Bergson's two ways of knowing

pp. 49-59

in: James K. Feibleman, Paul G. Morrison, Andrew J. Reck, Harold N. Lee, Edward Ballard, Carl H. Hamburg, Robert C. Whittemore, Centennial year number, Berlin, Springer, 1959

Abstract

Bergson's two sources of morality and religion are, at the bottom, two ways of knowing. Although no one else in modern philosophy has put as much emphasis on continuity as has Bergson, yet at the roots of his philosophy is a discontinuity of knowledge. Intellectual is set over against intuitive knowledge; scientific against philosophic knowledge. Scientific knowledge is conceptual, intellectual and reaches only a static image of reality. Philosophic knowledge, on the other hand, is intuitive, based on feeling and reaches the true dynamic reality. One is from the outside while the other is from the inside; one grasps only what is dead while the other grasps what is living; one materializes and mechanizes that with which it deals while the other is spiritual and finds freedom. We can not grasp what is dynamic by standing outside it and applying concepts to it, because concepts, being static and unchanging, distort its continuous flow. We can fully grasp our object only by having it in direct, immediate experience. This is philosophic, mystical knowledge.