The Disappearance of Time and Temporality in Bergson and
Deleuze
The
French philosopher, Henri Bergson, is famous for statements like, ‘no
negatives, only positives’, and no ‘deterioriations’ only changes (cf.
morality, and art periods). He also originated a theory of time appropriated by
Gilles Deleuze (most notably in his book on Bergson and on his work on Cinema).
This theory and its elisions provide the excuse for a continued examination of
‘everyday time’ and philosophy begun in the article on Heidegger om ‘boredom’.
But first a note on terminology and translation.
‘Contracted’ or ‘contraction’ and ‘relaxed’ or ‘relaxation’ (détente) are
better translated as: for the former, ‘concentrated’, as if seen from a
distance, or a kind of summary: and ‘relaxed’ (détente) as laid out, or opened
out, as seen from, or examined from up close… distant versus detailed recall
(modes of the past in the present, or of the past becoming ‘the past in the
present’ in the present).
This
essay is a continuation of a broader theme which we might gloss as:
Philosophers and the elision of ‘everyday time’, or the disappearance of human
temporality from considerations on ‘Time’. Much has been written to fill the
gap left by the shunting aside of human experience. Occam’s razor (as in the
case of Heidegger and ‘boredom’) opens the way to a much better explanation…
I
Time.
Lived
time or human temporality is what we directly experience (if you like,
‘subjective time’, made up of the ‘eternal present’ (I am with Kierkegaard on
this) with regular excursions into past and future and augmented with dream and
reverie). Within this (as a subset) lies our indirect experience of time; at
the furthest extreme, the scientific, empirical, quantitative model of time as
a part of space (what we would normally call ‘objective time’). At the intimate
end, our experience of clock time (which, as proof of its qualitative
difference, may clash with our experience of the passing of time…). Temporality
includes ‘time;’ as a third person image, or ‘thought experiment’ or measure:
time includes temporality as our actual experience of time. Those who attempt
go between time and temporality (between measure and quality of experience,
between objective and subjective, and empirical and personal experience), do so
with reason alone; theirs is a metaphysical move, going beyond experience, both
personal (temporality) and collective, scientific or historical (time).
Such
is the space (time) occupied by Bergson on time, as largely followed by Deleuze
(esp. in Cinema I and II) and as also found in other purely philosophical
attempts to deal with time: in the (Kantian) collective unconscious of
Structuralism; in the personal unconscious posited by Freud and his followers;
in Heidegger’s misappropriation of ‘boredom’ for grandiose metaphysical ends;
and even in Phenomenology, in Husserl’s attempts to unite, so ‘bridge’, subject
and object. The elision of ‘everyday time’ (imagined as if spoken in a disdainful
tone…) and so of the real human experience of time, our lived temporality, is
the unavoidable result; with the further result that our experience of time is
now deemed insufficient to be the foundation, and so explanation of, much human
culture (reason alone being preferred…). The compliment of temporality should
be ‘Time’, as examined by the sciences (and so an example of quantitative and
empirical data -augmented, to be sure, by a an ‘external’ point of view-
feeding into personal experience), and not the wilder fantasies unleashed by
the autistic operations of ‘reason alone’.
