RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 55

A PRESENT FOLDED BACK ON THE PAST (BERGSON)

by

RUDOLF BERNET
University of Leuven

ABSTRACT
In Matter and Memory, Bergson examines the relationship between perception and mem-
ory, the status of consciousness in its relation to the brain, and more generally, a pos-
sible conjunction of matter and mind. Our reading focuses in particular on his
understanding of the evanescent presence of the present and of its debt vis-à-vis the
“unconscious” consciousness of a “virtual” past. We wish to show that the Bergsonian
version of a critique of “the metaphysics of presence” is, for all that, an offshoot of a
Platonic type of metaphysics. It is true that Bergson departs from traditional stand-
points on the side of a self-sufficient and original present and a form of presence to
which the transparency of consciousness would confer the character of immediate evi-
dence. All the same, it can hardly be claimed that his rehabilitation of the past and
the unconscious opens up new perspectives on how forgetting and death are bound
up with the work of memory.

We are touching on one of the most profound, but perhaps also one of
the least understood, aspects of Bergsonism: the theory of memory. . . .
We have great difficulty in understanding the survival of the past in itself
because we believe that the past is no longer, that it has ceased to be.
We have thus confused Being with being-present. Nevertheless, the pre-
sent is not; rather, it is pure becoming, always outside itself. . . . The past,
on the other hand, . . . has not ceased to be. Useless and inactive, impas-
sive, it IS, in the full sense of the word: it is identical with being in itself.
It should not be said that it “was,” since it is the in-itself of being and
the form under which being is preserved in itself (in opposition to the
present, the form under which being is consummated and places itself
outside of itself ). At the limit, the ordinary determinations are reversed:
of the present, we must say at every instant that it “was,” and of the
past, that it “is,” eternally, for all time.1

Among all of Bergson’s works, Matter and Memory2 not only is the
one most debated but also remains the one most disconcerting for
today’s reader. This has as much to do with the ambiguity of its fun-
damental thesis as with the various changes of perspective and method
Research in Phenomenology, 35
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands 2005
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 56

56  

effected in the course of its development. It is as if the thesis of a uni-

versal continuity or “duration” could only be demonstrated, in the
end, by effacing in extremis all the oppositions that the book had, up
to that point, emphatically drawn to our attention.
Between the psychological monism of Time and Free Will and the
metaphysical dualism of The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, Matter
and Memory thus occupies a particularly instable position. Not only is
it a book on psychology, treating the relationship between the brain
and consciousness and between perception and memory. It is equally
a critical analysis of the metaphysical dualism between matter and the
mind, with special consideration for its methodological consequences
for either a scientific or an intuitive understanding of the universe and
of the realities that comprise it. The charms of a writing style, known
for its fluidity and exemplary clarity as well as the reassuring comfort
of repeated appeals to our most commonly held opinions quickly give
way to interrogations sparing neither Bergson’s fundamental concepts
nor his furthermost aims.
One cannot but wonder about the nature of the “image” in its abil-
ity to take on the varying form of either an “object-image,” a “per-
ception-image,” or a “memory-image.” What then is the relation
between this image and imagination, let alone that of imagination to
the opposed poles of psychic life, which are, according to Bergson,
action and dream? What can the role still be of a consciousness within
a perception of which it is said, moreover, that it is devoid of repre-
sentations and is essentially the work of our body? How can the brain
be the agent behind both the sensorimotor reactions of our body and
their inhibition? How is one to understand the way virtual memories
push towards their actualization in the recognition of a present object,
especially when it has just been explained to us that any such mem-
ory exists and is preserved in itself—that is to say, outside any rela-
tionship not only with the brain but also with any actual consciousness?
In passing from Bergson’s psychology to his metaphysics, due atten-
tion must be given to the efforts he made to overcome the opposi-
tions between matter and the mind; between sensations lacking all
extension and divided space; between a consciousness sensitive to the
qualities of a thing and a movement of a quantitative order; between
a creative freedom and the necessity of the laws of nature. Yet, in
view of such efforts, one is entirely within one’s rights to question the
end result of all such attempts to reconcile opposites. Do they lead to
a dialectical resolution, to the discovery of a middle ground in notions
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 57

       () 57

such as “mobility,” “the extensive,” and “contingency,” or to the sur-

prising proclamation of a mentalism of matter, and even of a materi-
alism of the mind?
On the other hand, perhaps the hasty reader of Matter and Memory
goes about it all wrong in searching for definitions in a text where all
of Bergson’s efforts turn on evincing states of tension and the processes
of their release, contracting and expanding movements, and the hid-
den existence of virtualities that come to be modified once they are
actualized under the form of a creation of new constellations? Perhaps
Bergson’s method of “intuition,” as renowned as it is misunderstood,
consists precisely in allowing philosophical understanding to open itself
up to phenomena that resist all conceptual framing and hence any
static definition? Would Bergsonism then be a new phenomenology
that, in granting to phenomena their dynamic character, would be in
a position to revitalize an academic specialty showing signs of exhaustion?
Now is not the time to decide on this. Instead, we should rather
take stock of all that which separates Bergson from the phenomeno-
logical method. Through a method of opposition and reunification,
Bergson distinguishes and links back together the functioning of per-
ception and memory, of the brain and consciousness, and of the body
and the mind. This permits him to explain such complicated phe-
nomena as aphasia or amnesia and to critique idealism, realism, and
associationism, each in its turn. However, it is rare for Bergson to be
contented with describing an experience or a form of givenness, such
as it is presented to us, outside any theoretical framework. Even if it
is true that phenomenologists will be fruitfully inspired by Bergsonian
conceptions of the relationship between consciousness and the neuro-
logical processes, between perception and corporal movements, between
a lived history and a creative evolution of nature, this certainly does
not suffice to make a place for Bergson on any phenomenological
panel.
Taken in this light, Bergson’s points of agreement with the Husserlian
conception of the internal consciousness of time and with the
Heideggerian destruction of a metaphysics of presence are only all the
more astonishing. Of the two, Husserl seems to have been more sen-
sitive to a convergence of their thought. Heidegger, for his part, not
only showed himself to be rather unfair in his reception of Bergson.
He also seems to have totally ignored all possible connection between
his conception of lÆyh and its unconcealment and Bergson’s notion
of the virtual past, where the processes of its actualization take place
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 58

58  

within a form of presence profoundly anchored in an irreducible

absence.

