Thursday 10 November 2022

Understanding Bergson

 “It is known to him to whom It is unknown; he does not know to whom It is known.  It is unknown to those who know well, and known to those who do not know.”  Kena Up. II.3


I was thinking of this when reading Bergson’s Matter and Memory again.  It’s a difficult book but the difficulty is of a different order to simple complexity and close reasoning.  You have to renounce your usual understanding of internal and external, idealism and realism by whatever name you call them.  Everything changes perceptually as I move my body around so to understand what is going on I have to begin with that central element.  Such is the common understanding, indeed the default position, when we turn our attention as thinkers to the problem.  When we are not thinkers and disciples of Descartes we find ourselves immersed in a non-dual world.  Bergson puts it thus:


Why insist in spite of appearances, that I should go from my conscious self to my body, then from my body to other bodies whereas in fact I place myself at once in the material world in general, and then gradually cut out within it the centre of action which I shall come to call my body and to distinguish from all others?




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