« Since Aristotle and beyond Bergson »

« Seit Aristoteles bis über Bergson hinaus »

Introduction

As Heidegger put it, « No attempt to get behind the riddle of time can permit itself to dispense with coming to grips with Aristotle » (The basic problems of Phenomenology, paragraph 19), since Aristotle shaped the traditional concept of time. He was the first to conceptualize the phenomenon of time instead of confining himself to tradition by accomplishing « the return to the things themselves »: « his view of time corresponds to the natural concept of time. » (Ibid.). Yet, while Aristotle had the « eyes to see » (Ibid.), he did not gain access to the origin of time, to the point from which time springs, as he only conceptualized the vulgar understanding of time. All the subsequent time conceptions (Plotinus, St. Augustine, Suarez, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Nietzsche, Bergson, Husserl and Einstein) only represent the variations of his conception.

Although Bergson’s concept of duration stands apart, his endeavour to put aside the tradition was not a success according to Heidegger. By distinguishing common time and duration (lived time), Bergson does not achieve his goal, that is to discover an original concept of time: his erroneous interpretation of Aristotle, as well as his misconception of common time prevent him from conceiving the fundamental time and thereby to relate time and being.

Since an understanding of time determines the sense of being, all the subsequent development of metaphysics depends entirely on the analysis of time as it was elaborated by Aristotle in the fourth Book of “Physics”. Aristotle established the derived concept of time, both as intra-temporality and as intra-psychic. Therefore, drawing upon Aristotle’s conception, we are able to reach the phenomenon of ecstatic-horizontal temporality as the horizon of the understanding of Being. In full accordance with fundamental ontology, we are only able to get indirect access to the original phenomenon, namely the authentic and original understanding of time, through the derived concept.

Making this deconstructive step, Heidegger assumes that the Aristotelian concept of time bears in itself the trace of the phenomenon. Its analysis would allow to extract its phenomenological content without paraphrasing the existing concept or trying to overcome it. For instance, Hegel did nothing else than substituting Greek terms by German ones (nun/Jetzt ; oros/Grenze ; tode ti/absolute Dieses ; stigmè/Punkt). As for Bergson, he made an attempt to overcome it using the pure intuition of duration. In this respect he complies with Aristotle’s requirement to provide a vision of time, but he is not able to satisfy it, since he abandons concept for the sake of intuition. Heidegger objects to « Bergson’s thesis that time understood in the common way is really space » (“Sein und Zeit”, p. 18). He intends to show that neither the traditional concept of time nor its common understanding is based upon a spatial representation, against Bergson’s critique during his summer course on the “Basic problems of phenomenology” in 1927.

Let us remind that Bergson never declares explicitly that his goal is to overcome the Aristotelian concept of time. In “Time and Free Will” (1889) he objects primarily to Zeno, Kant and Fechner, as he challenges the negation of movement, the transcendental idealism and psychophysical confusions. His starting point is neither the philosophical concept of time itself, nor its common understanding, but the immobility of scientific time, the T symbol.

Bergson provides his interpretation of Aristotle in “Creative Evolution” (1907) while discussing the cinematographical mechanism of thought. Still, Bergson does not refer to the fourth book of “Physics”. Rather, he addresses classification of the kinds of change in the Fifth Book. He also refers to the Eighth Book and to the “Metaphysics” XII, where the unmoved mover theory is discussed. Moreover, it is impossible to understand the Aristotelian concept of time as ‘’something about the motion” without the interpretation of movement in its ultimate principle.

However, Bergson and Heidegger are not challenging the same Aristotle, and so, it is necessary to clarify the relevant interpretations.

1) Heidegger’s Aristotle

     In the 1917th seminar, Heidegger talks at length on the traditional definition of physical time (Aristotle, Physics IV, 11, 219 b 1: « Time is the number of movement according to the before and after » – Touto gar estin o chronos, arithmòs kinéseôs kata to proteron kai husteron). He highlights the three major characteristics of time in order to show that they do not derive from the characteristics of space, but originate directly from those of original temporality: transition, extension and measure. These characteristics determine the natural understanding of time as an infinite succession of nows.

Time is indeed encountered with mobile as the experience of before and after which succeed one another in space. But the original sense of proteros and husteron is not temporal. If these terms referred to a chronological order (as earlier and later), Aristotle’s definition would be tautological, as time would then be characterized via intratemporality, as if « now » could itself be in time. Nevertheless, before and after presuppose temporal experience: retention and expectation. For when I see a movement, metabolé between two points, I retain the abandoned place as a starting point (before) and I expect what follows as a destination point (after). Thus, we see the transition through a temporal ecstatic attitude.

