This is a Letter to Jack F, author of the blog “Notes for Nomads” on Substack.
Jack! What’s up?
Last time, I wrote to you about Monads. Since you are such a fan of Henri Bergson, I wanted to write to you about my favorite thing about Bergson’s metaphysics, his concept of the two multiplicities (qualitative and quantitative).
As you've written so well about, in Giles Deleuze’s Bergsonism, we find a philosophy that poses two qualitative differences in kind between mind and memory, intention and extension, mechanism and vitalism. However, unlike Cartesian philosophy which subordinates the body to mind, Bergsonism poses all dualisms and pluralism in the form of monism. Additionally, this monism has no final end goal (telos) which is itself not subordinated to mechanism, determinism, or finalism.
Instead, we find a theory of life that is purely productive. Life does not begin with a plan, and cannot be reduced to an infinite causal series that can be read forward and backward by a superhuman or all-knowing God. Instead, life itself is creative. Life divides and differentiates itself across many different lines. Differentiation is life’s mode of creativity. We are no longer speaking of ‘free will' in the abstract and moral sense because free will only positions creativity as an anthropocentric concept. Instead, all of life is itself creative and creating.
Moreover, life differentiates itself as a kind of problem. Creativity arises as life runs into problems, and poses as perfect solutions to these problems as it can under varying conditions according to its ability and need:
“Each line of life is related to a type of matter that is not merely an external environment, but in terms of which the living being manufactures a body, a form, for itself. This is why the living being, in relation to matter, appears primarily as the stating of a problem, and the capacity to solve problems: The construction of an eye, for example, is primarily the solution to a problem posed in terms of light. And each time, we will say that the solution was as good as it could have been, given the way in which the problem was stated, and the means that the living being had at its disposal to solve it”1.
In Dorthea Olkowski’s reading of Bergsonism in her book Deleuze, Bergson, and Marleau Ponty: The Logic and Pragmatics of Creation, Affective Life, and Perception, she outlines many of the contentions to Henri Bergson’s thought (primarily from Bertrand Russel and physicists at the time). Bergson’s reputation as a philosopher of science is further complicated by his infamous debate with Einstein2. Despite that Bergson had no objections to Einstein’s theory of relativity as such, just that time isn’t a homogenous block but is rather heterogeneous and moving, Bergson’s popularity and influence plummeted as a result of this debate3.
Mechanism and Vitalism are often posed as opposites of each other. On the side of mechanism, we have a succession of infinite stable states which can be strung together on a single line, and on the side of vitalism, the absolute heterogeneous movement of those images cannot be reduced to an equivalence of exchange. Vitalism posits that life has a vital impulse, an élan vital, which is often read as a spiritual force.
From Bertrand Russel, Einstein, as well as many classical physicists’ viewpoints, Einstein’s theory of special relativity refutes the possibility of time being something that is distinct from space. The reason for this is that two people cannot agree on a single, universal time. Time is always something that is experienced differently by different people in different situations. From this, they concluded the concrete and homogenous measurements of time:
“the one thing that can be verified is the causal structure of events such that “what is physically real in the universe is its causal structure” and only its causal structure; the physical phenomenon is real”.4
However, for Bergson, such a viewpoint specializes time and ignores that time is always necessarily perceived by observers (and is therefore heterogeneous). Bergson here agrees with Einstein’s theory of special relativity that time must necessarily be experienced differently by different observers, but springs from the difference a theory of time which is distinct from space.
Furthermore, what is at stake for Bergson is creativity and freedom, which mechanism subordinates to determinism and infinite causality:
“Bergson’s target was always determinism. His version of novelty requires heterogeneity, or “multiplicity without divisibility and succession without separation,” which is qualitative multiplicity, but the causal order of classical science is timeless5”.
For Bergson, who is often (and wrongly) read as a pure vitalist, it isn't that mechanism is bad, and vitalism is good. Instead, mechanism and vitalism are two qualitatively different tendencies that are produced by life which is simple and singular. Life begins as an original impetus and divides itself across multiple different lines. These lines don’t move forward, just somewhere. Evolution isn’t a unilinear movement but is rather rhizomatic. Life differentiates, divides, and complexifies.
