본문 바로가기
  • Home

The Creative Evolution of H. Bergson in Terms of a Metaphysics of Immanence

  • Journal of Humanities
  • 2019, (74), pp.5-32
  • DOI : 10.31310/HUM.074.01
  • Publisher : Institute for Humanities
  • Research Area : Humanities > Other Humanities
  • Received : July 5, 2019
  • Accepted : August 6, 2019
  • Published : August 31, 2019

Arum LEE 1

1성균관대학교 하이브리드미래문화연구소

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This article tries to show what the philosophy of immanence means and what philosophical characters define it properly, by analyzing the concept of life in Creative Evolution by H. Bergson as a metaphysics of immanence. First of all, the meaning of Life in Creative Evolution doesn’t indicate simply the sum of the living organisms. It means the Totality and the Virtuality as the intrinsic sources of its universal creation. Thinking the Life as Totality, Virtuality and Productivity is a metaphysical task beyond one’s empirical area. But Bergson’s philosophy of life shows us how we can think metaphysical things from and beyond the condition of human experience and how the experience can be constructed as we know in the evolutionary formation. This new metaphysics proposes a new way of thinking with regards to the relation between the empirical and the ontological level, not opposed. Our own life indicates no longer “appearance” opposite to “essence” in the scheme of essentialism, no longer “phenomenon” corresponding to its transcendental condition. Our life relates to and participates in universal Life Becoming. In this sense, it means “the expression”. This new metaphysical thinking is neither the philosophy of God nor of human, but of Life. We can call it as the philosophy of immanence as a philosophical plan without transcendence after the famous philosophical manifestation of Nietzsche: “God is dead.”

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.