1. Pure Perception and the Extension of the Present

We have already alluded to the disconcerting character, for a phe-
nomenologist, of a Bergsonian conception of perception, such as it is
depicted in the course of the first chapter of Matter and Memory. The
Husserlian phenomenologist will have no little difficulty in coming to
understand how a perspectival conception of perception can forgo
understanding the adumbrations through which things present them-
selves to us in terms of intentional consciousness. The phenomenolo-
gist inspired by Merleau-Ponty will be enthralled by the capital role
Bergson assigns to the body and to corporal movements in processes
of perception that respond to the interrogative character of the pres-
ence of things (MM, 45/194). At the same time, it will be no easy
thing for her to allow that such a perception is a natural process of
adaptation devoid of any subjective participation. Even if it is not
impossible to find in Bergson’s conception of perception signs of a bril-
liant anticipation of the “flesh of the world,” the Merleau-Pontians will
be little able to accept the creative response to the manifestation of
things being reduced to a simple “reaction” in which the brain and
the lived body play the lead role. In all likelihood, these mixed reac-
tions on the part of phenomenologists are to be explained, at least
partially, by their particular relationship to Leibniz; though they too,
like Bergson, come under his sway in their understanding of percep-
tion, they are inspired by a more subjectivistic—and in any case, less
materialistic—reading of him.
Even if Matter and Memory never unreservedly endorses Leibnizian
metaphysics, his conception of the material world and the interaction
between its parts bears a striking resemblance to a monadological con-
ception of the world. Following Leibniz, Bergson understands the world
of natural things as a totality, all the parts of which are bound together
by an effect of universal mirroring that makes of each thing the reflection
of all the others. For Bergson, there can be no perception as long as
a body simply lets itself be traversed by the excitations emanating from
other bodies, or as long as such a body contents itself with reflecting
those bodies in a mechanistic or physical manner. Rather, perception
begins from the moment when a body shows itself to be capable not
only of establishing itself as a center of perspective but also of inhibit-
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 59

       () 59

ing every immediate motor reaction to an external stimulus. That is

to say, for Bergson, perception is situated halfway between an affection—
like pain, for example, where the body is related to nothing other than
itself (MM, 53ff./201ff. and 233ff./364f.)—and a causal type of exter-
nal reaction.
Perception is hence neither purely internal nor purely external to
the perceiving body. To perceive, the body has to retain in itself some-
thing of the external excitation. It has to appropriate the excitation
and become the center or focal point of the interaction of the bodies
of the material universe. Its capacity to perceive the universe from its
singular point of view thus does not proceed from the transparency of
consciousness. Quite to the contrary, it is a function of a certain opacity
of the perceiving body. However, this opacity does not go so far as
to abolish every tie with the exterior world, and in this way, percep-
tion is kept from being transformed into an affective process of the
body folding back on itself. Rather, for there to be perception, the
perceiving body must maintain its openness to external bodies while
still preserving the difference that separates it from what is perceived.
Perception is, in this regard, as much made up of distantiation as of
appropriation, and Bergson never fails to emphasize that the greater
the distance between the perceiving body and the bodies perceived,
the more the perception grows in richness and differentiation. In sum-
mary, then, perception requires that the things perceived and the per-
ceiving body be able to enter into each other at the same time, yet
without canceling out the distance separating them. In Bergson’s words,
the things must be made into “images” for the perceiving body and
the latter must produce a “perception-image” that accords with the
“image-object.”
However, our presentation remains insufficient as long as it over-
looks the principal contribution of the Bergsonian theory of percep-
tion, namely, its dynamic character. For Bergson, every perception is
an aborted—or more precisely, “suspended”—mechanical reaction. As
such, perception still falls under the heading of that general type of
interaction characterizing the physical world, where the action of one
body on another leads to the latter being set in motion by the for-
mer. This is why Bergson expressly underlines that every perception
naturally tends to prolong itself in a movement of the perceiving body.
This sensorimotor component of perception is essentially what Merleau-
Ponty took over from Matter and Memory. However, Bergson immedi-
ately adds that there can be perception only on condition that, on the
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 60

60  

one hand, the perceived image first be “isolated” from the context of
a simple material interaction and, on the other, that the movement of
the perceiving body be “inhibited.”3 Between the action and the reaction,
there must be time for a pause that preserves the split between the
perceiving and the perceived. Hence, there is no perception without
a degree of “indetermination” (MM, 41/191) in the reaction, or in
other words, without a moment of hesitation and choice between var-
ious possible reactions. Even if every perception is supposed to result
in a corporal movement, and even if only the circumstances of life
decide the appropriate—i.e., useful—character of such and such a sen-
sorimotor reaction, the moment of so-called “pure” perception is the
moment of a virtual dÊnamiw (that is, one not yet realized), of a merely
outlined course of action, of a distantiation and a deferment.
This “pure perception” is a little moment of respite in the agita-
tion of natural life; it is a moment of indetermination that seems to
open up the perceiving body to the possibility of a free choice and a
deliberate action. For all that, however, Bergson still attributes it to
the action of the body. There is thus no need for a subjective con-
sciousness to introduce a break in the machinery of the universe, since
the brain of the living being, acting in the capacity of a “central tele-
phonic exchange” (MM, 30/180) that establishes new connections,
suffices for the task. The brain receives the message coming to it from
the senses and transforms it into a corporal movement after having
made its choice between different virtual pathways.
In the perception, therefore, it is always the brain that sets the stage
for consciousness, and this perceptual consciousness, while being irre-
ducible to the activity of the brain, can lay no claim to the glorious
titles we are accustomed to heaping upon it. Perception produces images
and not representations, and it produces them, not with an eye toward
the realization of knowledge or a subjective contemplation of the world,
but rather in view of an action aiming at the adaptation of the living
being to the exigencies of its survival. If there is perceptual con-
sciousness, it can only be a matter of a minimal consciousness, more
corporal than mental, more impersonal than subjective, more virtual
than actual. The true subjective consciousness belongs solely to mem-
ory for Bergson. Only with the injection of memories of the past in
the apprehension of a present object does the perception become a
properly mental event with a subjective and individual hue. The true
perception of a present object, which Bergson calls “concrete” per-
ception, is thus always the end result of the complementary contribu-
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 61

