Thank you for another great video, and, rightly or wrongly, I personally have always associated that “liberation” from mechanical time Bergson seems to have been after with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow.” I like “flow” because it doesn’t make an enemy of “mechanical time” (which indeed has its uses), and because "flow" doesn’t consider itself free from rationality, but a state in which rationality is “in concert and harmony” with emotions, memory, and the like. I think that rationality “by itself” can indeed become overly instrumental and “reductionist,” but the answer isn’t to erase it, but to instead “harmonize” it (I like musical metaphors, as you can tell). In “flow,” what I call “thinking” and “perceiving” balance, and better yet tend to be in service of creativity, which isn’t purely emotional but not purely intellectual either. “Flow” is "creative time."
I believe that Friedrich Schiller was also trying to find a way of harmonizing the duality of Man; reason/rationality with his more natural and sensuous instinct. He explores the possible effects of an aesthetic education in collaboration with the ideal of beauty in order to "sensitize" reason. Quote from Schiller's letter IX of On the Aesthetic Education of Man; "it not therefore sufficient that all enlightenment of the intellect deserves recognition only insofar as it affects character; in part it derives from character since the path to the head must be opened up through the heart. Culture of the capacity for feeling is the more urgent need at this time, not merely because it will enable better insight into life, but because it prompts the improvement of such insight itself. "
@@ngdsmedia8189 Thank you for your comment! And I think you’re correct: that has been my impression of Schiller. He’s another example of someone who I think contains depths I need to go back and diligently mine. It is increasingly apparently to me that we’ve lost a sense that “feeling” contributes to us having “better insight into life”-that emotions and aesthetics in general contribute to “better thinking”: the relationship is not either/or. Lacking aesthetics, critical thinking can’t even be critical; it’s lifeless.
Excellent content ! I wrote a little about Kantian time and Bergsonian duration ("article" on my blog). Gilles Deleuze (in a passage from his essay "Le bergsonisme") talks about how Bergson redefines "multiplicity" after Riemann. Bergson would also have been strongly marked by the "integration" (important idea in his philosophy, already with the first "Essai") used in mathematics.
Bergson has done a lot to stress the difference between time and space. Schopenhauer also, although he claimed that the Will sits outside of time, acknowledges the special status of music, and even goes so far as to say that he might have called his book "the world as music and idea". I suspect that Bergson was right about the special status of time, that the Will unfolds in time. When we reason, we indeed take the thing itself out of its element, we analyse it, decompose it into parts. All of this linguistic reasoning however, though it seems dry and lifeless on the surface, is done in time, since it is actively carried out by a willing agent. Language is a system of signs but it lives on an essentially musical foundation.
Have you read Matter and Memory? Bergson‘s concept of the "zone of indeterminacy" should resolve your questions regarding his concept of freedom. For those seriously interested in Bergsons philosophy I would suggest reading both Gilles Deleuze‘s "Bergsonism" and Vladimir Jankélévitch‘ "Henri Bergson", two very different but complementary entrance points to Bergson‘s works.
@@JohannesNiederhauser I can‘t do the reading for you. The first chapter of M&M addresses Cartesian dualism if that is what you are concerned to find in Bergson‘s philosophy.
Insightful! Would you consider to venture a video on F. H. Bradley- the foremost of the English Idealists- with an emphasis on his doctrine of immediate experience which he referred to as "feeling" and, if possible, contrast it with William James' doctrine of pure consciousness.
@@JohannesNiederhauser Of course, his magnum opus "Appearance and Reality" yet for the purpose of attaining a thoroughgoing grasp of his doctrine of feeling his remarkable essay "On Immediate Experience" which he published in his "Essays on Truth and Reality" can be made distinguished avail of. I genuinely wish that you will consider this.
Thank you very much! I will definitely more than just consider but also read up on this. Just ordered a copy of his essays on reality. Highly appreciated ✌️🙌
Was Bergson essentially trying to say that the immediate act of processing the sensuous/phenomenal world (actuality) and trying to express or understand what is experienced using reason and a symbolic system such as language makes the human being (un)free?
