.)

How to connect the lan vital that governs evolution and the lan vital that courses

through the consciousnesses of individual life forms? This calls for an examination of

how how consciousness can awaken. This will be important, since we will be arguing that


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Bergsons laughter is a societal instinct, and for Bergson an instinct is a particular form of

consciousness to be distinguished from torpor and intelligence.

Awakening of consciousness

Torporis the consciousness of plants. Plants are living beings that have fallen

asleep. They have chosen to specialize in extracting their nutrients from their direct

environment, unlike animals which must look for their nourishment and which must

therefore be mobile:

We may say that vegetables are distinguished from animals by their power of

creating organic matter out of mineral elements which they draw directly from the

air and earth and water. () Animal life is characterized, in its general direction,by mobility in space. (CE, p. 108.)

Animals are living beings in which the lan vital has been awakened, whereas plants

have been crusted over by immobility. Plants therefore do not realize the full potential of

the lan vital, and tend in the direction of matter. However, because the narrow

consciousness of living beings is separate from the wider stream of the lan vital, the lan

vital keeps on pulsating, even in quasi non-consciousness organisms as plants: It lies

dormant when life is condemned to automatism; it wakens as soon as the possibility of a

choice is restored. (CE, p. 261)

This possibility of choice is precisely the mobility of animals which has

evolved along two main paths: instinct and intelligence.

Instinct and Intelligence

It must be emphasized here that instinct and intelligence show fundamental

similarities here for Bergson, for they represent two different solutions to the same

problem, the problem of fulfilling needs:

The life manifested by an organism is, in our view, a certain effort to obtain

certain things from the material world. (CE, p. 136.)

Their difference lies in that instinct is geared to fulfilling needs by means of the body,

while intelligence uses external objects to procure the needs:


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Instinct perfected is a faculty of using and even of constructing organized

instruments; intelligence perfected is the faculty of making and using unorganizedinstruments. (CE, p. 140.)

This is why Bergson later says that intelligence and instinct are turned in opposite

directions, the former towards inert matter, the latter towards life.(CE, p. 176)

Intellect and Intuition

What about the rhythm of duration of the human being? Besides bodily instinct,

there are essentially two differently rhythms in human consciousness: intellect and

intuition. Intellect is the human form of intelligence for Bergson. It contracts perception

according to material needs, and thus is primarily geared to action and the needs of the

body. Human beings rely on it in order to survive, because their intellect allows them tomanipulate the solid objects in the world. In this way intellect is something that deals

with the present instead of with the past, with space instead of duration. It is in this way

that intellect is turned towards inert matter.

Intuition is neither instinct nor intellect, in that it is disinterested. Intuition is like

instinct in that it is turned towards life itself, but differs from it in that it is no longer

occupied with fulfilling needs.

By intuition I mean instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable

of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely. (CE, p. 176.)

Human intuition isfreedfrom matter and places itself in the lan vital itself.

In this way perhaps the narrow consciousness of intuition parallels the wider

consciousness of the lan vital. Intuition is a manifestation in the human being of the

vaster power oflan vital: the violence needed for an act of intuition14 testifies to the

greater violence and explosiveness of life itself.

However, it cannot be the case that intellect is superseded by intuition. Intellect

remains necessary in practical life. Furthermore, without intellect intuition would remain

on the level of the instinct of animals:

But, though it thereby transcends intelligence, it is from intelligence that has comethe push that has made it rise to the point it has reached. Without intelligence, it

14InIntroduction to Metaphysics Bergson speaks about intuition as being a laborious, and even painful

effort (p. 32) and about its essentially active, I might almost say violent, character.(p. 33)


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would have remained in the form of instinct, riveted to the special object of its

practical interest, and turned outward by it into movements of locomotion. (CE, p.178)

This is perhaps another consideration to be taken into account for the relation between

analysis and intuition mentioned above.

In this way we see how the key concepts of matter, life, instinct and intuition can

be related to the basic notion of duration and contraction. This will serve us well when

we come to our discussion of laughter. Laughter, however, is not only something that

needs to be situated in life, but is also something that needs to situated in the

consciousness of man, since the particular inner workings of the human consciousness

will determine the character of laughter.

1.3Matter and Memory: Duration of ManWhat will be of particular interest here is Bergsons understanding ofimagination

and ofaffection, since these are two notions that will play a role in our understanding of

the subjective process of laughter. However, first we must discuss whatperception means

for Bergson, and how it is related to memory. It is important to examine this in some

detail, since it will play a role in how we will treat the comic perception.

Perception

Bergsons conception of the nature of perception went through a considerable

evolution in his oeuvre. In his earliest book, Time and Free Will he establishes the

opposition of duration and space by trying to show that psychic states are not

magnitudes, but rather intensities. Each perception, no matter how quantitative it may

seem, is actually a quality, and thus completely unique. This seems obvious with regard

to perceptions of deep-seated feelings as joy and sorrow, but less so with more empirical

perceptions, such as pain or the sensation of light. Can we not legitimately say we feel

more or less pain; do we not have a stronger or weaker perception of light? According to


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Bergson there are good reasons why we have a habit of saying this, but the truth of the

matter is that each inner psychic state is a quality that cannot be quantified, an intensity,

not a magnitude.

How does Bergson support this surprising claim? He distinguishes between two

layers in the psychic state, one corresponding more to duration, and the other to space. He

calls the layers the superficial self and the fundamental self (TFW, p. 128.). In this

way perceptions are grounded in duration, but at the surface they are manifested in space.

It has generally been pointed out that we generally perceive our own self by

refraction through space, that our conscious states crystallize into words, and that

our living and concrete self thus gets covered with an outer crust of clean-cutpsychic states, which are separated from one another and consequently fixed.

(TFW, p. 167.)

To reformulate in terms of past and present, perceptions are grounded in the past, even

though this past is contracted into the present.

Only inMatter and Memory did Bergson realize the ontological implications of

duration. The subjective past becomes an ontological past; consequently, perception is

not a contraction of a past that we contain in our self, but is rather an actualization of a

past that is not confined to the subject. We do not possess the past; rather, we are merely

a medium through which the past passes on the way to actualizing itself in the present.

Thus perception is the meeting point of the two vast realms of matter and memory. This

will be the conclusion ofMM. How does Bergson get there?

Matter as Image

Here I am in the presence of images, in the vaguest sense of the word, images

perceived when my senses are opened to them, unperceived when they are closed.(MM, p. 1.)

An image in this sense is simply the spontaneous impression we get when we perceive

matter: This conception of matter is simply that of common sense. (MM, viii) There is

yet no questioning about the true nature of things and whether the perception is correct;

the primitive fact is that we are in relation to the world. What Bergson now says is that

our spontaneous impression is the correct one, and it is no coincidence that the subtitle of

TFWisAn Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness. In a phenomenological vein,

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