Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze as interpreters of Henri Bergson

In this essay I concentrate on the relation between Deleuze's philosophy and Merleau-Ponty's. I examine the question of whether their philosophical projects are as widely divergent as Deleuze wants the reader to believe. Since explicit references to Merleau-Ponty in the work of Deleuze are rather rare, I take the detour of examining their interpretations of Henri Bergson, a philosopher they both recognized as an important source of inspiration. More specifically, I study the references to Bergson in the work of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze that deal with difference and immanence. I show that Merleau-Ponty merely reads Bergson as a difference thinker, whereas Deleuze stresses Bergson's immanentism. However, these two positions do not exclude one another. First of all, there are many similarities with respect to which Bergsonian concepts both authors focus on and how they interpret them. Secondly, as Deleuze's own philosophy illustrates, a philosophy of difference is not incompatible with immanentism. However, there is one passage in Cinema I. The Movement-Image in which Deleuze states that there is a fundamental difference between the battle against dualism as it is fought by Bergson on the one hand, and phenomenology on the other. Since Deleuze's search for an immanent philosophy relies heavily on concepts introduced by Bergson, this passage can help to indicate to what degree the aforementioned similarities between Deleuze's and Merleau-Ponty's immanentism hold

Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s criticism of Bergson's theory of time seen through the work of Gilles Deleuze

In this article I examine the relation between the philosophies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze by looking at the way they refer to the time theory of Henri Bergson. It appears that, although Merleau-Ponty copies some fundamental Bergsonian insights on the nature of time, he presents himself as a critical reader of the latter. I will show that Merleau-Ponty's interpretation of Bergson differs fundamentally from the one by Deleuze, but that Merleau-Ponty's 'corrections' to Bergson fit Deleuze's reading of Bergson very well. This indicates a similarity with respect to what is at stake in the philosophies of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze. The critical reference that Deleuze makes to Merleau-Ponty's conception of cinema and thus of movement is hence not justified, but the result of a selective and prototypical reading of the early Merleau-Ponty

Missing in Action: Job-Driven Educational Pathways for Unauthorized Youth and Adults

Policymakers in Washington, DC, and in the states have put forward proposals to make it easier for immigrants to fully contribute to the economy. Most federal immigration policy proposals -- whether administrative or congressional -- require immigrant applicants to attain credentials, thus facilitating their full economic integration. These educational requirements -- if supported by adequate policy infrastructure and investments -- increase the likelihood of positive economic outcomes for individual immigrants and our economy as a whole. It is well-documented that higher levels of education are associated with higher earnings and economic productivity. But some of these credential requirements have not lined up with what the labor market actually demands, and to date, no policy has included the investments or infrastructure needed to support job-driven educational pathways for unauthorized youth and adults. Reflecting on the DREAM Act, DAPA, and DACA today creates an opportunity to ensure that the current lack of access to job-driven educational pathways does not become a barrier to citizenship in the future when comprehensive immigration reform comes to pass

T.S. Eliot and others: the (more or less) definitive history and origin of the term “objective correlative”

This paper draws together as many as possible of the clues and pieces of the puzzle surrounding T. S. Eliot’s “infamous” literary term “objective correlative”. Many different scholars have claimed many different sources for the term, in Pound, Whitman, Baudelaire, Washington Allston, Santayana, Husserl, Nietzsche, Newman, Walter Pater, Coleridge, Russell, Bradley, Bergson, Bosanquet, Schopenhauer and Arnold. This paper aims to rewrite this list by surveying those individuals who, in different ways, either offer the truest claim to being the source of the term, or contributed the most to Eliot’s development of it: Allston, Husserl, Bradley and Bergson. What the paper will argue is that Eliot’s possible inspiration for the term is more indebted to the idealist tradition, and Bergson’s aesthetic development of it, than to the phenomenology of Husserl

The limits of process: On (re)reading Henri Bergson

This article offers a reading of the work of Henri Bergson as it pertains to organizations through the lens of ideas drawn from critical realism. It suggests an alternative to interpretations based on a stark division between process and realist perspectives. Much of the existing literature presents a rather partial view of Bergson’s work. A review suggests some interesting parallels with themes in critical realism, notably the emergence of mind. Critical realism has a focus on process at its heart, but is also concerned with how the products of such processes become stabilized and form the conditions for action. This suggests that attention might usefully be paid to the relationship between organizational action and the sedimented practices grouped under the heading of ‘routines’. More attention to Bergson’s account of the relationship between instinct, intuition and intelligence provides a link to the social character of thought, something which can be mapped on to Archer’s work on reflexivity and the ‘internal conversation’. This suggests that our analyses need to pay attention to both memory and history, to building and dwelling, rather than the one-sided focus found in some process theory accounts

Memory transition between communicating agents

Abstract: What happens to a memory when it has been externalised and embodied but has not reached its addressee yet? A letter that has been written but has not been read, a monument before it is unveiled or a Neolithic tool buried in the ground – all these objects harbour human memories engrained in their physicality; messages intended for those who will read the letter, admire the monument and hold the tool. According to Ilyenkov’s theory of objective idealism, the conscious and wilful input encoded in all manmade objects as the ‘ideal’ has an objective existence, independent from the author, but this existence lasts only while memories are shared between communicating parties. If all human minds were absent from the world for a period of time, the ‘ideal’, or memories, would cease to exist. They would spring back to existence, however, once humans re-entered the world. Ilyenkov’s analysis of memories existing outside an individual human consciousness is informative and thorough but, following his line of thought, we would have to accept an ontological gap in the process of memory acquisition, storage and transmission. If there is a period, following memory acquisition and receding its transmission, when memories plainly do not exist, then each time a new reader, spectator or user perceives them, he or she must create the author’s memories ex nihilo. Bergson’s theory of duration and intuition can help us to resolve this paradox. This paper will explore the ontological characteristics of memory passage in communication taken at different stages of the process. There will be an indicationof how the findings of this investigation could be applicable to concrete cases of memory transmission. In particular, this concerns intergenerational communication, technological memory, the use of digital devices and the Internet

Whitehead and Pythagoras

While the appeal of scientific materialism has been weakened by developments in theoretical physics, chemistry and biology, Pythagoreanism still attracts the allegiance of leading scientists and mathematicians. It is this doctrine that process philosophers must confront if they are to successfully defend their metaphysics. Peirce, Bergson and Whitehead were acutely aware of the challenge of Pythagoreanism, and attempted to circumvent it. The problem addressed by each of these thinkers was how to account for the success of mathematical physics if the world consists of creative processes. In this paper I critically examine the nature of the challenge posed by Pythagoreanism to process philosophy and examine the efforts by process philosophers, particularly Whitehead, to overcome it, and offer some suggestions for advancing these efforts

La liberté bergsonienne et la responsabilité

In the Essay Bergson defines personal expression as free. A free act is the expression of the conception of life found in a person’s experience of life. Given that it is different for everyone, it cannot be expressed in language. That is why Bergson considers that the act which is the most free is one that is done without any reason. It can be said that Bergson himself felt the need to ground his conception of responsibility. In the Cours II he states two conditions of responsibility: freedom and discernment. The identity of a person which ensures that freedom is based in the conception of duration found in the Essay. In Matter and Memory Bergson tries to resolve the question of discernment with the help of his theory of memory. Bergson succeeded in solving the problems related to reason and to fanciful decision and solidly established the notion of responsibility while renewing the theory of freedom originally found in the Essay