"Bergson and Intuitive Knowledge" by Alan Shepherd (Keywords: Intuition, Time, Truth, Memory, Metaphysics)

From The Philosopher, vol. 113, no. 1 ("Marx and Philosophy")

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The French philosopher Henri Bergson affirmed intuition both as the key method of metaphysics and as a way to help us find meaning in life. Related to this, he argued that our lives and experiences can, at times, touch absolute reality, a position that contrasts sharply with Kant’s view that reality-in-itself is unknowable and our experience limited to how things appear to us. Bergson’s philosophy also stands in contrast to those, such as positivism, which reject subjective or intuitive knowledge as meaningless. In a time when such currents of thought, together with the great progress in scientific knowledge, have undermined the reality of our experience and the status of intuitive or subjective knowledge, Bergson’s philosophy, beginning from his original insights into the nature of time, is among those that hold that our experience must be included in our philosophical picture of things along with objective or scientific truth.

Despite the dominance of conceptual, scientific, or intellectual forms of knowledge, we may find that these are limited and unsatisfactory as the sum total of what we can know. What about emotional, experiential, artistic, or spiritual forms of knowledge? Our own understanding of life requires a fuller way of knowing than philosophy often allows for, a knowledge rooted in heart and soul as well as mind. At the deepest level, our connection to reality is personal. What Bergson provides is an explanation of why felt truth, or intuition, is essential to philosophy and is in fact the principle means by which metaphysics advances. As Bergson notes, it is the method through which we directly address the “problems we have most deeply at heart, those which distress the human mind with anxious and passionate insistence. Whence are we? What are we? Whither tend we?”

For Kant, reality in itself was something of a chaos beyond the order and sense imposed on it by the structure of our mind. Our knowledge and experience are limited to operate within this pre-formed domain. In opposition to Kant, however, Bergson’s philosophy aims to re-establish the possibility of direct intuition into reality, and thus the possibility of the kind of metaphysics which Kant denied. Whereas for Kant time is one of the categories of the human mind that structure our experience, for Bergson, the duration of time is an absolute reality, and, as a first step, we can know, in our immediate consciousness, the duration of our inner life directly. From that basis, through his four major works, he opens a new path to intuition which he deepens and expands as his philosophy progresses, beyond our own lives to life in general and to the vital principle of all things. 

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Bergson’s first book is Time and Free Will (1889). In it, he develops his notion of “duration”: that lived, experienced time is the reality, and that there would be no succession without the past being preserved in consciousness. Clock time, or the time of physics, is derived from this more fundamental time, and though valid and useful for daily life, common sense, and scientific knowledge, it is ultimately relative to practical purposes, not absolutely real. Bergson describes it as time projected into space, that is, instead of intuiting and experiencing time as a continuous duration of absolute novelty, we separate moments of time and set them side by side, like points in an ideal space, and count them as though each was the same and one instant replaced another. When we measure time in this way, we abstract its essence, which is to flow.

Bergson thought that Kant had made the mistake of only considering this spatialised form of time, treating it as a form of our perception only, not a reality in itself.

Bergson thought that Kant had made the mistake of only considering this spatialised form of time, treating it as a form of our perception only, not a reality in itself. Further, because there is some kind of unity of time and consciousness, these two aspects of time are also two aspects of how we experience our lives. There are, as Bergson puts it, “two different selves, one of which is, as it were, the external projection of the other, its spatial and, so to speak, social representation”. We may have the idea that in some way, somewhere in the background, every moment of our lives, our feelings, and our experience is completely new and unique, never lived before or to be lived again. But most of the time we cannot see it this way, as we blindly follow habits and routines, seeing the present and future in terms of the past, meeting the needs of practical purposes and the necessities which take up much of our lives. Our concomitant habits of thought conceal the unforeseeable novelty.

In the intuition of the duration of our inner lives, by contrast, as we sweep aside these practical habits of thought, we can grasp a part of reality in itself. This self is free because we are alive in the here and now, our past concentrated in the present, in touch with the newness of time and openness of the future. Bergson acknowledges that such moments are rare, and that this is why we are rarely free: “The greater part of the time we live outside ourselves, hardly perceiving anything of ourselves but our own ghost, a colourless shadow which pure duration projects into homogeneous space”.

In his second book, Matter and Memory (1896), Bergson’s subject is the mind-body problem, and he sets out a novel form of dualism, a temporal dualism. His ideas about time and intuition are expanded beyond our free action in the present through an investigation of memory. For Bergson, memory is the “intersection of mind and matter”. The body and brain are part of the material world, where things do not truly endure, where cause and effect occur of necessity, and where the future state of the material world could theoretically be read in its present; unlike living things, inert matter does not have an irreversible existence in the flow of time. It is in consciousness that the past is preserved and prolonged into the present, the actual; in “pure memory” all the details of the past are retained, albeit mostly unconsciously. Unconscious because, to meet the needs of living, only those memories that are useful to the present are realised.

