Reading Journal 2024: Matter and Memory

Reading Journal 2024: Matter and Memory
Author: Henri Bergson

A tough read, although altogether fascinating and challenging. The toughness comes in wading through the thought process. The ideas are poignant and profound, but also at times frustratingly allusive in both their nature and their argumentation.

The purpose however is clear- “This book affirms the reality of spirit and the reality of matter and tries to determine the relationship of one to the other by the study of a definite example, that of memory.” This attempt to reconcile platonic ideals with aristotelian realism becomes the essential pattern, and it depends on both distinguishing each idea while at the same time seeing them as operating in relationship to each other. Here he puts forth a mutually existing pure perception and pure memory.

This is where I think it gets difficult to fully grasp. The author is clearly critiquing modernism and its hard and fast allegiance to enlightenment thought. However, this critique comes through acknowledging that the existence of pure perception actually roots memory in realism, while pure memory roots perception in idealism. Perception emerges from the flow of memory, thus being made of a composite of progressive actions as we exist in relarionshop to the world around us.

It becomes a fallacy to say that memory is a materialist function, and equally a fallacy to say that perception is not a spiritual function, precisely because these two ideas are interrelated and dependent on the other. The more we see them operating together the greater our perception of reality becomes.

I am deeply interested in the subject of memory, so I really appreciated how he approaches this subject as a blend of science and philosophy. He doubles down on perception as an active word, meaning it is formed as we act in the world, or through necessary movement. Without movement there would be no perception precisely because there would be no memory. It is on this basis that he looks to establish that memory is not simply something that is trapped in a brain, as though it is a series of snapshots being stored until they are accessed. Memory perception exists as a summation of movement/activity, and thus as reality. Perception pulls memory down into the functional reality of Aristotle’s concern while memory pulls perception upwards into the Platonic ideals, ultimately giving us what we call reality, something that is neither realism or idealism, both pure ideas in their own right, but something truer to itself when it is opposing such dualism.

I’m butchering the brevity of the books lengthy passages and exposition, but from what I gathered these were some of its more essential conclusions. Because movement and image are not opposed but mutually dependent, this must change our perception of reality, or our perception of perception to put it more aptly. Living, or true reality is what he calls a “continuity of becoming”. Perception can only ever be a distinguishing of the beginning to the end, a movement. And in the center of this movement is a body. A body situated between the matter that influenced it and that which it is has influence on. It is human interaction with these two competing forces, which is responsive in its nature, that holds consciousness in its grip as the characteristic note of the present, pulling realism and idealism together as it acts/functions.

To cease to act would be to cease to be conscience, and to cease to be conscience would be to cease to exist. It is this flow of  conscious action that we can call spirit. Consciousness illuminates the past in relationship to the future, proving that the past must exist/survive for the present to exist. We, by nature of conscious awareness, are interested in the unfolding of time precisely in this manner, not necessarily the whole, but the unfolding depends on the existence of the whole.

If it hasn’t been made aware yet, this is why this is a tough read. I would wager even my understandings here, for as much as I am trying to articulate it with integrity, is not yet quite grasping the ideas. But that’s the beauty of such a process- it ruminates, and as it does I trust it continues to bring clarity, because I do think this is important stuff.