Yet, if Aristotle’s definition is indeed tautological, then it points to the identity of the derived and the original, in other words: “the derived time is original Time”. Therefore, Aristotle could not aim to derive the common time from anything other than Time itself. Space does not establish experience of movement nor time; on the contrary, space itself is derived from time. Hence, when Aristotle says: o chronos akolouthei té kinései (“Time follows movement” – Physics IV, 11, 219 b 23), he aimed to work out a priori conditions for the experience of movement. The verb akolouthein (follow, accompany) indicates here that the experience of space depends a priori on the common understanding of time. Heidegger concludes that Bergson misinterpreted Aristotle (affirming that time as conceived by him is space) as he didn’t understand the transcendental meaning of akolouthein (BPP, p. 294).

Heidegger pursues his analysis in order to establish derived time on the basis of original finite time. He traces time major characteristics (measure, extension and transition) back to their origin, as he relates them one by one to their original existential meaning. This original relation is beyond common understanding of time, because time is conceived as an infinite succession of “nows”. This way of understanding which obscures original Time is integral to Dasein’s way of being. In the everyday existence, Dasein does not recognize ordinarily itself via ecstatic temporality, but through the extantness as if it were a thing present-at-hand (Vorhandensein); so the derived temporality decidedly depends on the presence. That is, the interpretation of time through now is related to the conception of being as being-actual, as being-present. That means that a temporal modality of Dasein is raised to the rank of a paradigm of being.

Heidegger then raises the following question (BPP, p. 323): if initially Dasein is only aware of common time, can we still call the original time by the same name, “time”? Here Heidegger clearly opposes the Bergson’s point of view, as Bergson refers to the original time as “duration” leaving the title of “time” to the derived concept. Yet, it’s the original time that should be called time in the first place. (BPP, p. 326.)

However, if we relate every ontic notion to its ontological notion, do not we risk building an ontology that would merely model the ontic? And if we build the conception of original time on the basis of finitude, how will we be able to justify time as an infinite succession of present “nows”? And does not the paradigm of transition “in general” translate time into the concept of a uniform becoming which slides indiscriminately along each and every thing? It is exactly on this matter that Bergson confronts Aristotle.

2) Bergson’s Aristotle

 The forth chapter of Creative Evolution is « a glance at the History of systems ». It aims to pinpoint the latent geometrism of human mind within the traditional fundamental concepts (God, being, nothingness): the cinematographical mechanism inherited from Greeks, which makes us conceive the unstable out of stable, the moving out of immobility, the full out of empty and being out of nothingness. This way of thinking remains « the last word of the Greek philosophy », « connected by many threads to the soul of ancient Greece ». (EC, p. 325). The « trust in the cinematographical instinct of our thought » (EC, p. 315) is what makes us « all born Platonists » – Plato just integrated into philosophy this natural tendency of our instinctive intelligence. The same mechanism is responsible for the way Aristotle conceived change: he focused on stability of different mobilities because he was relying on language (adjectives, nouns and verbs) to derive qualities from matter, forms from bodies and result obtained (or presiding intention) from actions (EC, p.302). In this regard, quality is precisely a moment of the alteration, form is a moment of the evolution and the result/intention a moment of the action. Concentrating on these moments, we fixe logically the instability of matter, the uninterrupted continuity of life and the body movement. Theses three kinds of change classified by Aristotle (Physics V, 3, 225 b 11-13) bear in themselves a common idea, namely that of a unique and impersonal movement, a form of « becoming in general » (EC, p. 306). As far as adjectives (qualities) and verbs (actions) are nothing but derivations of a noun, each expressing merely a state of reality, and Greek philosophy had no other way than to conceive the reality as constituted of forms. It was therefore condemned to confuse these relative perspectives with the things themselves. Plato and Aristotle failed to see that the substantial reality is not a form, but the transformation itself. Aristotle couldn’t understand how change itself could be a genuine subject (Physics V, 3, 225 b 5); instead, he made of it an accident of substance. Thus, denying that becoming is itself being, Greeks had to reduce time to be a « moving image » of the eternity (Cf. Plato, “Timaeus” 37d : eiko kinèton tina aionos). Which means the separation of eternal being from the sensible world. « Ideas must then exist by themselves. Ancient philosophy could not escape this conclusion. Plato formulated it, and in vain did Aristotle strive to avoid it. » (EC, p. 321.)

