Henri Bergson (20) - Art / The Possible
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- čas přidán 21. 08. 2024
- Well, we’ve come to the last video in my Bergson series. In this video, we first look at art, the purpose of which is to extend our perception to the things themselves; to go beyond seeing things as mere instruments in relation to our desires, needs, interests, etc., and apprehend them in their metaphysical truth. In the second half, we turn to the possible and the actual, where Bergson argues that the possible doesn’t pre-exist the actual. On the contrary, they are created together. Finally, we link this to freedom, which people often argue for based on the (incorrect) idea that multiple possibilities exist at any one moment.
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*Contents*
02:03 Art
02:08 The purpose of art
02:25 Perception
08:42 Artistic genius
13:32 How art extends our perception
17:20 The body
23:29 The Possible and the Actual
25:10 The negative sense of the possible
25:47 The positive sense of the possible
27:00 The retrograde movement
41:33 Consequence 1: The possible is created with the actual
42:36 Consequence 2: There is more in the possible than the real
44:36 Freedom
47:03 Summary
Congrats on finishing this series. I stayed with it through, took lots of notes in prep for my own reading. I have to admit I had to rewind and replay several parts of this series. Thanks for the videos, they helped me immensely.
Thanks a lot. Great to hear you found the vids helpful.
Nathan, thanks so much for putting this together. I listened to this series twice the whole way through, many other episodes multiple times and (being an artist myself) this last one maybe ten times!
I love how Bergons theories challenge and stretch my way of thinking and perceiving not to mention how i understand and conceive of (my) art.
Please add that last remaining Bergson book in once youve read it and keep the channel up, love your work!
Thanks for getting into my videos so passionately. That's a pretty heavy-duty level of effort you're putting in there!
I'm really glad to hear that you get as much out of Bergson as much as I do, too. I'll do my best to keep putting out quality content.
Thank you so much for this series Nathan!🙏❤
You're welcome, Rebanta. Thanks for joining me for this Bergson ride!
Brilliant series. Your work is so clear and concise. Thank you very much. And what a great final episode. I’m an artist so this one was real good food for thought.
Thanks a lot. I really appreciate that. Bergson didn't have a huge aesthetic theory, but I also found what he had to say on the topic interesting.
23.29 The possible being bigger and more complex than the reality that eventuates! That reminds me of the benefit of hindsight, when you look back at the context and path you took ( with your feeedom!) to get to the mess/bliss you are in today!
Yeah. Bergson is so insightful on the possible and freedom.
Thank you Nathan.
You have made top quality standard in how philosophy can be teached. Very clear, insightful, agile, deep, and the same time accesible to we the side spectators of such fascinating arena of concepts.
I made it through the twenty, wishing perhaps the 21 of Bergson and religion.
Yes by now I know what you think about this but I am very curious of your own interpretation of it
Gracias!
Thanks a lot Armando! I just ran out of steam at the end there!! Hopefully you also enjoy the Levinas series.
Thank you Nathan, this is one of my all time favorite series of videos on CZcams. I’m still catching up from the beginning of the series as there’s so much to wrap your head around in each one. Thank you seriously for the time and effort to break down these ideas, theyve helped me see things in a totally new way and it’s truly a gift.
Gosh, can't ask for more than that! Thanks.
And that's a great way to describe good philosophy - providing a totally new way of seeing things. Exactly the way I feel when I read this stuff, too!
again thanks fellow being for sharing awareness and insights out loud with us
Thanks as always, Dominic.
Thank you for consistently putting out great content. Sometimes I just save for future use since each requires lots of concentration for me. That’s why I think there must have been a lot of thoughts putting into it, thank you for your time.
Thank you, and you're welcome! Lots of effort at both ends, I guess. But very happy to hear you get some value from them.
Going to have to read this now!
Oh yeah - add it to the list!
Thanks for the great series Nathan, I really enjoyed it! I’m thinking about starting your Kierkegaard videos next, I’ve read a few books by him but the next one I’m thinking about starting while going through your videos is either Repetition or Either/Or.
Thanks Dany. Welcome to the end of this series! I could probably talk forever about Bergson.
_Either/Or_ is definitely the better of the two, in my opinion, although repetition, the idea, is interesting, and was picked up in interesting ways by both Heidegger and Deleuze.