       () 61

tions of “pure” perception and memory. As we shall see, this leads

Bergson to the paradoxical claim that a concrete perception of the
present is in reality a perception of the past.4
Taken in this light, it can be understood why Matter and Memory
hesitates to make room, within the accomplishment of a “pure” per-
ception, for an obligatory role of “consciousness.” It cannot in fact be
a question of a consciousness operating at the level of “representa-
tions.” There are, however, good reasons for appealing to conscious-
ness from within this perception. These reasons have to do not only with
the production of perceptual images. They are equally related to the
fact that this pure perception already has a certain “duration,” and
thus can be said to constitute, in Husserl’s parlance, a “living present.”
Once matters have been understood along these lines, we can feel
entirely at home in certain passages in Matter and Memory like, for exam-
ple, the following: “The psychical state, then, that I call ‘my present’,
must be both a perception of the immediate past and a determina-
tion of the immediate future. Now the immediate past, insofar as it is
perceived, is . . . sensation, since every sensation translates a very long
succession of elementary vibrations” (MM, 138/280). This “immedi-
ate” past and “immediate” future, of which the duration of the pre-
sent perception—like the one already involved in a simple “sensation”—is
composed, are the effect of a “contraction.” In our view, this “con-
traction” can no longer be attributed to a simple neurological process—
even if it is not yet a question of a consciousness of the past through
recollection or a consciousness of the future taking the form of explicit
foresight. Properly speaking, this comes down to neither memory nor
expectation, but to what Husserl calls a “retention” and a “proten-
tion” and which he furthermore qualifies as being a “perception” of
the past and the future.
There seems to be no getting around the fact that such a primitive
consciousness of temporal duration already belongs to the “pure” per-
ception. This elementary perceptual consciousness, whose corporal char-
acter we have underlined, is nothing other than a consciousness of the
temporal extension of the present. This primitive consciousness, consti-
tutive of the living present, effects a “first synthesis of time” that has
to be distinguished, as Deleuze does, from a “second synthesis of time”
that, for its part, makes an appeal to the pure past and to memories
in order to account for the fact that the duration of this living pre-
sent comes to “pass.”5 Bergson says nothing less when he distinguishes
two forms of memory, where the first constitutes the duration of the
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 62

62  

present and the second the virtuality of a “pure past”: “However brief
we suppose any perception to be, it always occupies a certain dura-
tion, and involves, consequently, an effort of memory which prolongs,
one into another, a plurality of moments. . . . In short, memory in
these two forms, covering as it does with a cloak of recollections a
core of immediate perception, and also contracting a number of exter-
nal moments . . .” (MM, 33f./184).6

2. Pure Memory and the Virtuality of the Past

If the instant cannot be the object of conscious apprehension and if
consciousness necessarily extends into the past and the future, this
signifies, at the very least, that the nature of consciousness is always
to have already transcended the sphere of the immediate. Bergson does
not hesitate to take an additional step in declaring that the instant is
not simply inapprehensible for consciousness, but that it cannot be pre-
tended to have any form of veritable existence at all. Only the past
truly exists. By consequence, the present only exists for a conscious-
ness if it is accompanied by a consciousness of the past.
That is to say, the psychological analysis of memory as consciousness
of the past is always bolstered, in Bergson’s philosophy, by an ontolog-
ical thesis according to which the veritable “being” to which con-
sciousness addresses itself is always a “being-past.” To this, Bergson
also adds: that which truly “is” can only be that which exists by itself
and “in itself ” (en soi ). He concludes that the only things that truly
exist, which is to say, in themselves, are the pure past and the mate-
rial world. Being in itself is thus divided into two realms over which
consciousness or “mind,” on the one hand, and “matter,” on the other,
reign supreme. The psychological dualism Bergson introduced between
consciousness and the brain is hence coupled with a metaphysical dual-
ism between mind and matter. Not the least paradoxical aspect of
Bergsonism is that he sought to overcome metaphysical dualism with-
out touching on the apparently insurmountable character of psycho-
logical dualism. One has to think that for Bergson it was easier to
make place for mind in matter than to create room for consciousness
in the brain.
The whole Bergsonian analysis of memory and its different forms
is based on the ontological conception of a “pure” past. A past is pure
when it is preserved from any contamination by the present. To be
pure, the past thus has to be able to exist and to be preserved in itself,
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 63

       () 63

that is, outside any tie not only with present things but also with a
present consciousness. Moreover, as Bergson demonstrates at length,
the brain, as a present material object, is incapable of being related
to the past. In other words, it is incapable of apprehending any pre-
sent mnestic traces inscribed in it as remnants of a bygone past. It is
thus only for and through consciousness, and not the brain, that the
past exists. Accordingly, in order to respect the nature of a pure past
and yet uphold its conservation in consciousness, one is forced to allow
for the existence of a consciousness that, while coinciding with the
pure past, is totally independent of any present awareness. It can thus
only be a question of an unconscious consciousness.
We can sum up Bergson’s line of argument in the following fash-
ion: if the past cannot be extracted from the present, then conscious-
ness of the past or recollection cannot be attributed to the presence
of mnestic traces present in the brain. It must follow not only that the
past is exclusively an affair of consciousness but also that every true
form of consciousness—that is, purified of any contamination by the
essentially neurological process of perception—is a consciousness of the
past. The followup to such reasoning can easily be foreseen: the explicit
consciousness of the past, which has the form of a recollection join-
ing back up with a past in its original context, must necessarily be
preceded and made possible by an implicit or unconscious consciousness
of an unperceived past whose existence remains, for consciousness,
purely “virtual.”
Hence, consciousness maintains a double relationship with the past:
as unconscious or virtual consciousness, it constitutes and conserves
within it this past in itself; as explicit and actual consciousness of the
past in a recollection, it reactivates and repeats this past in the pre-
sent. However, in face of such a thesis of a pure past that, while exist-
ing in itself, nonetheless only exists for and in a necessarily virtual and
unconscious consciousness, are we not left with a simple petitio principi,
meant to explain the possibility of an actual recollection of the past?
What is it that, in the existence of this pure past, bears witness to an
unconscious mental activity that would be irreducible either to a pre-
sent consciousness or neurological processes?
Bergson’s answer is more easily found than understood: all of the
pure past is subjected, through itself and in itself, to processes of inces-
sant division and restructuration. The pure past is as living as, if not
even more alive than, the living present. It is the locus par excellence
of the hidden life of the mind. Like a living organism, dilating and
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 64