The nervous system is an interplay of physical elements, and so consciousness itself cannot be generated by it.

Bergson thus opposes the dominant view that memories are stored in the brain. Damage to the brain undoubtedly affects memories, but for Bergson, the memories themselves aren’t destroyed; rather the mechanism of linking them to motor activity is at fault. In present action, our memory inserts itself into the “tissue of events” by preparing actions in our body relevant to the situation from past experience. He argues that our perception doesn’t spring from the brain, “the brain is in the material world, the material world is not in the brain”. The nervous system is an interplay of physical elements, and so consciousness itself cannot be generated by it. He attributes to the body the “sole function of directing memory towards the real and of binding it to the present”. On the other hand, “pure memory” exists independent of matter, and the more of our past we can gather up in the present, that is, the more we act with our whole self and live in the moment, the more we transcend the material “meshes of necessity”, the freer we become. Through his consideration of pure memory, Bergson deepens his notion of duration, or real time, the understanding of which is attained by intuition, such that it begins to have an immaterial, spiritual element.

In his third book, Creative Evolution (1907), Bergson applies his notion of duration to the philosophy of evolution, the very idea of which entails a view of time in which the past is prolonged into the present and not just one instant replacing another. At the same time, this book develops his theory of intuition into the method of metaphysics, as the intuition of time stretches beyond human life to life in general. Not only is it our essence to endure in a preservation of the past into a new present, but the same is true of all organisms. Indeed, Bergson sees mind as the vital principle of all life; it is the interaction of this “supra-consciousness” and matter that constitutes the evolution of living organisms on earth.

In a phrase reminiscent of Neoplatonism, Bergson notes that “if organisation is, as it were, an awakening of matter, matter can only be a slumber of the mind.” In the process of the evolution of organisms, consciousness has developed two main branches, or two ways of acting on matter: instinct and intelligence. As they are tendencies evolving from a common origin, there is no complete severance, as each always retains a trace of the other. Nevertheless, the ideal feature of intelligence is constructing instruments from matter, tool-making, whereas that of instinct is using an instrument that forms part of the body, for instance the sting of a scorpion. For Bergson, the evolution of the Hymenoptera to ants and bees exemplifies the development of instinct, while the evolution of vertebrates exemplifies the development of intelligence (although, as already noted, there can be no clear-cut divisions).

Although the human intellect reaches far beyond matter, it is nevertheless formed through the evolution of intelligence in general, that is, through the adaptation of consciousness to matter. Intellect, thus, treats its objects, physical or not, as discontinuous, immobile, and divisible; our conceptual knowledge works on things from the outside, in manipulating them as objects. Instinct, by contrast, bears on life. It, as it were, lives out a knowledge of life from within. It is an extension of the process of the organisation of living matter, for example, as in the actions taken by a caterpillar in its metamorphosis. But although the human mind is primarily intellect, we still retain an element of instinct, and intuition is, as Bergson notes, “instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely”. Instinct and intuition are closer to life than intellect. In fact, intuition continues the vital movement, the “current of consciousness”, enduring in a flow of genuine novelty, whereas intellect takes a static view, looks back at what already exists, and sees the future in terms of the past.

The way that life has evolved on earth is contingent on the material circumstances confronting it.

The way that life has evolved on earth is contingent on the material circumstances confronting it. We might have evolved to be more intuitive or to be more intellectual, but, as it happens, consciousness had to adapt itself here primarily to matter, that is, to become for the most part intellect. There is, however, a remnant of intuition in humans, which Bergson considers to be “vague and above all discontinuous”:

It is a lamp almost extinguished, which only glimmers now and then, for a few moments at most. But it glimmers wherever a vital interest is at stake. On our personality, on our liberty, on the place we occupy in the whole of nature, on our origin and perhaps also on our destiny, it throws a light feeble and vacillating, but which nonetheless pierces the darkness of the night in which the intellect leaves us.

Our intellect is just one aspect of life, formed for understanding and manipulating inert matter. We can apply it to understanding life, but in doing so we transfer to it the forms we customarily apply to matter and translate it in material terms. Intuition makes up this shortfall. It puts us in touch with the immaterial principle of life. In fleeting insights we glimpse the fuller and more profound truth, and this should be the focus of metaphysics as it aims to develop more substantial answers to the vital questions of life.

In his final book, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932), Bergson considers where the conscious principle, or “creative energy”, at the source of life comes from, and how far intuition can go in knowing it. To begin to answer these questions, we have to extend intuition yet further and look to what mystical intuition can tell us. For Bergson the message that mystics pass on to us is that this creative energy is love: “the love wherein the mystic sees the very essence of God”. And it is the moral vision attending mystical experience that Bergson believes reveals the deepest metaphysical truth – that the fire of love they feel is the very principle of life. He argues that it is through mystical experience that individuals have progressively developed more inclusive forms of human morality, as opposed to morality limited solely to our group or nation.