Thank you for your great lectures - I've listened to them carefully and taken some notes. As per the last lecture I want to ask two questions and maybe speculate about some ideas. First, Is it accurate to say that according to Bergson, art is essentially the ability to look at the world from a different, hypothetical perspective, and by doing so, expand the intuition and get closer to the nature of totality as a duration? If so, can I claim that this is the essential difference between metaphysical reasoning and practical reasoning (in the forms of Ethics) i.e. hypothetical vs actual beings? And I want to speculate by saying that if it is so, then it is essentially a very Jewish thought, deeply rooted in the Moses revelation as he stood in front of the burning fire ("Sne"). The fire did not burn the "sne" (bush?) because it was inside him, as the essence of the force of inner life (Fire is the symbol for change and creation. For example creating eatable meet out of rare meet as Peterson marks). When hearing god's voice, he asks for his name (i.e. his essence) and the answer he gets is "Eheia Asher Eheie" (Which is badly translated to "I am what I am"). The "Eheie" is the equivalent of "shall-Be" and "Being". What god demands from Moses is to understand him as THE hypothetical point of view as being, i.e. to look at the world from a metaphysical point of view and see THE perspective of humanity.
Hi again. I remember discussing things with you on other videos. Thanks for taking the time to leave some interesting comments!
To your first question; I’m not sure ‘hypothetical’ is the right word. The purpose of art for Bergson is to let us see things, not from a practical perspective, but as they are in themselves. I guess he was thinking of things like paintings of landscapes and nature, in particular. We usually see a tree in terms of what it can do for us (provide shade, a place to climb, etc.), but art detaches from this and presents the tree stripped of its references back to us and our projects. Now that I think about it, I might have overcooked the metaphysical connection here. I’m not sure that Bergson was making such a strong metaphysical claim about art. He says in _The Creative Mind_ that art lets us see more than perception grants us (because perception is tied to our projects), but it doesn’t let us truly move beyond it. For that, we need philosophy. Maybe, then, we could say art is the _starting point_ for a metaphysical inquiry (seeing the nature of reality as a whole) insofar as it presents a perspective that doesn’t see everything in light of our goals and aims. This can lead (through philosophy) into an understanding of duration (which, remember, is nothing more mysterious than time).
To your second question; again, is ‘hypothetical’ the right word here? Metaphysical thinking isn’t hypothetical; it’s at least as real as practical thinking. Also, ‘practical’ thinking here is not connected with ethics. It’s about utility, not right/wrong. It therefore stands opposed to metaphysical thinking because the latter requires us to think beyond our individual goals, projects, and desires - to understand reality as it existed _before_ all of these things, and how it must be in order for these things to emerge within it. Hypothetical vs. actual, therefore, doesn’t quite seem to capture the distinction for me.
To your religious interpretation; personally, I don’t find these kinds of connections particularly compelling. We can, for sure, read philosophy into our religious texts (basically because they are full of allegory, symbolism, and magic all of which are infinitely interpretable), but I think you have to be religious (i.e. already believe religious texts contain profound truths) to want to even try. With that said, for me at least, it’s probably going a bit far to call this a “Jewish thought”.
@@absurdbeing2219 Thank you for your answer - maybe I wasn't explaining myself accurately. Trying to ignore your interests while acting in the world according to your moral duty and transcend beyond subjectivity to experience aesthetic judgments, are all Kant's ideas. What I think is interesting in Bergson, as far as I understand it, is going beyond the cultivation of taste or doing your moral duties. It actually demonstrates how art IS the core of philosophical meditation. By looking at the world from different angles (from the eyes of the hypothetical characters in some writer's book or from the eyes of some person experiencing life and painting it) IS doing philosophy. I think that this kind of idea is deeply rooted in old manuscripts (Myths) like Gilgamesh's journey and in the revelation of Moses (Which, in my opinion, is one of the major corners of Jewish thinking). These scripts ARE art and metaphysics. My next project is listening to your lectures about Levinas, which I very much like, and have done some reading of his original essays and books a few years ago. Thank you again.
Hi, l have few questions about reading philosophy , is it possible to contact with you?
Hi Feqan, sure. Easiest way is probably email: absurdbeing@gmail.com