64  

contracting itself, the pure past is divided up into a multitude of strata,

each of which repeats, in its own fashion, the same genetic code, that
is, the same subjective identity.
This life of the past is thus the product of ruminating and sifting.
In it, things are repeated, differentiated, and depicted anew in move-
ments rising and falling, contracting and dilating, that, like the respi-
ration of the living thing, are simultaneously the condition of the past’s
survival as well as the expression of its vitality. Like the natural move-
ment in Aristotle and the eternal return in Nietzsche, this is a process
with no other finality than its own prolongation in an infinite repeti-
tion. There can be no doubt that a philosophy like Deleuze’s is bet-
ter prepared to understand this hidden life of the pure past than a
phenomenology forever insistent upon tangible proof of its existence.
Is this to say Bergson fails to furnish us with any phenomenologi-
cal proof of this existence in itself of the pure past? Yes and no, since
such a proof can only be indirect and derived. Because of its simply
virtual existence, the unconscious pure past is characterized precisely
by its “powerlessness” (MM, 141/283, 176/315) to make itself present,
from itself, in order to be manifested in the course of the actual life
of the subject. Only an explicit consciousness of the past or a present
memory-image can inform us, after the fact, of the manner in which
the past pre-existed within a virtual and unconscious consciousness
before being remembered.
However, since such an actualization of the original past by an act
of remembrance entails a profound modification of the virtual past,
this past is accessible to us only after having already been modified
and reshaped, that is, in a disfigured form. To a certain extent, then,
the problem of the manifestation of the pure past in Bergson recalls
the Freudian problematic of an expression of repressed unconscious
desires through neurotic symptoms. On both sides, the unconscious
can only manifest itself by compromising with the circumstances of a
present that is foreign to it. The disfigurement or the “compromise”
(Freud) thus has a double meaning: deviation of the meaning of pre-
sent life in favor of the manifestation of the unconscious, and trans-
formation of the unconscious in view of its possible insertion into the
woof of present life.
At the same time, Bergson is undoubtedly more attentive than Freud
is to the different forms and the different degrees of such a reshaped
manifestation of an unconscious past. His famous distinction between
a recollection-memory and a habit-memory of the “lesson I have
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 65

       () 65

learned” is the best illustration of this (MM, 79ff./225ff.). To be able

to recall not only the content of the lesson in view of its flawless and
often thoughtless recitation but also the circumstances in which I
learned it for the first time, I have to plunge myself back into my past
by turning away from all the preoccupations of my present life. This
great “leap” into the realm of memories is followed up by a more or
less long voyage into my past in order to track down the memory I
am seeking in situ, meaning in its place, in its original temporal local-
ization. En route, I come across a multitude of memories concerning
which I decide whether to stop along the way, and once having reached
my destination, I am able to explore the sought memory up and down,
which is to say, by dilating and contracting this past according to my
whims. When I return to this same memory at another time, it can
appear to me with a different meaning and different connotations,
according to the level of the memory at which I decide to stop. These
repeated voyages to the realm of memories are hence just as much
expeditions out to discover the nature of a pure past that is assuredly
my own but whose very existence I had forgotten.7
But then, am I truly the captain on board this phantom vessel that
steams ahead into my past by distancing me from my mooring in pre-
sent life? Nothing, in the nature of the pure past, obligates us to think
so. This past that, due to its changes in structure, never ceases to be
transformed, also has means to take the initiative and make itself known
or recognized by me. Bergson thoroughly takes account of the “invol-
untary” recollection, where the past itself brings about the encounter
with the present. However, this difference between a voluntary and
an involuntary recollection (MM, 88/234) has to be carefully distin-
guished from the difference, of which we have just spoken, between
recollection-memory and habit-memory (MM, 150f./292 and 79ff./225ff.).
The habit-memory, in which a memory comes to fulfill a fault in
a present perception, certainly implies an involuntary actualization
of the past. Still, nothing prevents us from imagining a recollection-
memory that would be equally gratified, in the course of one’s exploration
of the past, by the gracious gift of an unexpected recollection sponta-
neously presenting itself. Everything in Bergson’s analysis of memory
suggests to us, to the contrary, that in every form of recollection the
appeal to memory and the “pressure” of virtual or “pure” memories
toward their actualization go hand in hand. The voluntary recollec-
tion prepares for the unexpected occurrence of an involuntary recol-
lection, and the perplexity incited by the perception of an enigmatic
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 66

66  

object sets the stage for the miraculous rescue lavishly proffered by a
recollection that spontaneously comes to interpose itself between the
perceiving and the perceived.