If
Heidegger loses actual temporality, ‘actually-experienced’, ‘everyday time’ to
metaphysics, and not just to speculative thought which would then look for its
empirical, corresponding structures, but to an tendentious, irrational, empty,
exterior, type of model (a ‘transcendental’, or ‘deep-structural’, ‘essence’…
bolstered by etymology); then Deleuze in using Bergson also puts aside the
everyday experience of time in favour of the ‘virtual’ as a kind of ‘higher
reality’ - or the ‘virtual’ as both non-subjective and non-objective time, as
…rational time (similar to Structuralism’s ‘virtual’ unconscious… or ‘deep
structure’, the traces of Kantian ‘transcendentals’). And so also loses the
‘still’, the manifestation of ‘duration’ (also ‘pure’) as a kind of tremulous
ecstasy (the ‘pleasure of the text’, of the signifier, as of symbolic, and of
plural or polysemic signifieds), to a rationalist exterior model – which, it is
important to note, is not a science-based model. This exterior model, when not
tied to empirical or recorded material can only be described as metaphysical;
Logos as God’s point of view - whatever its source. Happening nowhere (we
accept this as a projection of self, or a vision of self as others see us, type
of ‘thought experiment’, as also of the visualisation of the arrow of time, as
if ‘outside’, because useful – but whilst being aware of their limitations - no
actual God’s eye view in reality). Both philosophical moves occur at a cost to
actually experienced time (phenomenology does this too when it tries to move
beyond subject and object, inside and outside, the undecidables and pluralism
of relativism, in Husserl). Including dream and reverie… also a key mode of the
human experience of time (temporality). Dream is the basis for Surrealism and
all visions, all visionary type art; and also feeds into the avant-garde and
Modernism. Dream time is definable as both in and out of time in the
experiential definition (‘the ‘outside’ proper would be ‘eternity’,
ahistorical, radically ‘outside’ -an ‘absolute other’ in the Kantian sense- and
so home to a plurality of heavens and putative universals alike).
Duration
is opposed to interval (temporality versus time, subjective versus objective
time): but duration is a part of the frame of unified perception (if not the
felt frame itself, the sense of it always being ‘now’) and content, what fills
the duration, perception or memory, or projection) and can be measured by a
clock… (‘you were lost in your dreams for exactly one minute, fifteen
seconds…’, ‘it happened about a minute ago’). For the tension of clock or
measured time and desire see my analysis on Heidegger and boredom… when the
future ‘window’ is open and a clock records present time in the Eternal
Present… the torsion of the two results in the slowing of time’s felt flow… So
the simple opposition of qualitative and quantitative elements in duration, in
lived consciousness is not enough… Analysis must use types of temporality and
(here) desire too, to explain effects… So even if the clock seems to slow
(subjective temporality)… the time measured (objective time), the time ‘passed’
is …as measured - still x minutes and y seconds… The ‘speed’ at which pleasure
passes is the opposite pole of temporal ‘stretching’ and offers the sense of
‘contracting’ time (time disappearing – along with the self) in passages of
total involvement or great pleasure. Consciousness of time as unwanted slows
time (if we were lost in the future, imagining our meal or other desired
activity, then time too would pass quickly). It is the consciousness of the
present (the context of the Eternal Present) in relation to the desired future
(a desired state or event), the contrast, or conflict, which produces boredom
(how to fill the gap), or worse impatience (annoyance at length of gap)… that
causes the apparent slowing. This ‘gap’ also reminds us of the ‘reality’ of the
past and future as ‘windows’, recall or projection, as they effect, together
with desire (to go back, to go forwards), our sense of the present, our affect
in the present. Not a contest of time and temporality, but a contradiction in
temporality (as ‘measured’ by the presence of a clock, of ‘time’) as without a
clock boredom and impatience also may occur… These temporal effects or affects
(emotions) are the product of a tension between our temporal parts, within
temporality, and not of time and temporality as such. A tension driven by
desire.
Indeed,
in the contrasting pole of the disappearance of time, and even of self, in
ecstasy, we experience a union of temporality, or temporalities, such that it
disappears (or they, their difference, disappears) – suggesting that the
vestigial moments of ‘becoming past’ and ‘becoming future’ (as contrasted to
passed past, recall, and projected future, images with no continuity or
contiguity with the present, except desire to reference them, using, planning),
that these operate at the ’edges‘ of our ‘present’ (EP), that they are ever
there and so structural, part of the ‘frame’ (‘being’) in which the content
(becoming’) occurs. The disappearance of self (as content) with time, also
indicates the self as made in, or of time, suggesting temporality as one key to
identity… Further, this
disappearance of self -to self- is part of the ‘unity of feeling’ in ’peak
experiences’, and is also found in participation in ritual practices (where
eternity and identity – ‘eternity’ and the Eternal Present- are ‘re-unified’).
