Intuition and Duration: an Introduction to Bergson’s ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’

Despite Bergson’s immense fame,1 Bergson never produced a movement;2 Bergson never produced a Heidegger. The lack of a movement explains why Husserl’s phenomenology continues to overshadow Bergsonism. Phenomenology looks to be so much more important than Bergsonism that Derrida, in his 1967 study of Husserl, mentions Bergson only in passing, implying that that his criticism of Husserl should be able to strike at Bergson as well.3 Foucault does the same, as early as 1963 in The Birth of the Clinic and as late as 1984 in an essay called ‘Life: Experience and Science/4 Derrida and Foucault are able to subordinate Bergson’s thought to phenomenology not only because phenomenology virtually dominated twentieth-century thinking. They can do this also because Bergsonism seems to be conceptually similar to phenomenology. Bergsonism is an intuitionism, and Bergson’s central concept of ‘the duration’ (la duree) looks to be equivalent to Husserl’s concept of Erlebnis (lived-experience). In 1965 however, Deleuze asserted that Bergson holds a unique position — different from Husserl and even from Heidegger — in the Western philosophical tradition.5 This assertion distinguishes Deleuze from Derrida and Foucault. Indeed, Deleuze might be Bergson’s Heidegger. In What is Philosophy? for instance — a text co-authored with Guattari — Deleuze says that Bergson is the only philosopher who was mature enough for the inspiration Spinoza gives us.