3. The Past Coming to the Rescue of the Faltering Present

The Bergsonian insistence on the “difference in kind” (MM, 135/278
et passim) between perception and memory finally has no other objec-
tive than to make us comprehend the possibility of their conjunction.
This conjunction of the present and the past can only be realized,
however, at the price of a profound modification of the virtual past.
Bergson underlines time and again that the “actualization” of a “vir-
tual” memory is not tantamount to a simple “realization of a “possi-
bility.” This brings us to the well-known critique of the concept of
“possibility,” which, for Bergson, is only a diminished reality, retroac-
tively projected into the past. According to him, the actualization of
a virtuality is distinguished from the realization of a possibility by the
fact that it implies not only a profound modification of this virtuality,
but also the creation of an actuality set apart by its novelty with respect
to every anticipation that would have preceded it. Applied to the case
of the actualization of a virtual past within a present perception, this
modification essentially consists in the transformation of a “pure” mem-
ory into a “memory-image,” capable of coinciding with the present
“image-object” of the perception. Such a modification is truly a form
of creation because, apprehended through the prism of the past, the
present object of the perception appears to us with a new meaning,
which it borrows precisely from the memory.
In being made into an “image,” the “pure” memory quits the retreat
of a virtual and unconscious past in order to be embodied in a visi-
ble form. Ricœur is not mistaken in seeing in this process the work
of an imagination that, far from “derealizing” a given by producing
a fiction, to the contrary, “visualizes” something inapprehensible.8
Nonetheless, this cannot be a process of perceptual visualization that
would make the memory into a simple object of perception. This is
why Bergson prefers to speak of a “concretization” of the memory
that has to be understood as the production of the “schema” of a
bodily movement. In being embodied in an image, the pure memory
is actualized under the form of the “outline” of a perception and of
a concomitant sensorimotor reaction: “The memory-image, in its turn,
partakes of the ‘pure memory’, which it begins to materialize, and of
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 67

       () 67

the perception in which it tends to embody itself: regarded from the

latter point of view, it might be defined as a nascent perception” (MM,
133/276).
We cannot stress enough how much all of this process, for Bergson,
is an issue of movement, tension, and dynamism. The movement of
the injection of the memory into the perception starts off with a fault
in the perception: “this memory merely awaits the occurrence of a rift
between the actual impression and its corresponding movement to slip
in its images.”9 No perception can be spared from such a “rift” or
fault in the course of recognizing a perceived object because, in every
perception, the brain has already fixed a split, a moment of hesita-
tion, between the excitation and the execution of the sensorimotor
reaction. When the brain does not manage to fill up this split on its
own and to establish the right connection between the excitation and
the reaction, it appeals to something more powerful than it, namely,
the consciousness of a virtual past. However, since the brain is deprived
of any direct access to consciousness, this appeal can take no other
form than a lifting of the “inhibition” ordinarily imposed upon mem-
ory through the effectuation of a perceptual process (MM, 95/241).
Disoriented, the brain ceases its shielding and gives free passage to a
memory that has only been waiting for this propitious occasion to
make itself count and to bear upon the perception with all its weight.
This happens in every perception that, instead of leading directly to
a bodily movement, turns into an “attentive” perception whose aim is
the “recognition” of the perceived object (MM, 90ff./235ff.). The appeal
to memory in the course of a perception, as Bergson understands this,
thus corresponds quite precisely to the Kantian moment of the appeal
of a blind sensibility to its determination by concepts of the under-
standing. With the capital difference, however, that Bergson rejects the
conceptual character of memory-images and places strong emphasis on
the dynamic nature of this synthesis between perception and memory.
We have already seen that the dynamism of this synthesis has a
double meaning: an “appeal” of perception to memory (MM, 107/252,
153/293) and, on the other hand, a “continuous pressing” of mem-
ory toward its actualization in a perception (MM, 168f./307f., 237/367).
Regarded more closely, these two movements of appeal and response
do not, for all that, have the same importance or the same force.
When Bergson says that the appeal of perception to memory amounts,
in reality, to a disinhibition of memory, he explicitly suggests that the
memory was only waiting for the appeal in order to get caught up
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 68

68  

with something that, by nature, disregards it. We have to be attentive

to how this is slipped in, at first almost imperceptibly, if we are to
understand how Bergson manages to declare that “every perception is
already memory. Practically, we perceive only the past, the pure pre-
sent being the invisible progress of the past gnawing into the future”
(MM, 150/291). The fault in perception indeed seems essentially to
belong to its nature, thereby making the appeal to memory inevitable.
This appeal is, consequently, less a call in the sense of an invitation
than a sheer call for help.
This constitutional lack in perception is what permits virtual mem-
ory to follow the natural penchant that carries it toward its actual-
ization: “On the one hand, the sensorimotor state S delineates the
present direction of memory, being nothing else, in fact, than its actual
and acting extremity; and, on the other hand, this memory itself, with
the totality of our past, is continually pressing forward, so as to insert
the largest possible part of itself into the present action.”10 Here Bergson
refers to the pressure of a memory that is responding to all the demands
emanating from the present, the better to be able to wholly pervade
it. This pressure or thrust of memory is thus a sort of drive or even
a sort of desire to which the Bergsonian description seems to lend a
quasi-sexual character: “memory, laden with the whole of the past,
responds to the appeal of the present state by two simultaneous move-
ments, one of translation, by which it moves in its entirety to meet
experience, thus contracting more or less . . .; and the other of rota-
tion upon itself, by which it turns toward the situation of the moment,
presenting to it that side of itself which may prove to be the most
useful” (MM, 168–69/307f.).
In this way, it can be more easily understood why habit-memory,
and not recollection-memory, represents the most current form of actu-
alization of a virtual past. In habit-memory, the “circuit” (MM, 104/249f.)
between perception and memory folds in on itself to such an extent
that memory is literally substituted for perception. In this case, Bergson
writes, the memory of the learned lesson is “lived and acted, rather
than represented” (MM, 81/227). Disinhibited, the memory acts in an
unbridled fashion, and its action culminates in nothing other than a
repetition of the past in the present. In this repetition, the cone of
memory is maximally contracted into a point that coincides with and
becomes an integral part of the present instant.
Such a repetition of the past in the present is thus forcefully real-
ized at the cost of those differences that a recollection-memory prizes
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 69