We should also note the similar (but less intense) sense of time passing all
too quickly, as we do what we like, but are aware that in the future lurks a
less pleasant, or worse, a wholly unpleasant situation… So offering the sense of, ‘its all going
too fast’, ‘is that the time already’, all of which are made out of the
comparison of present and future or past (or all three), as combined with our
preference, our desire….
Indeed,
our desires, in combination with our experience of time, the temporal, perhaps
together with the exchanges we continually make (the rituals of gift and
recognition) constitute our identity. Even to power, or propel it, provide
motivation… or motive force (as will be seen in the analysis of time and desire
below). Desire in ritual, ‘recognition desire’, provides belonging, imaginary
‘unity’ (of self, and of self with others). As does, on a more earthly note,
the crucial link of ritual and food! Repetition, celebration, cycles of life
and memory, the role of food and drink (and of course the varieties of desiring
fantasy, as of sexual experience itself) from the minor repetitions of the
everyday to sublime experience… in art as in life… all reinforce identity (and
also often provide a kind of ‘short circuit’).
II Temporality: the elision of everyday
time.
Real,
lived and ‘actually experienced time’, all are read as false; not suiting
metaphysical (rationalist) concepts; simply read as the ‘illusion of the
essence of Time’… (as Deleuze puts it in, ‘Bergsonism’, p. 61, preferring, with
and after Bergson, an ‘analysed composite’). However, a rationally described
-or theorized- mechanism is not experience, and does not invalidate experience.
Indeed, explanations, other conceptual models, can be invalidated, or
disproved… if testable, that is by experience... (the ‘empirical moment’ here,
is our experience…). An ‘analysed composite’ is not actual experience, but a
rational, metaphysical construction… or conceit.
Proust goes from detail to the past, Bergson the
opposite…
Duration as present and ‘actual’. The
lexical definition of the word ‘duration’ is actually concerned with
quantitative length - ‘how long’. But is used here in its philosophical sense
to describe temporal experience, and to indicate the quality of being in the
middle of something, and not just any completable process, but of life, our
life, whilst conscious. So again, we have the ‘contradiction’ of measure, of
quantity, and, apparently, of ‘quality’. But let’s look again: the
contradiction is as in the paradox in the ancient parable of the race of ‘Tortoise
and Achilles’ (or the Hare), where subdivision of measure is contrasted to the
completability of traversing a set distance, infinite subdivision of course
does not negate the ability to finish a process - unless it’s the process of
existence, ‘for us’ from ‘the inside’ (from the outside, it’s a variation on
the ‘three-score years and ten’ story – if we are lucky). Our completion
precisely coincides with our death. However the finishing of the course, and
indeed of life, if and when done, is accomplished in time, in a set, measurable
time, for quantity is the measure of time as of space (and not the capacity for
infinite subdivision, which we turn to for fine-tuning - so a similar issue to
that of real versus unreal numbers…). No: the contrast lies in this, the parts
and indeed the whole may be measured… but the whole only exists from ‘without’,
that is, after our death is witnessed and measured by another. The problem,
interestingly, lies in the parts, which we may measure from within, that is
measure or count; how long we take to do, to experience, something; we are both
able to live in a continuous present… to be continuously present to ourselves,
and to count, on a clock, or on our fingers, or even aloud, the passing of time
in a quantitative manner. The relationship of present to presence, the latest
point in the counting process is where we are (where we always are, even when
we remember or think ahead) - dream or daydreaming may be the possible
exceptions as we may be incapable of counting whilst in such a state. So the
two ‘durations’, two types or definitions of ‘duration’, come together in the
‘now’ moment; no great contradiction here. However distortions occur as we
approach the two extremes: of boredom or dislike of the present process (implicit
is the desire for another state, similar to one we remember, as one desired in
the future - which cannot come soon enough); and in the total submersion of the
moment, ecstatic, pleasurable, when all sense of time, all awareness of time,
disappears – we are too distracted to notice. The latter is simple enough;
involvement, most especially in pleasurable activity, short-circuits our
temporal sense or awareness of the passing of time. The former however, is
fecund (as in the case of Heidegger’s mis-appropriation mentioned above). When
we compare the present to past or future, or both (as in remembering a
pleasanter time, and desiring its return) then clockwatching stretches felt
time, our temporality, as the seconds seem to pass more slowly. Perversely, when
awareness is based upon a desired escape from the present, then time is
stretched; and even more perversely, with awareness that time is running out,
that our time of pleasure is limited, or with the approach of something
unwanted, then time appears to contract, to pass more quickly than it should
(than we want). Again, we have the relation of counting, of clockwatching, in
combination with our now moment and a desire that seems to interfere in the
running of time (objectively nothing has changed) subjectively, temporally,
time, felt time, runs faster or slower.
