Time and venue: 8-9 January 2024, AKC, Husova 4a, 110 00, Praha 1 Czech republic.
The Workshop is Funded by The Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion (IRC), Oxford University, and Faculty of Arts, Charles University.
Abstracts
Retroactive freedom
Mark Sinclair (Queen’s University Belfast)
This paper discusses Time and Free Will’s notion of ‘effects preceding their causes’ in the free decision in relation to Bergson’s later doctrine of retroactivity, according to which the present shapes the past. This admittedly difficult doctrine is often misunderstood, and identified with Bergson’s notion of retrospective illusions, but this paper will show that they are quite different, and that the idea of retroactivity is implied and required by Bergson’s account of the free act in Time and Free Will. The paper will attempt to give a full account of the durational free act as retroactive freedom.
Incompatibilism without Alternative Possibilities: Bergson in the Debate on Free Will
Joël Dolbeault (Charles-de-Gaulle University, Lille, France)
The main aim of this presentation is to show that, in the debate on free will, Bergson defends an original form of indeterminism, without the notion of alternative possibilities. Another aim is to offer some food for thought on the relation between freedom and morality in Bergson’s work.
The contemporary debate on free will mainly opposes two conceptions: on the one hand, compatibilism, which asserts that the notions of free will and determinism are compatible; on the other hand, incompatibilism, which asserts the opposite. Incompatibilism is more intuitive than compatibilism, but it seems to encounter an insurmountable difficulty. Conceiving of the free choice between two ideas of action as an indeterministic process seems to lead us to conceive of this choice as an effect of chance. This is where Bergson’s approach to free will is interesting. Indeed, Bergson develops a form of incompatibilism that avoids this difficulty. In what way? By replacing the notion of a typical cause capable of producing different effects with that of a singular cause capable of acting in a non-nomological way. In other words, by replacing the idea that, at certain moments, the self could choose one thing and its opposite, with the idea that, at certain moments, due to its singularity, the self can form a decision that is impossible to predict. This conception of free will is original in the sense that it amounts to defending a form of indeterminism without the notion of alternative possibilities, understood as virtual paths into the future. From this point of view, for Bergson, free will is not simply a choice between fixed possibilities. It has a creative dimension, and this dimension works in two directions. In the direction of action, the process of free decision is the progressive formation of a singular action, impossible to predict. In the direction of the agent, this process contributes to the psychological evolution of the personality. In this sense, it is a creation of the self by the self.
In presenting this conception of free will, in Time and Free Will (1889), Bergson does not address the relation between freedom and morality. However, in this book, the moral question is already raised, since Bergson asserts that the free decision emanates from the deep self, and that this self may wish to act morally, but in an original way, possibly opposed to a certain social morality. In The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932), thanks to the distinction between open and closed morality, this idea is clearly enriched. But it is no longer just a question of escaping certain social determinations to reconnect with our deep self; it is a question of escaping certain natural determinations to reconnect with the fundamental impulse of life. In a way, this liberation may seem like alienation. For Bergson, however, this is not the case at all, since to coincide with the fundamental impulse of life is to coincide with oneself.
Being the cause of one’s actions. Examining the free action in Bergson’s philosophy
Yoann Malinge (Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium)
This paper will investigate the notion of freedom in Bergson’s philosophy and, more specifically, the relationship between the character of the agent and their actions. This correlation can be understood as a manifestation of self-expression or a resemblance between the agent and their action. Consequently, exploring the nature of the cause linking the agent and their actions is crucial. This paper will demonstrate Bergson’s rejection of physical causality and his preference for psychological causality instead. First, I will examine the agent’s capacity to comprehend his own character, before considering the formation of that character. Then, I will investigate how an agent can initiate the new in his or her action. Eventually, I will evaluate Sartre’s critique of the emergence of free action in Bergson’s philosophy, and evaluate its relevance.
Freedom of Hesitation and the Second Life of Choices. Henri Bergson in the Light of the Phenomenological Criticism
Jakub Čapek (Charles University, Prague)
Freedom implies hesitation. In this Bergson and some of the phenomenological authors agree. This proximity, which even suggests possible inspiration, is overshadowed by the phenomenologists’ overall critical attitude toward Bergson.
I will begin with a general description of the difference between Bergson and phenomenology. The difference can be grasped, first, in how they conceive of consciousness, second, in their different attitudes toward the possibility of metaphysics, and third, in the way they work with descriptive distinctions, with Bergson sometimes moving quickly from descriptive distinctions to conceptual opposites.
In the second part, I will sketch a phenomenological reading of Bergson that attempts to preserve a sense of Bergsonian freedom. According to Bergson, there is no freedom outside the passage of time. This means that hesitation and decision are part of a process of freedom that cannot be accelerated, stopped, or skipped. This also means that if we are to understand freedom in a Bergsonian way, namely as a creative process, it cannot simply be a choice among pre-given options. Nevertheless, Bergson often concludes that the future to which we relate in our free activity is an unpredictable novelty. In contrast to this, I will draw attention to his reflections on hesitation. They offer, in my view, a more plausible account of the essentially temporal freedom that is also inspiring for phenomenological descriptions of freedom.
