La distinction occidentale moderne entre nature et culture traverse, dans sa longue durée, la plupart des débats qui ont défini la philosophie européenne du début du vingtième siècle. Bruno Rates a reconnu les déclinaisons qu’a pris ce vaste débat dans l’œuvre de Bergson, et il a fait de la dualité nature/culture le fil rouge de son essai, qui observe toutes les subtiles métamorphoses que ce thème traverse dans la pensée de Bergson. Pour considérer ce débat, il a fallu prendre en compte des questions apparemment éloignées, comme le partage entre science et métaphysique (ou, comme on le disait dans l’Allemagne de l’époque, entre Naturwissenschaften et Geisteswissenschaften), l’articulation entre la dimension humaine et la dimension de la nature, la distinction de l’inné et de l’acquis en biologie, le statut de l’habitude, le rôle de la technique, du langage et des institutions sociales dans l’hominisation, l’épistémologie de l’histoire, et encore l’ancienne tension franco-allemande autour des deux concepts de Kultur et Zivilisation, qui explose de nouveau pendant la guerre de 1914-1918, et qui ne sont que des parties du grand débat autour de la « naturalité » de la nature, et de la « culturalité » de la culture, que Bergson contribue à repenser profondément, et qui connait dans la philosophie d’aujourd’hui une nouvelle – et peut-être ultime – phase de radicale redéfinition.
Les études africaines et africana sur Bergson ont guidé et enrichi depuis longtemps la réflexion sur les questions morales, humaines, religieuses, postcoloniales, épistémologiques, etc., à partir des travaux respectifs de Léopold S. Senghor, Ebénézer Njoh Mouelle, Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Nadia Yala Kisukidi, Emile Kenmogne, etc., et ont développé des traditions d’études et d’écoles au Sénégal, au Cameroun, en Côte d’Ivoire, en République Démocratique du Congo, entre autres. Ces traditions nous offrent aujourd’hui des outils et des références précieux pour refléchir aux thèmes qui seront au cœur de notre rencontre, à partir d’une conscience profonde des itinéraires du bergsonisme en Afrique.
La prochaine séance de l’Atelier Bergson, avec Bruno B. Rates et Mathilde Tahar aura lieu le 28 novembre 2023 de 11h-13h à l’École normale supérieure (45 rue d’Ulm, Salle Pasteur) et sur Zoom, et sera animée par Florence Burgat.
Tano S. Posteraro est déjà un chercheur reconnu, à la fois pour ses contributions sur la philosophie bergsonienne de la biologie, et pour ses réflexions sur la philosophie du vivant. C’est pourquoi la parution de son ouvrage était très attendu dans les cercles bergsoniens comme auprès des historiens et philosophes de la biologie – et notamment par l’autrice de cette recension. Cet ouvrage vient en effet faire la synthèse des idées les plus saillantes de Posteraro, et permet d’appréhender de façon plus globale et systématique la portée des idées qu’il avait déjà diffusées à travers conférences et articles.
La prochaine séance de l’Atelier Bergson aura lieu sur Zoom le 24 mai 2023 de 13h à 15h30 (CET)
La dernière séance du cycle 2023 de l’Atelier Bergson se concentre autour des renvois entre les œuvres d’Henri Bergson et de Georges Sorel (1847-1922). Lecteur original de Proudhon, Marx et Vico, inspirateur du syndicalisme révolutionnaire, auteur d’un long et important commentaire à L’Evolution créatrice en 1908, Sorel inspira Benjamin, Hulme et d’autres intellectuels du début du vingtième siècle par ses théories du mythe et de la violence, qu’il élabora en dialogue avec la philosophie bergsonienne.
Mélanie Weill (chercheuse indépendante) : Life and education: the influence of bergsonism on Montessori pedagogy
In the aftermath of the First World War, a great movement aiming to reform education took place in Europe, called “new” or “alternative” or “active” education. The new educators questioned the authoritarian way teachers related to their students in the 19th century, defended children’s rights, and renewed the notions of what it is to learn and to teach. Reading the works of medical doctor and pedagogue Maria Montessori, I noticed the repeated presence of bergsonian vocabulary. In the introduction of The formation of man (1949), an overview of her life’s work, the major figure of New Education places Bergson’s most famous concept at the heart of her pedagogy, stating that “Our first teacher will be (…) theélan vital”. In this talk I will defend the idea that a lot of aspects of New Education can be seen as practical applications of Bergson’s philosophy.