It seems a matter of what is in our
minds as how subjective time is felt to pass, or is experienced (one conclusion
might be that our temporality is made by us, part of the synthesis that makes
up the self). Otherwise put, what is in our mind alters how we experience time;
this is the difference of time and temporality, a difference usually read as of
two different qualities… except that clock time is also with us, within us, and
the proof is that it is (the experience of) this that is distorted by the
combination of our desire and our attitude towards our present situation. It
may be more useful if we might pose two strands or layers of time: one, the
present together with the ‘others’ that appear within it, the past and future;
and the other layer, a semi-objective sense of the passing of time (countable,
objectified and quantifiable in clock time). This awareness of clock-time,
counting clock-time in the present, is something applicable to the sense of
being in the present, experienced as now usable, now not - as opposed to
ourselves simply being within it, as with the sense of the present. This
element of measure or counting is felt as something external (‘objective time’)
which nevertheless can be ‘brought in’ to lie alongside and to measure, the
passing of the arrow of time in everyday felt temporality (‘subjective time’,
the interior movement of self that continues in the absence of any movement
outside). This opposition, whilst usually glossed as ‘temporality’ and ‘time’,
as becoming and being, quality and quantity, even mind and matter; might more
precisely be described as the ‘now’ experience or ‘Eternal Present’ and a
parallel sense, that of counting or measure, the ‘points’ of which pass as we
count (a lesser and so malleable form, like the past or future in the present)
and so also ‘semi-present’ or ‘optional’. This awareness brings with it a sense
of counting, of rhythm, that appears in, or alongside, the present;
‘alongside’, because we can use it to calculate ‘how much’ time has passed as
we experience it. However, this is a counting that is variable in its ‘felt’
speed, varying, as we have seen, according to desire (desire, of course, is
completely temporal in its effects, future leaning, motivating, taking aim at
things and actions... projecting past experiences, memories, into the future as
desired ends). Our sense of the ‘now’ is altered by our desire, to be felt as
passing too fast or too slowly; when a clock is referred too, it too appears as
if passing too quickly or too slowly. Our sense of inexorability or of
tardiness is transmitted to any means of measure it touches – to any clock that
we happen to see.
Again, we have not needed any
metaphysical extensions or proliferation of concepts, not even of unifying
terms; the tension we describe is between parts, and it is these parts that
produce the effects described. Everyday temporality, everyday temporal
experience, is sufficient to deal with our experience of time and its effects (if
insufficient we turn to psychology and physiology). The present with past and
future together and with the force of desire is adequate to description (the
addition of dream time -both in and out- and ‘eternity’ as a kind of parallel
non-realm to the Eternal Present, fictional -or mental- home of gods, heavens,
myths, universals, generalisations and axioms, answer to the two other aspects
of our temporal parts, the later as a-temporality, illegal but indispensable,
necessary yet fictional extrapolation of the Eternal Present to an
a-historical, ‘all time’).
Time countable passes, and the
‘speed’, the rhythm, may vary, be felt to vary (the combination of counting and
the present produces this) according to our desire; quantitative time is both
‘inside’ and ‘outside’, but here the interior sense of clock time is distorted,
by desire – as our awareness increases, so it lengthens (or contracts - or is
this latter a case of any movement as too fast, a sense of inexorability?).