       () 69

so highly; what is lost in habit-memory is precisely what recollection-

memory seeks in penetrating into the richness of the past and in pay-
ing attention to the finest and most subtle nuances. Whereas, in
recollection-memory, two recollections of the same past event will never
be entirely the same, the mechanistic recital of the lesson reproduces
it identically; its repetition of the past leaves no room for a possible
reconfiguration of the lesson. Habit-memory is too driven to allow itself
to stop for the details of the past, and this is why Bergson says that
it “stamps the note of generality on its action” (MM, 155/296).
Recollection-memory is, to the contrary, “an entirely contemplative
memory which apprehends only the singular in its vision” (ibid.).
Forging ahead, Bergson adds the observation that habit-memory
shows no interest for an evocation of memory-images. It is content to
actualize them under the form of a motor comportment: “Habit rather
than memory, it acts our past experience but does not call up its
image” (MM, 151/292). Recollection-memory, on the other hand, “is
the true memory. Co-extensive with consciousness, it retains and ranges
alongside of each other all our states in the order in which they occur,
leaving to each fact its place and, consequently, marking its date, truly
moving in the past, and not, like the first, in an ever renewed pre-
sent” (ibid.). We can sum up this long list of oppositions by empha-
sizing in particular the following distinction: in habit-memory, it is the
body that “fixes” and takes possession of single memories that are use-
ful for its future action (MM, 173/311f., 176/315); whereas in recol-
lection-memory, it is, to the contrary, consciousness that coils back
into itself in order to exult in the infinite powers of a creative mind.

4. Conclusion: Inexistence or Profundity of the Present?

It can thus be legitimately claimed that habit-memory sacrifices the
evocation of the past to the urgencies of the present and that recollec-
tion-memory, by contrast, is essentially preoccupied with the preser-
vation and exploration of the past in turning away from the present.
However, it would undoubtedly be more correct to say that the for-
mer is turned toward an action to be accomplished and that the lat-
ter turns its back on active life in order to give itself over to “dream”
(MM, 153ff./294ff.). Rather than having to choose, now for the pre-
sent against the past, now for the past against the present, one faces,
in these two forms of memory, the same experience of an evanescent
present: habit-memory neglects the present in favor of the future, and
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 70

70  

recollection-memory neglects the present in favor of the past. Indeed,

this common disinterest in the present allows us to grasp how these
two forms of memory, whose difference Bergson has so endeavored to
demonstrate, can nevertheless be deployed within one and the same
experience of the actualization of a virtual memory. There cannot be
the least doubt that the Bergsonian enterprise is oriented precisely
toward evincing such an interweaving of these two forms of memory.
And in so doing, he would at the same time bring to light the origi-
nal affinity, and even the shared essence, between matter and mind.
The difference between recollection-memory and habit-memory essen-
tially comes down to the fact that, in the former, the past is recog-
nized and represented as such. This is in sharp contrast to the latter,
where the past acts by substituting itself for the present perception.
Must one then conclude, with Deleuze, that these two forms of mem-
ory and the different manners in which they actualize a pure past fur-
nish us with a double proof of the inexistence of the present? Let us
recall the strong claims at stake in the citation with which our article
began: “Nevertheless, the present is not. . . . The past, on the other
hand, . . . has not ceased to be. . . . [ I]t IS, in the full sense of the
word: it is identical with being in itself.” Deleuze unquestionably deserves
credit for bringing us to understand better that, for Bergson, the past
is indeed something other than a weakened echo of the present, and
that the nature of the past could not be reduced out of hand to being
a former present. Nevertheless, was there justification for going fur-
ther and proceeding to a total reversal of the traditional conception
of the relationship between the present and the past? Let us take up
the citation once more: “of the present, we must say at every instant
that it ‘was’, and of the past, that it ‘is’, eternally, for all time.” Is this
not simply to accord to the past what had just been removed from
the present? Is this not to show all too little interest in the dynamic
conjunction, so important for Bergson, between the present and the
past? Rather than speaking of the inexistence of the present, it would
seem preferable to draw attention to the fact that, for Bergson, the
evanescence of the present is ballasted by the weight of the past that
not only saves the present from foundering in nothingness but that
also gives it a dimension of depth.
It is true that the present has, in Bergson’s thought, something para-
doxical about it. Fugitive and fleeting, it seeps away into both the past
and the future. It is so inapprehensible that Bergson can claim, with-
out the least hesitation, that it can never be made into an intentional
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 71

       () 71

object of consciousness. For Bergson, the pure present is never given to con-
sciousness, and consciousness is thus never a simple consciousness of the present.
To the contrary, every attentive perception of the present is firmly
battened to the virtual consciousness of the pure past that exists inde-
pendently of any present consciousness.
Accordingly, with the present owing (almost) everything to the past
and the pure past owing nothing to the present, there is no other form
of originary being than this past whose origin can only be found in
itself, and not in any (former) present. Since there is no absolute pre-
sent whose existence would have preceded the past, this past does
indeed merit the title of a past “which has never been present,” but
it certainly cannot be called an “immemorial past.” Taking such an
approach furloughs not only what has been called (a bit hastily, no
doubt) the “metaphysics of presence,” but (more precisely) the whole
long philosophical tradition according to which the transparency of
consciousness would assure it of a direct and immediate access to every
internal or external form of present givenness.
If a pure present does not exist for consciousness and yet exists
nonetheless, this can only be for the perceiving body, or more pre-
cisely, for the brain that receives and transmits a present excitation.
The conclusion to be drawn is that, in Bergson, there is only a pre-
sent for a corporal perception and that, moreover, such a “pure” mate-
rial perception has nothing in common with intentional consciousness.
However, it should not be assumed that Bergson, despite his slightly
outmoded vocabulary, would have already embraced the positions held
by Merleau-Ponty. Quite the opposite! Merleau-Ponty and Bergson
draw diametrically opposed conclusions from the incapacity of con-
sciousness to account for the perception of the present. Bergson does
not conclude, as does Merleau-Ponty, that the philosophy of con-
sciousness has to give way to a phenomenology of embodied percep-
tion. To consciousness as mind, he would, to the contrary, restore its
full rights by assigning to it, as the privileged field of life, the virtual
past as well as its actualization under the form of memory-images.
Without such a reserve of a pure past that comes to the aid of an
evanescent present, there could be no consciousness of a living, extended
present!
This rehabilitation of consciousness as consciousness of the past goes
together with a conception of the perceiving body in opposition to the
one advocated by Merleau-Ponty. The perceiving body does not, for
Bergson, have anything subjective or even sensuous about it, since it
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 72