Liselott-Mariett Olsson (Associate Professor in Pedagogy, Malmö University) : Becoming Pedagogue: Bergson and the Aesthetics of Early Childhood Education and Care
Throughout the history of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), aesthetics has played a prominent role, and it has been practically and theoretically treated as concerning the relation between matter and mind in a non-dualistic and integrated way. However, in the contemporary educational situation the aesthetic dimension is neglected, and the components of the relation are no longer “held together” (Olsson 2023). A certain kind of “abstract formalism” (Løvlie 2007), expressed not the least in ever-growing “neuromania” (Vandenbroeck et al. 2017) and “standards and accountability movements” (Taubman 2009) in ECEC, has taken over the discourse on education, obliterating the aesthetic dimension and relation as well as pedagogical practices and theories connected to these.
To address this, some decisive parts of Bergson’s major work Matter and Memory (1896/1991) are of value and use, not the least the critique of epiphenomenalism and parallelism in neuroscientific explanations of the human mind, as well as the critical and creative account of the relation between matter and mind herein displayed. Bergson approaches the problem by showing how the dualism between mind and matter becomes settled when space is allowed to intervene and through perception produce a distance and a division between mind and matter – between “our mind” and “our body” (including our material brain) as well as between “our mind” and “things”. This spatialized vision is due to how perception is directed towards action that pragmatically and reductively deforms matter. This, however, is not the only or even the true nature of matter and the quest that Bergson begins with this book concerns therefore to restore to matter (including our own body and its brain) its “ultimate reality”[1] (Worms 2013:112, my translation). The main thesis is double: “the critique of space is extended to the perception of matter, leading to a metaphysics of duration, that in turn is extended to the reality of matter[2] (Worms 2013a:113, my translation).
In this presentation I will further explore this thesis and its potential synergies with the aesthetics of ECEC by proceeding through three movements: 1) critically identifying abstract formalism as a badly stated problem in ECEC, 2) making an inventory of some pedagogical-aesthetical practices and theories in ECEC, and 3) suggesting some creative and contemporary contributions for how to practically and theoretically re-activate aesthetics in ECEC.
REFERENCES:
Bergson, H. (1896/1991) Matter and Memory. New York: Zone Books.
Olsson, L. M. (2023) Becoming Pedagogue – Bergson and the Aesthetics, Ethics and Politics of Early Childhood Education and Care. London & New York: Routledge.
Taubman, P. M. (2009). Teaching by numbers: Deconstructing the discourse of standards and accountability in education. New York: Routledge.
Vandenbroeck. M., DeVos J., Fias, W., Olsson, L. M., Penn, H., Wastell, D., and White, S. (2017) Constructions of neuroscience in early childhood education. London: Routledge.
Worms, F. (2013 2e éd.) Bergson ou les deux sens de la vie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
[2] la critique de l’espace, étendue à la perception de la matière, conduit à une métaphysique de la durée, elle-même étendue à la réalité de la matière
Chair : Maria Adriana Camargo Cappello (Universidade Federal do Paraná)
Matyas Moravec (University of St. Andrews) — Analytic Bergsonism
The aim of my talk will be to discuss the prospects for a new philosophical movement entitled “Analytic Bergsonism.” I will do so by exploring the possibility of translating the thought of Bergson into the language of analytic philosophy. Recent years have seen a heightened interest in the philosophy of Bergson (traditionally classified as a “continental” thinker due to the style of his writings and his later influence on the likes of Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, or Deleuze) from analytic philosophers. Bergson turns up in analytic discussions of temporal experience, biology, free will, or the philosophy of religion. This process is similar to the way in which the thought of Thomas Aquinas was taken up by analytic philosophers of religion, who have translated his thought from the language of scholastic metaphysics into the style of 20th-century analytic philosophy. This eventually crystallised into a movement now commonly known as “Analytical Thomism.” Naturally, the thought suggests itself: Can something like this be done with Bergson? As a matter of fact, the “Kyoto Manifesto” of Bergsonism published in 2020 explicitly encourages philosophers to take seriously the idea of a “philosophically clean-shaven analytic Bergson.” My talk will proceed in three steps:
1. In the first step, I will explore “Analytic Appropriations”—attempts by analytic thinkers to translate the philosophical systems of historical figures into the language and style of contemporary analytic philosophy. Examples will include the “rational reconstruction” of Spinoza by Jonathan Bennett, Humeanism in the philosophy of science, or the influence that Kant exerts on debates about constructivism in ethics.