Bergson condemned the mechanical way of thinking about time -- which he called the “cinematographical mechanism of thought” -- because such a way of thinking fails to recognize how life is a differentiating movement. However, despite this condemnation, science maintains a prestigious and affirmative position in Bergson’s philosophy. Bergson’s point is never to negate science but to include science in the study of metaphysics. The point isn’t to go beyond science, but to develop a monism of metaphysics and science.
You put it very well in your essay on Bergson and Einstein’s debate:
“Mechanism, or mechanical philosophy (Newton, Galileo, Bacon), is not wholly illegitimate or simply false in Bergson’s view. It is a reflection of our evolved habits of representation rather than an adequate reflection of nature itself. These are habits that conform in large measure to certain ‘tendencies’ of matter. Mechanism gives us only a partial view of reality and neglects other crucial aspects such as ‘duration’.6
This other aspect that you name is what the study of metaphysics focuses on. However, it should be noted that this is where Bergson departs from many traditional metaphysicians because Bergson’s metaphysics isn’t attempting to find an eternal truth but rather explaining how life is constantly unfolding and evolving.
Humans cannot help but be trapped between these two types of being: heterogeneous movement, and mechanism. Our perception and relationship with the outside world engender a sense of determinism in us. From utilizing our intuition, we retreat inwards and recognize the heterogeneity of time and can recognize where things differ in kind.
This is why for Simone De Beauvoir, true ethics is one that is ambiguous. Life is a process of contraction and expansion (détente). We are constantly moving outwards and inwards. In moving outwards, we interact with material and play outside. We gain a sense of causality and can begin to form a concept of science. However, we also have an inward existence that is not reducible to causal mechanisms. For Bergson, when we access our intuition we understand life as a heterogeneous multiplicity. Life isn't an infinite set of exchangeable components but is a rather pure difference and pure movement. It is only when we abstract life into equivalence that we establish values.
But again, life straddles the line between the two. Life oscillates. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari have a beautiful line that I think articulates this point well:
“The self is only a threshold, a door, a becoming between two multiplicities”.
For Bergson, these two multiplicities are Time and Space, or rather, Duration and Matter.
As you explain, time is distinct from space insofar that space is understood as quantitative multiplicity and time is qualitative multiplicity. On the side of duration, we observe Life’s creative evolution which works via differentiation. But this is not a division of numbers, but rather, a creative, mutative expression:
“In reality, duration divides up and does so constantly: this is why we call it a multiplicity. But it is a multiplicity that divides by changing in kind and does so in the process of division. In this process, the multiplicity goes through changes in kind where we can refer to indivisibles (monads) at each stage of the division (indivisible as in cannot further change in kind, like love and hate, simple elements). In this way, we can have others without there being several; number exists only potentially, depending on the stage in the process of division”7.
Although we still retain some form of mechanism on the side of quantitative multiplicity, qualitative multiplicity is one of movement. To study this multiplicity, we need a nomad science.
References and Further Reading
Giles Deleuze, Bergsonism
Jack F, “Bergson vs Einstein, On Time”, Substack.
Dorthea Olkowski, Deleuze, Bergson, and Marleu Ponty: The Logic and Pragmatics of Creation, Affective Life and Perception.
Jack F, Bergsonism Part 3 - Duration, Substack.
Our group readings of Bergsonism: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgy2c_lQJS5eN7vi48eUscwW4YmQLTLIv.
Giles Deleuze, Bergsonism, page 103.
Jack F, “Bergson vs Einstein, On Time”, Substack.
From Dorthea Olkoski’s book: “Russell’s unrestrained criticism of Bergson’s philosophy as antiscientific metaphysics was taken up by many philosophers and physicists of the time who sought to defeat Bergson’s conception of time and intuition with what they perceived to be a rational, scientific worldview. This occurred in spite of Bergson’s ongoing insistence that he had no objections to the theory of relativity and did not actually reject Einstein’s formulation of the simultaneity of time—the claim that there is only one real and universal time, which is actually timelessness, and can be interpreted to allow for the claim that two events that seemed to occur simultaneously according to one observer were not necessarily simultaneous for the other due to time dilation at high velocities”.
Dorthea Olkowski, Deleuze, Bergson, and Marleu Ponty: The Logic and Pragmatics of Creation, Affective Life and Perception.
Ibid.
C.F. Jack’s essay on the subject.
Jack F, Bergsonism Part 3 - Duration, Substack.
Love the Simone de Beauvoir combo with Bergson!!