72  

is a material body controlled by the action of the brain. This is why

embodied perception must of necessity appeal to a consciousness of the
past, if it would prolong itself in a corporal gesture with a subjective
significance, and if it would attentively gather knowledge about what
is perceived by recognizing it for what it is in itself.
Even if it remains true that the pure present exists only for the
brain and not for consciousness, it immediately has to be added that,
according to Bergson, the presence of the present only truly exists,
that is, only takes on a human significance, through consciousness, and
more precisely, through the consciousness of the past. The present
needs to be associated with the past to be what it is, namely, the blaz-
ing instant of the event of the new. However, this dependence of the
present vis-à-vis the past does not at all force us to conclude, with
Deleuze, that, “of the present, we must say at every instant that it
‘was’.” The assistance the past gives to the present does not lead to
the abolition of the difference between the present and the past, nor
to the absorption of a fugitive present by an “eternal” past, as Deleuze
again suggests. Instead, their difference must be upheld in order to
conceive of the miracle of a conjunction between two such dissimilar
partners. Not only that, but their difference must be upheld in two
senses: on the one hand, to protect the newness of the present from
its absorption by a familiar past that would otherwise only identically
repeat itself; on the other, to protect the inexhaustible richness of the
past from its subjection to a present that is all too driven to pass to
action and that would only retain, from the past, that which is useful
to it.
It is true that in every present and every presence with a human
meaning, there is manifested a pure past that is unrelentingly bent on
its actualization in the present. But it is no less true that, by always
being a quite partial actualization of the “virtuality” of the pure past,
this manifestation of the past in the present never abolishes the irre-
ducibility of the past to the present. The actualization of the virtual
past in the present is indeed like a sort of Heideggerian “unconceal-
ment” in which the past is revealed, yet without surrendering its retreat.
The past, as the secret resource of the present in which it is disclosed,
accordingly keeps all of its unconscious secret for a consciousness that
lets itself be absorbed by the attentive perception of the present.
Yet what remains, finally, of the newness of the present in a form
of presence over which the shadow of the past perpetually hovers? It
has to be said that few philosophers have shown themselves to be as
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 73

       () 73

attentive to this question as Bergson was. Moreover, there was noth-

ing embarrassing for him about such a question, since he thought a
creative response to a new situation could only take place under the
form of an as-yet-untapped actualization of the virtual richness of the
past. In cases when it is not solely a matter of receiving and passing
on the “latest news,” a form of knowledge or an action that creates
something new will necessarily take the form of a repetition of the
past that produces a new difference. This is because the present by
itself, no matter what journalists might think, is never new. A new-
ness of meaning can only arise from a singular and unprecedented
present event that, by exposing us to the necessity of finding a response
to it, mobilizes in us as-yet-unexplored memories of our past experi-
ences. One does not make the most of the opportunities offered by
the new by letting oneself be blinded by the present. Yet equally, one
does no better by blindly repeating a habitual comportment. The
chances for a creative conjunction between the past and the present
can be preserved only by holding fast to the tension between a dreamy
exploration of our memories and the urgency of a future action. An
inventive and creative encounter with the present can be realized only
through the conjunction between a memory turned toward the past
(the “recollection-memory”) and a memory turned toward the future
(the “habit-memory”).
If, up to now, we have given just due to what we have called the
“depth” of the present, have we indeed gauged the “weight” with
which the past bears down on it? This question cannot be answered
without evoking the treatment Bergson reserves for the problem of for-
getting. For Bergson, like for Husserl, consciousness is incapable of any
true form of forgetting that would introduce a definitive break or an
insurmountable interruption into its duration. If such a forgetting occurs
nonetheless—and we know only too well that this is far from being a
mere fiction—it can only come about, according to Bergson, through
a malfunction in the lived body and in the brain, which is to say,
from their incapacity to establish an actual connection with the virtual
memories stocked away in the pure past. Does Bergson not say, in
citing Ravaisson, that it is “materiality [which] sets us to forgetting”?
(177/316 [trans. modified]). Consequently, we must keep from confusing
the phenomenon of a true forgetting with the fact that the greater
part of our memories indeed remains buried in the unconscious vir-
tuality of the pure past. While escaping the grasp of a present con-
sciousness, these memories indeed remain, as Deleuze emphasizes,
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 74

74  

“eternally” present to consciousness. Even if they do not make up

everything that “IS” and even if they do not make up everything that
consciousness is, these virtual memories of the pure past always in
principle remain available and prompt to materialize themselves under
the form of actual memory-images. If we were still to insist on seeing
the presence of unconscious memories as a representative figure of
forgetting, we would have to recognize, with Ricœur, that this would
only be a forgetting that provides a “reserve” or a “resource.”11 As
Ricœur again writes: “Forgetting then designates the unperceived char-
acter of the perseverance of memories, their removal from the vigilance
of consciousness.”12
Rather than being a thinker of the forgetting, Bergson is thus, like
“Plato,” a thinker of the énãmnhsiw or “the Reminiscence.”13 In no
way does it suffice to observe that what becomes the object of the
reminiscence is, for Bergson, the infinite multiplicity of singular mem-
ories rather than the unity of general ideas or to suggest that virtual
memories belong to “a past which has never been present” in order
to strip Bergsonian reminiscence, as would Lawlor, of any Platonic
heritage.14 It can thus seem misleading to argue on the basis of these
differences in order to present Bergsonism as a reversal of Platonism.15
Even if Plato is mainly interested in a form of reminiscence that
bears on the Ideas, this does not mean that an actual remembering
of a singular memory would, given its materialization in a concrete
memory-image, amount for him to a form of forgetting. If we had to
choose between Plato and Bergson as to who could better allow us to
understand how much and with what inexorable fatality forgetting
weighs upon the life of mortals, the choice would be swiftly made. It
suffices merely to refer to the celebrated final myth of the Republic
(10.614bff.), which treats the journey of the souls in the land of Lethe
before their return to earth. This tale also has the distinction of draw-
ing our attention to the manner in which the experience of forgetting
is already an experience of death. Forgetting and death stamp a mark
on the temporal finitude of all human life that nothing can erase. If
one cannot be mortal without forgetting, the hypothesis of an eternal
persistence of the pure past for consciousness can only count as a proof
of immortality, that is, of consciousness as incapable of dying.
Without wishing to make too much of this detail in Lawlor’s stim-
ulating reading of Bergson, I have to confess my perplexity in face of
his attempt to construe the pure past as a figure of death.16 Nothing
in Bergson, it seems to me, invites us to relate the manner in which
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 75