Thus, Aristotle takes up Plato’s logical system of ideas, merely reorganising them around the idea of the unmoved mover. The static principle remains thereby separated from the becoming world, ontologically isolated from movement. At the base of the universally moving sensible where Plato found the mè ón, which partakes in the intelligible and imitates being, Aristotle places the shapeless matter awaiting to be informed. While for Plato it is form that is imitated by the things, for Aristotle movements that partake in the sublunary world mimic the movements from the supralunary region. (EC, p.321): « So, having begun by refusing to Ideas an independent existence, and finding himself nevertheless unable to deprive them of it, Aristotle pressed them into each other, rolled them up into a ball, and set above the physical world a Form that was thus found to be the Form of Forms, the Idea of Ideas, or, to use his own words, the Thought of Thought. Such is the God of Aristotle. »

Thus Aristotle is long way from challenging the khôrismos: instead, he pushes the cinematographic Platonist tendency to its limits, by distinguishing a stable element from its negation, as parts of any transformation process. In other words, he distinguishes the immovable general form which subsumes all the particular cases, from the unstable matter as pure indeterminacy: eidos and hylé – this dissociation is « the first proceeding of our thought » (EC, p. 326). It means that: « The affirmation of a reality implies the simultaneous affirmation of all the degrees of reality intermediate between it and nothing. » (EC, p. 323.)

In this respect, there is no fundamental difference between Plato and Aristotle. Delimited by intelligence and expressed in language, Forms are either oriented towards the Idea of Ideas, or brought together in the eternity by a pure act unifying them into « a single concept, the synthesis of all reality, the achievement of all perfection ». In both cases, conceiving being requires therefore to postulate a primordial nothingness: « If we pass (consciously or unconsciously) through the idea of the nought in order to reach that of being, the being to which we come is a logical or mathematical essence, therefore non-temporal. And, consequently, a static conception of the real is forced on us: everything appears given once for all, in eternity. » (EC, p. 298.) Hence, space and time are seen as degradation of the first principle, as a diminution of being which tends towards nothingness as things spread in space and particles of time get extended. The becoming world arises therefore as a bridge between the supra-sensible Ideas and infra-sensible nothingness. Because, « having cut your cloth, you must sew it. » (EC, p. 326).

As the generative act of every movement, the symbol of the general idea of all general ideas, Aristotle’s God just poured out Platonic ideas beyond him into time and space [« an outpooring of Platonic Ideas from the Aristotelian God » (EC, p. 321)]. The non-extended and eternal theîon originates the world’s movement without producing anything. The first diminution of the first principle initiates the perpetual movement of heavens. This movement imitates the divine eternity « creating (…) its own place, and thereby place in general (…) creating also its own duration and thereby duration in general, since its movement is the measure of all motion. » (EC, p.323-4). Thus, time is the consequence of eternal circular movement, which dwells eternally in the same place and measures all movements. The second diminution gives rise to the sublunary world with its cycle of birth, growth and death that imperfectly and for the last time imitates the circle of God’s thought.

We can see how the unmovable principle is derived from an interpretation of movement as infinite. For Aristotle, the unmoved mover is necessary because movement is not supposed to have a beginning or an end: there must be a unique entity that corresponds to movements in the eternity. This is how Bergson claims that Aristotle derives his time interpretation from his space interpretation: movement is conceived on the basis of primary immobility. By establishing chronos through aîon, he is far from establishing it through time. Aristotle derives duration of eternity the same way he used to trace back to the original circularity. The analogy he uses to derive both existences of time and places from the place of places, leads him to negate both movement and time.

Bergson thus confronts directly the principles that withdraw the onto-theological perspective of metaphysics, which pretend to establish being in its totality on the idea of an isolated and unmoved super-being.

The possibility to misinterpret what must be overcome is a risk assumed by Being and Time and it lays in wait for all ontology that seeks to be fundamental. A project that traces the derivative back to its origin remains always undermined by possibility of misinterpretation and risks distorting its starting point and its goal. That could be exactly what happened to Heidegger towards Bergson.

Presentation given at the XIV international scientific conference « Aristotle’s readings », the 24th of May 2018, Lomonosov Moscow State University.

(translation : Maria Kobzarenko. Et merci à Anna Yampolskaïa pour la révision)