How Freedom Originates from Closure: Through the Bergsonian Lens of Tense, Aspect, and Modality
Yasushi Hirai (Keio University, Japan)
Henri Bergson envisions two types of societies – the Closed Society governed by duty and rules, and the Open Society inducing novelty and transformation. This issue is rooted in the previous Bergson’s works on time, memory, and evolution, where he posits the superficial life, the motor memory, and the inertial materiality on the one side and the deep self, independent memory, and vital forces on the other.
Despite these structural homomorphisms, in examining the correlation between individual freedom and societal closure, Bergson’s analysis of the dynamism inherent in personal temporality is crucial. It plays a pivotal role in the ripple effect capable of revolutionizing society, as described in Two Sources.
My presentation will highlight how Bergson’s philosophy of time, unlike McTaggart’s, is grounded in aspect rather than tense (Sugiyama 2006), and how Bergson’s notion of modality differs from the Lewisian view by employing non-extensional aspects. This modal-temporal perspective leads us to the following insights on two key points: the temporality of freedom, and the formation of closure.
First, I will address Bergson’s argument in Time and Free Will on the unpredictability of free acts. I interpret this not as denying determination itself, but rather as rejecting two external conditions surrounding determination. These are the temporal externality that decisions are predestined outside the present moment, and the personal externality that other parties make one’s decisions. This meticulous conceptual dissection of the determination process allows him to establish the ʻzoneʼ ‒ not the ʻtrajectoryʼ ‒ model of indeterminacy, which is grounded in aspectual rather than tensual temporality. This explains how Bergson can defend freedom while refuting a simplistic understanding of contingency under the extensional modality.
Second, I will examine the concept of canalization in Creative Evolution. Bergson uses this concept, or rather image, to argue that evolution cannot be reduced to microscopic randomness and selection. He depicts evolution as a large-scale counteraction between stabilizing repetition and destabilizing divergence, not simply as a vigorous conquest of the former by the latter. This conflictual picture is essential for leaving a place for an ʻimperfective aspectʼ on an evolutionary scale. The force of repetition articulates and structures, while divergence reveals stability is never complete, but provisionally held in a zone of indeterminacy. The former defines the criteria of distribution, extension, similarity, and proximity, and thus articulates the speciesʼ behavioral landscape. In contrast, the latter prevents stability from being ʻfully made (tout fait),ʼ ensuring the imperfective transformation into new configurations at any time. This delineates the Bergsonian strategy of non-transcendent interventions against societal mechanisms of closure.
Rules in motion: rule-following with Bergson and Wittgenstein
Pavel Arazim (Charles University, Prague; Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague)
Bergson and Wittgenstein both like to stress that philosophical questions should disappear once we clarify them. Even if Wittgenstein is much more categorical and apodictic about this, the similarity prevails so much that it deserves closer attention.
Bergson begins his philosophical work by an attempt to dissolve the problem of liberty and proceeds to doing the same with, among others, Zeno´s paradoxes, the source of the morality, nothingness or evil. After trying to solve as many as all philosophical problems in one fell swoop in the Tractatus, later Wittgenstein works much more piecemeal, but we can highlight the question of rule-following and skeptical doubts about reality as examples of dissolutions he attempted at later.
Rule following, a topic particularly dear to the Wittgenstein scholars, displays a striking analogy with Zeno´s paradoxes. While Achilles seems unable to catch up with the tortoise, as he has to go through infinitely many points in order to get on her level, the aspiring rule-follower of the Philosophical Investigations is in a similarly troubling situation. In order to follow a rule, it seems, she has to interpreted it, which involves fencing off all the wrong interpretations. Yet there seems to be no limit to them and therefore, no rule-following can ever be achieved. Or, if the subject does something, then her deed can be seen as in accordance with many other rules. All the determinacy seems to evaporate.
While it might seem that we need to add something in order to disambiguate and escape all the indeterminacy, Wittgenstein mentions all such disambiguations because he wants to show their insufficiency. How do we follow rules and how do we move? In both cases, it seems we have to do with quite a mundane phenomenon which resists theoretical explication.
In both cases, the answer consists in the dissolution of the question by showing that it is replete with untenable presuppositions. For Bergson, this boils down to the reduction of movement to its stages, while for Wittgenstein it boils down to excessively intellectualist accounts of rules. While it is tempting to see rules as a kind of railway going into infinity and determining of every action whether it is in accordance with it or not, Wittgenstein mentions the possibility of rules being determined only in the course of their application.
This approach to rules sees them as much more dynamic and could even be linked to Bergson´s conception of the normative in the Two sources. Bergson stresses that we also follow rules blindly and not only sometimes, but typically. But, unlike Wittgenstein, he distinguishes two kinds of this following, corresponding to his two sources. We can either follow a rule under the dictate of a societal pressure or we can follow it inspired by a creative enthusiasm. This distinction enables us to flesh out in more detail the sketchy but crucial mention of the notion of the form of life in Investigations. Forms of life enable both the requisite specificity but also the further development into new shapes.
Bergson and the Fragility of Democratic Societies
Paola Marrati (Johns Hopkins University)
In this talk I would like to revisit the significance of Bergson’s philosophy of time, and in particular of how it shapes his understanding of society and history in the Two Sources of Morality and Religion, for our present context when the very fabric of democratic societies shows its vulnerability at a global scale and the reality of climate change seems to threaten the possibility of the future itself.