       () 75

the past weighs upon the present with the Freudian hypothesis of a
death drive inhabiting every living entity. As a philosophy without for-
getting, Bergsonism is thus as well, as Levinas says, a “philosophy with-
out death.”17 It is the perfect illustration of the embarrassment of a
philosophy of consciousness before the double form of an irremediable
loss, which forgetting and death constitute.
In closing, by dint of ‘ontologizing’ consciousness and placing all
the weight of being in the pure past of this consciousness, the exis-
tence of the pure past threatens to get the upper hand on the aspi-
rations of the free existent. By shielding this existent from every essential
encounter with nothingness, Bergson would assure it of an eternal life
without being too concerned about whether it actually desires this or
not. The upshot here is that a consciousness that is not pierced with
nothingness from the start becomes, as Bergson has no trouble admit-
ting, an incarnation of being in itself. Accordingly, the being in itself
of the pure past, bearing down with all its weight on the evanescent
present of the subject, offers it no other route of escape than that of
projecting itself, eternally, into the future. Yet since this future contains
within it all of the past, simply by repeating it differently, the human
subject is condemned in perpetuity to having to support the burden
of this past. For this reason, the singular subject does not truly mea-
sure up next to its virtual consciousness of a past that, rather than
being effaced in favor of the expression of the subject’s aspirations and
deficiencies, makes use of subjective life in order to perpetuate itself
through, and perhaps also despite, the mortal subject. The Bergsonian
conception of duration in its folding and refolding, while admirably
taking account of memory, thus lays out the portrait of a spiritual life
that, in being sheltered from every violent rupture coming to it from
the outside, runs the risk of folding back upon itself by eternally repeat-
ing, in each new action, what it has always already been.

Translated in consultation with the author by Basil Vassilicos

University of Leuven

NOTES
1. G. Deleuze, Bergsonism, trans. H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam (New York: Zone
Books, 1988), 55.
2. H. Bergson, Matter and Memory, trans. N. M. Paul and W. S. Palmer (New York:
Zone Books, 1991; originally published as Œuvres, Edition du Centenaire (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1959). Hereafter cited as MM, followed by page
references first to the English translation, and then to the French edition.
RIPh 35_f3_55-76 8/2/05 2:38 PM Page 76

76  

3. “Everything will happen as if we allowed to filter through us that action of external

things which is real, in order to arrest and retain that which is virtual: this vir-
tual action of things upon our body and of our body on things is our perception
itself ” (MM, 232/363). Cf. also MM, 58/206.
4. “[E]very perception is already memory. Practically, we perceive only the past, the pure
present being the invisible progress of the past gnawing into the future” (MM,
150/291).
5. G. Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. P. Patton (London: Continuum Press,
1994), 90ff.
6. One should not, however, confuse this distinction between retentional memory and
a memory that recalls remembrances of the past, with the celebrated Bergsonian
distinction between recollection-memory and habit-memory (MM, 79ff./225ff.). The
latter distinction in effect only concerns memory of the past under its double form
of a reactivation of a memory in its original context and the role of memories in
the immediate recognition of the present object of a concrete perception. Retentional
memory is neither a contemplation of the past nor its habitual repetition in a pre-
sent comportment.
7. “In fact, this is just what consciousness bears witness to whenever, in order to ana-
lyze memory, it follows the movement of memory at work. Whenever we are try-
ing to recover a recollection to call up some period of our history, we become
conscious of an act sui generis by which we detach ourselves from the present in
order to replace ourselves, first, in the past in general, then in a certain region of
the past—a work of adjustment, something like the focusing of a camera. But our
recollection still remains virtual; we simply prepare ourselves to receive it by adopt-
ing the appropriate attitude. Little by little, it comes into view like a condensing
cloud; from the virtual state it passes into the actual; and as its outlines become
more distinct and its surface takes on color, it tends to imitate perception. But it
remains attached to the past by its deepest roots; and if, when once realized, it
did not retain something of its virtuality, if, being a present state, it were not also
something which stands out distinct from the present, we should never know it for
a memory” (MM, 133f./276f.).
8. P. Ricœur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. K. Blamey and D. Pellauer (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2004), 52.
9. MM, 95/241. Cf. also MM, 101/247, 107/252, 129f./274.
10. MM, 168/307. Cf. also MM, 237/367, 239/369.
11. P. Ricœur, op. cit., 417 and 442.
12. P. Ricœur, op. cit., 440.
13. G. Deleuze, Bergsonism, 59.
14. L. Lawlor, The Challenge of Bergsonism. Phenomenology, Ontology, Ethics (London: Continuum,
2003), 54ff.
15. Lawlor, op. cit., 57: “The Bergsonian reversal of Platonism consists in this: Bergsonian
reminiscence is Platonic forgetfulness.”
16. Lawlor, op. cit., 59: “That the experience of pure memory must be an experience
of death. . . .”
17. E. Levinas, Time and the Other, trans. R. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University
Press, 1987), 80 (trans. modified). (Lawlor also cites this text.)