Either way, this is not a case of imaging ourselves from the outside, the clock
watching is part of our perception, part of our present, our preference for
past or future distorts time - motivated by desire for another state. Or we
wish not to have to leave -our present state- and so time flies when we are
ignorant of it, but we register its passing as too fast when we clock watch, or
countdown to an event we dread, or are not looking forwards to. The two kinds
of distortion I suspect are different, two different combinations of desire and
awareness leading to two effects or distortions, ‘lengthening’ and
‘shortening’; the lack of, or desire for, passing speed, responsible for the
psychological effect that accompany these processes. ‘Lengthening’ involving
full awareness of time up to a limit (the slowing is not infinite (unlike the
sub-divisions of its measurement): ‘shortening’ as the awareness of the speed
of passing as faster than desire would wish, the sense of ‘it’s already that
time’ (up to full un-awareness of time and self… the sense of being unconscious
of the passing of time - ‘where did that hour go?’). But note when we are
urging it to slow, it speeds up: and when we are urging it to speed up it slows
down. In each case it is the intervention of consciousness and desire that
distorts time, a torsion between the present and clock time, where perhaps the
former is linked to the later (but not as in simply counting, recording, noting
or ‘telling time’) but as in desire as bridging the ’gap’ and producing the
effects we have just described… Desire appears to fuse present temporality with
clock time, the quality of passing (duration as ‘-ing’, ‘being as becoming’)
with quantitative measure. Desire therefore is the last element needed. Our
life force or one if its most powerful drivers, source of a future aimed at, or
a past recalled, spur to comparison (with past or future), the desire to stay
(in the present, ‘all joy seeks deepest eternity’) or go (remembering a better
past time we choose to go to this, or something like it, as a future option,
next ‘time’).
The sense of the present, where we are
is standard, ‘foundational’, from the point of view of experience (from the
point of view of science, or reason, it is, of course, secondary, the sense of
ego as epiphenomena, the illusion of full presence) the other elements of
temporality are variable; the presence of past or future, the awareness or not
of the clock, and desire in its varying aims and intensities; but we are always
‘in’ the present… (whence, the ‘Eternal Present’ as a handy axiom for thinking
human experience, where we always come back to, where we always are…).
Past and future both appear to have
two forms (which we might gloss as ‘-ing’ form or ‘-ed’ form; becoming, or
finished): the first sharing the ‘in process’ character of the present of which
they are a part, are either ‘just happened’ or ‘about to happen’ (the ‘edges’
of the present as process, movement, the change of the content of the process
of perception, within the ‘frame’ of the present). The second pair are recall
and projection; the ‘semi-present’ past or future retrieved from the ‘virtual’,
from memory. In this sense the future can only come from memory, from where it
is then projected forwards. This is why Deleuze and Bergson operate with the
binary past and present and its line up with all the other binaries that follow
so easily (virtual/actual; memory/perception; being/becoming). Or even
conceptualise temporality with the past alone; with presence, the ‘present’, as
the ‘it just happened’, the Eternal Present as, in effect, a kind of recording,
translation or synthesis (and so second – because always a split second behind
the causative stimulus…). But this latter is an external description, a theory,
rational, made entirely of concepts and logic (and scientifically accurate
too): but not part of our internal experience. We can see from this that
experience is malleable… if we focus on past or future (or an a model of how
these work…) then the present (EP) feels different… And if we (in a recursive
moment) then think of a model of ourselves, as variable, malleable… well,
surprise, surprise… so we appear to ourselves! Even including the retrieval of
the past as the retrieval of another self… or more, of selves, discreet and
nameable, in cases of multiple personality disorder.
To take one, for Deleuze and Bergson, key, binary, the
‘actual and the ‘virtual’ and examine it from the point of view of our lived
experience of time...
From virtual to actual, as a kind of ‘search’. From
recollection (act of recall) to the perception of the past (making present or
retrieval of the past image memory). Here we might also note that recognition
of things (potentially anything and everything) is based on prior experience…
our habitual or everyday use of memory, permanently refreshed in experience… in
re-cognition… More distant recognition is slower as we have to think about it,
searching… needs more recall, the finding process (here the virtual behaves as
a trace (less than semi-present, an empty form… or place holder), or connection
to the virtual, which when found gives recall, actual memory (semi-present in
the present…) then, if remembered, actual-isation… actual-ly present - found!
