Compromise formations
Bergson's vitalism
pp. 127-140
in: , Bergson and the metaphysics of media, Berlin, Springer, 2013Abstract
At the center of Bergson's philosophy, we find a basic dualism of mechanism and vitality that repeats itself in a variety of oppositions, such as discrete and continuous multiplicities, points and continua, or synchronous and diachronous time. On the one hand, Bergson recognizes that we have to live in bodies and machines, languages and numbers, whose "discrete' qualities separate us form the flow of life — the élan vital. On the other hand, he will sometimes speak about intuition (rather than intelligence) as a kind of sympathy with things that allows us to fall out of reason and back into the immediacy of life. It is easy to suppose that Bergson is an animist or vitalist who rejects the contrivances of culture in order to fall back into the wellspring of being.