2. In the second step, I will focus on one specific case of such an appropriation: Analytical Thomism. I will discuss the benefits and pitfalls of converting sections of Aquinas’ metaphysical system into the argumentative structures and style of analytic philosophy.
3. In the third step, I will explore whether Analytic Thomism could provide a feasible methodological blueprint for Analytic Bergsonism. I will do so by asking three questions: (i) Can Analytic Bergsonism be generated? (ii) If it can, what would it be? (ii) If it cannot, why not? I will argue that the style of analytic philosophy is both the reason why an analytic translation can be done in the case of Aquinas but not in the case of Bergson. This is because in the case of Aquinas, analytic philosophers start with theological (that is, extra-philosophical) doctrinal commitments to orthodoxy (e.g., the existence of God, the Incarnation, etc.) and then clarify those using the methodology and style of analytic philosophy. I will propose that in the case of Bergson, it is both hard to see what these “doctrinal” presuppositions would be and that Bergson’s philosophical style is not easily separable from the content of his philosophy and replaceable by the style in which analytic philosophy is usually conducted.
Thomas Bourdier (Université Bordeaux-Montaigne) — What does it mean that the past still exists? Bergson and the growing-block theory of time
That the past still exists is a familiar thesis for Bergson’s readers. In the field of “analytic bergsonism”, this claim naturally leads to a cautious rapprochement with the so called “growing block theory of time” (Broad, Tooley, Forrest and many others). However, it is doubtful that Bergson would endorse such a theory as it is. Firstly, the very name of the “growing block theory” seems to imply some misunderstanding concerning the nature of time because representation of the universe as a block of spacetime (even growing) is a mere representation and not an adequate description of reality, at least from a bergsonian point of view. Secondly, the growing block theory faces a famous “epistemic” objection (Braddon-Mitchell) which sounds very strange and off-topic regarding Bergson’s approach. Moreover, this approach itself is not clear and deserves some explanations. In this communication, I propose to elucidate the survival of the past as Bergson seems to understand it in contrast with the growing block theory of time. I proceed as follows : (1) I present the growing-block theory of time and try to emphasize the limits of this theory from a bergsonian point of view ; this leads (2) to an attempt of exegesis of Matter and memory (chapter III) concerning the existence of the personal past, mainly in trying to conciliate the two pictures of qualitative multiplicity (where the past is in the present) and of the cone memory (where my present is the extreme point of my past) ; finally (3), I propose a more speculative reconstruction of “cosmic memory” (memory of the Universe as a whole) and of the survival of the past in an ontological sense (not only psychological) of which we have no detailed account from Bergson. In conclusion, I emphasize the contrast between growing block and bergsonian theories of time.
Colloque international: Le clos et l’ouvert. Bergson, l’Afrique et le monde contemporain (Université de Yaoundé 1 et Zoom)
11-12 et 18-19 Janvier 2024
Il est proposé, pour la rencontre de 2023 sur le bergsonisme dans l’histoire globale de la philosophie, piloté par l’Afrique à partir du Cameroun, de tenter d’utiliser une grille conceptuelle bergsonienne d’interprétation de l’évolution des affaires humaines centrée sur les concepts de « société ouverte » et de « société close ». La mondialisation, non pas comme ouverture, mais paradoxalement comme avènement d’un « village planétaire » d’une part et, d’autre part, l’apparition de nouvelles formes de revendications identitaires se fondant sur les principes de liberté, de respect des droits des êtres humains, tout autant que sur les grandes avancées dans la recherche scientifique et technologique, peuvent-elles être interprétées et comprises par référence en particulier aux concepts bergsoniens de « société ouverte » et de « société close », sans oublier celui d’un évolutionnisme par création d’imprévisibles nouveautés ?
The CNRS International Research Network A Chapter in a Global History of Philosophy. New Perspectives on Bergsonism, is producing a new and up-to-date bibliography of studies on Bergson, completely open access on Zotero.
The bibliography responds to the global history vocation of the research project and is divided according to a geographical criterion. The coordinators of the project, Alessandro Taverniti (University of Pavia) and Caterina Zanfi (CNRS/ENS), are seeking contributors from or with expertise in philosophy of the following areas: Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, Estonia, Hungary, India, Israel, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Uruguay, USA, Venezuela, Vietnam.
While the current team has a majority of early-career contributors (master’s students, Ph.D. students, young researchers), we are nevertheless open to collaborating with researchers at all levels.
Those interested can contact me directly at the following email address: alessandro.tavern@edu.unito.it
