Matter and memory
Matter and Memory ( French: Matière et Mémoire ) is a work of the French philosopher Henri Bergson . It deals with the different functions and forms of memory and on this basis also gives an answer to the body-mind problem . The treatise based on Bergson's conception of time (1889) was published in 1896 and is one of the four main works of the philosopher.
content
overview
As the subtitle of the book ( Essai sur la relation du corps à l'esprit , English: A treatise on the relationship between body and mind) announces, Bergson opens up the body-mind problem through an analysis of the functioning of memory. Bergson's focus is on The Memory and Its Disruptions (1881) by Théodule Ribot . Ribot claims that the findings of neurology prove that memory is located in the human nervous system and is therefore materially constituted. Bergson contradicts this reduction of memory to matter and takes the view that memory is fundamentally spiritual in nature. The brain aligns its content with what is currently given to it and continuously inserts the memory content necessary for orientation into human actions during the ongoing process. It therefore fulfills a practical function, in the center of which is the body.
Now comes the brain damage is not primarily wiped out the memory, but in practical situations that goes memory lost, so the ability to retrieve contents of memory (to "incarnate" as Bergson says). They persist but are impoverished. Therefore, the brain can no longer fully perform its practical task.
Forms of memory
Bergson differentiates between two forms of memory: habitual memory repeats the past without understanding it as past. It uses the skills previously acquired to solve the current tasks and works largely automatically. The way it works is so inscribed in the body that it does not have to be consciously accessed. According to Bergson , this can be seen in verses learned by heart , which can be recited mechanically, as it were, without having to think about it. Bergson calls this knowledge-how memory habitual memory .
The other memory is pure memory or memory memory. It retains what has been experienced in the form of memory images that represent what has been experienced. In memory, however, what has been experienced is also recognized as the past. It is used for contemplation and theory building and is completely free in it. It is completely spiritual and therefore embodies the actual memory. With reference to the above example, memory can remember the fact that something has been memorized. It can classify this as a past event and understands that the learned content is not innate.
Metaphysical Consequences
Bergson accuses the metaphysicians of having asked only insignificant questions and also wrongly. While the traditional problems of metaphysics are still of interest to the philosopher, Bergson would like to rethink the approach to these problems from the ground up. Each of his four great treatises specifically addresses a central metaphysical problem. In “matter and memory” this is the connection between mind and body, a problem that Descartes puts into the distinction between res cogitans (thinking, mind) and res extensa (extended matter). However, this distinction is not sufficient for Bergson.
The philosopher differentiates mind and body on the level of reality, but does not make this distinction spatially like Descartes , but temporally . The mind is the place of the past, the body is the place of the present. The mind is therefore always anchored in the past and does not protrude into the present: it processes the present solely from the standpoint of the past. To be conscious of something means to illuminate it with knowledge of the past. Those who limit themselves to an external stimulus have no awareness of what they are doing. He is alone in the physical, i.e. H. in the present. Where something is to become conscious, there must therefore be a certain period of time between receiving the stimulus and reacting to it. In the meantime, awareness occurs. It takes place out of the past, which illuminates the present and considers a future. This shows that the three tenses, past, present and future, come about through the unity of mind and body. The more the mind is pushed into the past, the more conscious we are. The more one gets absorbed in doing things, the more one is in the present, i.e. in physical time. Although it is possible to be sometimes more in one time, sometimes more in the other, one is never exclusively in one or the other. True attention, on the other hand, requires acting with full mental and full physical effort. According to Bergson, the “impulsive personalities” show how consciousness can recede behind the immediate absorption in things and actions. This turns the question of the causality of action, i.e. the question of freedom and the determinacy of human actions, into a question of practice: Man encounters this problem through his creative development.
literature
expenditure
- Henri Bergson: Matiere and memory. Essays on the relationship between mind and body. With a foreword by Wilhelm Windelband. Eugen Diederichs publishing house, Jena 1908.
- Henri Bergson: Matter and Memory. A treatise on the relationship between mind and body. Verlag Felix Meiner, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-7873-1027-4 , (reprint of the 1908 edition with a new foreword by Erik Oger).
- Henri Bergson: Matière et mémoire. Essai on the relation du corps à l'esprit. With comments by Frédéric Worms and Camille Riquier. 8th edition. Quadrige et al., Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-13-056870-4 ( Quadrige. Grands textes ).
Secondary literature
- Gilles Deleuze : Le bergsonisme. Presses universitaires de France, Paris 1966 ( Initiation philosophique 76, ISSN 0446-2696 ).
- Henri Gouhier : Bergson et le Christ des évangiles. Librairie Arthème Fayard, Paris 1961 (Edition revue et corrigée de l'ouvrage 1961. Vrin, Paris 1999, ISBN 2-7116-0925-1 ( Histoire de la Philosophie )).
- Jan Cernicky: Perception and Sensation in Henri Bergson's “Matter and Memory”. wvb Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Berlin, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-86573-172-4 ( Foreign proximity 6).
Web links
- Matière et Mémoire as full text in the archive for classics of the social sciences (French)
- Matter and memory in the German first translation Leipzig 1908 (digitized via Google books)