- Title: An Introduction to Metaphysics
- Author: Henri Bergson
- Translated: T. E. Hulme
- Published: 1903
- Publisher: Macmillan and Co. Limited, 1913
There are two ways of knowing a thing; Relative & Absolute.
Relative
- Viewed from outside
- Depends on the point of views and the symbols
- Representation taken from a certain point of view (images)
- Translation made with certain symbols (concepts)
- Analysis
- The process that reduces the objects to elements already known
- A translation into other symbols or a representation from different perspectives
- Operates on the immobile (at the instantaneous moment)
- Cannot never reach to itself (always incomplete representation / imperfect translation)
Absolute
- Viewed from inside, in itself, perfection, organized, infinite
- Can be given in an intuition
- Intuition places itself in mobility (in duration)
Metaphysics
- Claims to dispense with symbols
- Must transcend concepts in order to reach intuition
- It is an error that we believe we can reconstruct the real with the fragments (symbolic representation) captured in a static moment.
- Concepts may be extracted from the mobile reality, but we cannot reconstruct the mobility of the real with concepts
- Philosophy and science claims this reconstruction of reality. It is an error. It is bound to fail.
Time
- By analysis
- Multiplicity of successive state
- Unity which binds them together
- In intuition, time is a whole continuity accumulated from the past
Scriptorium 