Thank you for another great video, and, rightly or wrongly, I personally have always associated that “liberation” from mechanical time Bergson seems to have been after with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow.” I like “flow” because it doesn’t make an enemy of “mechanical time” (which indeed has its uses), and because "flow" doesn’t consider itself free from rationality, but a state in which rationality is “in concert and harmony” with emotions, memory, and the like. I think that rationality “by itself” can indeed become overly instrumental and “reductionist,” but the answer isn’t to erase it, but to instead “harmonize” it (I like musical metaphors, as you can tell). In “flow,” what I call “thinking” and “perceiving” balance, and better yet tend to be in service of creativity, which isn’t purely emotional but not purely intellectual either. “Flow” is "creative time."
I believe that Friedrich Schiller was also trying to find a way of harmonizing the duality of Man; reason/rationality with his more natural and sensuous instinct. He explores the possible effects of an aesthetic education in collaboration with the ideal of beauty in order to "sensitize" reason.
Quote from Schiller's letter IX of On the Aesthetic Education of Man; "it not therefore sufficient that all enlightenment of the intellect deserves recognition only insofar as it affects character; in part it derives from character since the path to the head must be opened up through the heart. Culture of the capacity for feeling is the more urgent need at this time, not merely because it will enable better insight into life, but because it prompts the improvement of such insight itself. "
@@ngdsmedia8189 Thank you for your comment! And I think you’re correct: that has been my impression of Schiller. He’s another example of someone who I think contains depths I need to go back and diligently mine. It is increasingly apparently to me that we’ve lost a sense that “feeling” contributes to us having “better insight into life”-that emotions and aesthetics in general contribute to “better thinking”: the relationship is not either/or. Lacking aesthetics, critical thinking can’t even be critical; it’s lifeless.
@Anthemic Lullaby / Joshua / That's excellent imagery! I like that a lot.
Excellent content ! I wrote a little about Kantian time and Bergsonian duration ("article" on my blog). Gilles Deleuze (in a passage from his essay "Le bergsonisme") talks about how Bergson redefines "multiplicity" after Riemann. Bergson would also have been strongly marked by the "integration" (important idea in his philosophy, already with the first "Essai") used in mathematics.
Bergson has done a lot to stress the difference between time and space. Schopenhauer also, although he claimed that the Will sits outside of time, acknowledges the special status of music, and even goes so far as to say that he might have called his book "the world as music and idea". I suspect that Bergson was right about the special status of time, that the Will unfolds in time.
When we reason, we indeed take the thing itself out of its element, we analyse it, decompose it into parts. All of this linguistic reasoning however, though it seems dry and lifeless on the surface, is done in time, since it is actively carried out by a willing agent. Language is a system of signs but it lives on an essentially musical foundation.
Have you read Matter and Memory? Bergson‘s concept of the "zone of indeterminacy" should resolve your questions regarding his concept of freedom. For those seriously interested in Bergsons philosophy I would suggest reading both Gilles Deleuze‘s "Bergsonism" and Vladimir Jankélévitch‘ "Henri Bergson", two very different but complementary entrance points to Bergson‘s works.
How would a rehashing of Cartesian dualism “resolve” anything?
@@JohannesNiederhauser I can‘t do the reading for you. The first chapter of M&M addresses Cartesian dualism if that is what you are concerned to find in Bergson‘s philosophy.
Insightful! Would you consider to venture a video on F. H. Bradley- the foremost of the English Idealists- with an emphasis on his doctrine of immediate experience which he referred to as "feeling" and, if possible, contrast it with William James' doctrine of pure consciousness.
Very intriguing, thank you! Which text by Bradley would you recommend? The British Idealists are still a blind spot for me unfortunately.
@@JohannesNiederhauser Of course, his magnum opus "Appearance and Reality" yet for the purpose of attaining a thoroughgoing grasp of his doctrine of feeling his remarkable essay "On Immediate Experience" which he published in his "Essays on Truth and Reality" can be made distinguished avail of. I genuinely wish that you will consider this.
Thank you very much! I will definitely more than just consider but also read up on this. Just ordered a copy of his essays on reality. Highly appreciated ✌️🙌
Good video.
Was Bergson essentially trying to say that the immediate act of processing the sensuous/phenomenal world (actuality) and trying to express or understand what is experienced using reason and a symbolic system such as language makes the human being (un)free?
If your gonna take away the ground please don’t put it back. Thank you
This is probably the worst reading of Bergson I’ve ever heard.
Das ist nicht sehr sachlich, "Kyle".
@@JohannesNiederhauser I wasn’t stating a fact but giving a judgement. Find a worse reading and I might change my judgement