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In "An Introduction to Metaphysics" the epistemological assumptions that underlie Bergson's philosophical work first explicitly come to the surface of his thought. The doctrine of "Time and Free-Will" originates in the observation of a discrepancy between the subject-matter of psychology and the terms of that science, and that the metaphysics of matter put forward in Matter and Memory is based on ... More

In "An Introduction to Metaphysics" the epistemological assumptions that underlie Bergson's philosophical work first explicitly come to the surface of his thought. The doctrine of "Time and Free-Will" originates in the observation of a discrepancy between the subject-matter of psychology and the terms of that science, and that the metaphysics of matter put forward in Matter and Memory is based on the fact that physics is a science of immediate experience: on the discrepancy, that is, between the world of the concrete, unique, and altering objects that play on our organs of sense, and the world of the abstract, invariable elements that physics describes. The fundamental spring of Bergson's objections to psychology and physics is thus the fact that these sciences do not absolutely resemble, that is, coincide with, their objects. From the condemnation of the sciences of mind and matter on this score an easy step brings one to the condemnation of all natural science on the same ground; and the taking of this step is precisely what separates "An Introduction to Metaphysics" from "Matter and Memory."

In this book Bergson classes all scientific knowledge as relative over against metaphysical or philosophical knowledge, which is absolute. He leaves to scientific knowledge a certain qualified validity and is less severe in condemning natural science as a whole than he was in condemning analytical psychology in Time and Free-Will, for naturally the validity of physics is more difficult to explain away than whatever validity associationistic psychology may be said to possess. That the reasons for Bergson's refusal to admit that the knowledge furnished by any natural science is philosophically genuine are the same as his reasons for objecting to psychology and physics, however, can without difficulty be shown by reference to numerous passages in his book.

Bergson introduces the argument of "An Introduction to Metaphysics" with the statement that philosophers agree in distinguishing two profoundly different ways of knowing a thing: a relative way and an absolute. Relative knowledge, he pursues, implies that from a point of view external to the object we express the object by means of symbols; whereas absolute knowledge is dependent on no symbol, but implies the insertion of the subject into the object by imagination, the identification of subject with object in a simple feeling, or, in another word, the "coincidence" of the knowing subject with what is known. Relative knowledge is acquired by analysis; absolute knowledge, on the contrary, by "intuition." Analysis, Bergson says, is the operation which reduces the object to elements common to both it and to other objects, and intuition is that by which one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with what is unique in it and consequently inexpressible.

It is obvious that we are dealing here with a generalization of the distinction made by Bergson between the anti-material psychology and the ordinary psychology of "Time and Free-Will," and the metaphysics of matter and the science of physics in "Matter and Memory." If we note what the subject-matter of absolute or intuitive knowledge is given as, in "An Introduction to Metaphysics," we shall have further evidence that the book formulates epistemological assumptions that were implicit in Bergson's preceding work.

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