The instinct toward a closed society and the aspiration toward an open society struggle against one another in the progress of civilisation

Our species was originally formed by nature to live in small, closed societies, where our love for our fellows is based on social cohesion and hostility to other groups. The creation of the human species is, like any, a halt on the road of evolution, a check of the current of consciousness by the resistance of matter; but the same creative energy can be continued, beyond what nature “ordained” for our species, in the love felt in mystical intuition and by moral revolutionaries who see better and more worthwhile ways of living and thereby drive humanity forward.

In this way, the instinct toward a closed society and the aspiration toward an open society struggle against one another in the progress of civilisation. In terms of political systems, for Bergson, democracy, with its inviolable rights for humankind, its fraternity, is the furthest removed from the closed society and has its basis and motivation in love. There are inevitable regressions to our more tribal nature, but those who have experienced something of God’s love for humanity, the sages, prophets, saints and those they have inspired, have gradually, as Bergson puts it, “broken down the gates of the city”, envisioned the open society, and led its tentative development in reality.

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Through these four major works, Bergson’s philosophy makes a full and profound case for the importance of intuition in philosophical knowledge. While it is rooted in his core insight about the nature of time, Bergson’s philosophy renews a tradition as old as philosophy itself. One goal of philosophy has always been to try to find a deeper, more meaningful way of being. There is, to a greater or lesser extent, a yearning, a lack, an unsatisfactoriness in ordinary reality; and the various ways of raising the soul in ancient thought, of living more spiritually in religion, of embracing authenticity in existentialism, and so on, can be seen as trying to address this need. Throughout the history of philosophy, intuition was often the most highly valued form of knowledge since it helps us to see more deeply into the nature of reality. Through it, we can achieve a temporary awareness of the Good, the One, God, an inner knowledge of, and participation with, the truth beyond its material, sensible forms, a faint glimmer or illumination of supreme, immaterial being.

Throughout the history of philosophy, intuition was often the most highly valued form of knowledge since it helps us to see more deeply into the nature of reality.

Kant’s philosophy, which, as we have seen, is to a large degree the background against which Bergson’s metaphysics stands, proscribed such metaphysical speculation as beyond possible experience and therefore knowledge. For Kant, we cannot know things as they are because we lack the capacity for intuition that we would need to access such a priori knowledge. Bergson’s philosophy, originating from his notion of duration, brings intuition back within experience, and can be seen as a kind of radical empiricism which accommodates both the reality of our experience and objective knowledge. It is, I believe, the major contemporary philosophy that re-establishes intuitive metaphysics, and in doing so also revitalises our connection with the spiritual end of much of past philosophy and helps to keep that tradition alive.

It is important to note that Bergson is not trying to defend institutional religions; rather, he is concerned with personal spiritual experience. For William James, who, like Bergson, was a defender of intuitive knowledge, what religions held in common was that, in heeding intuition, we become conscious that this “higher part is conterminous and continuous with a more of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of [us], and which [we] can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board of and save [ourselves] when all [our] lower being has gone to pieces in the wreck.” Much of the wisdom handed down to us maintains that beauty, truth and goodness have a spiritual source, so although philosophy must be free from organised religion, we should not separate it completely from spirituality in accounting for what ultimately matters.

We find ourselves largely benighted by our material nature but with a spiritual essence that shines through at times. 

Intuitive knowledge is spontaneous, not an effort taking place in abstract discourse. And because it is a form of knowledge about life itself, it is open to all; no qualifications are required or possible, nor is intellectual capacity any use in finding it (although it is in explaining and sharing it); in fact, it is often seen as a hindrance. While we may not be able to fully articulate the meaning we feel on those rare occasions of insight, what we can glean from them is more profound and lasting than anything our practical intellect can provide. It is as though we are above an infinite, or indefinite, maze for a while before we sink back down into it. They are moments of deeper consciousness, where we find ourselves suddenly awake and immersed in the enduring present, happy at just being, and in that joy, unafraid, and full of goodwill toward life.

Crucially, the search for intuitive truth isn’t a disengaged, private concern because it has this moral dimension. To see the truth is to transcend the conceptual and material distinctions which separate us and to experience the unity of life in a way that transforms us and reshapes how we live. In much of the history of philosophy, metaphysics was wedded to the idea of the mind or soul ascertaining truth by trying to grasp something of a higher nature by focusing on a trace of a richer, more divine nature within. We find ourselves largely benighted by our material nature but with a spiritual essence that shines through at times. It is in these moments that we at once gain something of the truth most valuable to us and something of the true love we are impelled to try to realise in our ways of life, our values and our institutions. Intuitive knowledge is always unfinished and imperfect. To inform our philosophy by it will always call for a new effort though it recalls us to the ancient wisdom which we seem to continually forget or fall away from.

Alan Shepherd studied philosophy at the University of Glasgow and is the treasurer of the PSE. He lives in the North-East of England.

First published online on 14th September 2025

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