A New Philosophy : $b Henri BergsonLe Roy, Edouard
Philosophy
A New Philosophy : $b Henri Bergson
Le Roy, Edouard
Bergson, Henri, 1859-1941
Now to go further and become more precise, Mr Bergson points out that we
must "approach problems of quite a different kind, those of morality."
About these new problems the author of "Creative Evolution" has as yet
said nothing; and he will say nothing, so long as his method does not
lead him, on this point, to results as positive, after their manner,
as those of his other works, because he does not consider that mere
subjective opinions are in place in philosophy. He therefore denies
nothing; he is waiting and searching, always in the same spirit: what
more could we ask of him?
One thing only is possible today: to discern in the doctrine already
existing the points of a moral and religious philosophy which present
themselves in advance for ultimate insertion.
This is what we are permitted to attempt. But let us fully understand
what is at issue. The question is only to know whether, as has been
claimed, there is incompatibility between Mr Bergson's point of view and
the religious or moral point of view; whether the premisses laid down
block the road to all future development in the direction before us; or
whether, on the contrary, such a development is invited by some parts at
least of the previous work. The question is not to find in this work
the necessary and sufficient bases, the already formed and visible
lineaments of what will one day complete it. To imagine that the
religious and moral problem is bound to be regarded by Mr Bergson as
arising when it is too late for revision, as admitting proposition and
solution only as functions of a previous theoretical philosophy beyond
which we should not go; that in his eyes the solution of this problem
will be deduced from principles already laid down without any call for
the introduction of new facts or new points of view, without any need to
begin from a new intuition; that his view precludes all considerations
of strictly spiritual life, of inner and profound action, regarding
things in relation to God and in an eternal perspective: such a view
would be illegitimate and unreasonable, first of all, because Mr Bergson
has said nothing of the kind, and secondly, because it is contrary to
all his tendencies.
After the "Essay on the Immediate Data" critics proceeded to confine
him in an irreducible static dualism; after "Matter and Memory" they
condemned him as failing for ever to explain the juxtaposition of the
two points of view, utility and truth: why should we require that after
"Creative Evolution" he should be forbidden to think anything new, or
distinguish, for example, different orders of life?
The problems must be approached one after the other, and, in the
solution of each of them, it is proper to introduce only the necessary
elements. But each result is only "temporarily final." Let us lose the
strange habit of asking an author continually to do something other
than he has done, or, in what he has done, to give us the whole of his
thought.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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