When looking back, into the past, remembering, in Bergson
is said to proceed from the general to the particular; from laid out (détente)
to detail… And when found, the virtual then becomes actual (memory) or
recall(ed) memory. Here ‘virtual’ effectively means the unconscious or better
(as the Freudian notion of the unconscious involves an active barrier),
preconscious (the ‘mind’ as ‘body’, neurology).
So the ‘unity of actual and virtual’, if it means
anything at all, can only mean that a given memory is ‘actual’ in terms of its
existence in the head (electrical, the neuron that is its materiality), and
‘virtual’ in terms of its existence as a (stored) copy or further; an
incorrect, creative, copy (in relation to the original or real situation).
Which is not saying much of use. Or that the memory is ‘actual’ as it shows
what actually happened (in its relation to the past (its fidelity as a record)
and ‘virtual’ as a copy, as a record of the past (no matter whether ‘correct’
or ‘incorrect’; a matter of emphasis which is also of limited use). In neither
case do we go further than the foregrounded recall of the past in the present
and its accuracy or not. All doable within the terms used in the description of
the experience of everyday human temporality - the past presented as
semi-present in the present (for example….).
*
Rhythm
as ‘another’ quantitative aspect that also involves counting, one which gives
rhythm, that is peaks of presence, in repeated cycles… (cf. Husserl on music).
Presence here is the sense of now, and the peak of the pulse is the
co-existence of that pulse (its maximum presence) with the present, our
present… We may picture it before and after, leading towards and leading away
from, the present moment, as an ‘objective’ (but viewed from outside, so
imaginary) picture - in our present, now (ourselves imagining ourselves in the
context of the rhythm). Otherwise the sense of a before and coming, past and
future pulse or peak, is the view from the present, looking backwards or
forwards (either part of the ongoing present, if the rhythm is fast enough to
be included in consciousness as now… ‘just happened’, or ‘just about to
happen’). Or, as a last remembered peak and a forecast peak; as a present
event, suggests recall, the retrieval from the memory of a past, or similar,
past event, together with the forecast of its return in the future, as
suggesting cycles of this event in an on-going rhythm...
Here
again we can sense the relation of two differing qualities, one quantitative
(repetitive, cycle, rhythm), the other, our sense of ongoing events (the
unidirectional passage of time). But rather than separating and indeed,
segregating these elements it would be better to think of their relation as a
quantitative ‘ruler’ set next to the existence of the present as (we saw in the
discussion of clock-time and desire above). The present however my here take
the form of, either: an image seen, as if, from the outside; or contain the
sense of a before and after as sensed from the inside (now). Two options - not
axes (this would still be an ‘object’, the different aspects of the self seen
as if other, a type of image-ining). However, technically, this is still a
picture; so we should sense the picture before us in our imagination with this
awareness as pictured within the Eternal Present… (object (self as object)
within our subj-ectivity). We can perhaps dare to picture a synecdoche; the
part (the image) in the whole (the ‘now-moment’, the Eternal Present) the one
contained by the other (with the Eternal Present as final frame, axiomatic
metaset).
That
is, our experience should come first, then suggesting the projection of an
image as contained within this. So we move from ‘now’ to image to ‘now’ Here
again we may note the usefulness of the concept of the ‘Eternal Present’ as a
‘final’ metaset, or axiom, for all experience based matters: here whatever we
are picturing, including ourselves as picturing ourselves, as part of some
process (clock/object time), as part of the process (ad infinitum) and
no matter how much recursion is involved, the basic place of the picturing, the
where of the where, is where this is all happening, in the Eternal Present. So
the Eternal Present is the ever present (ever-shifting ‘foundation’) with other
‘objective’ elements overlaid, or pictured within the ‘now’ moment of the
Eternal Present (including this picturing, as a second order event… to, or in,
the Eternal Present’s fundamental ‘frame’ – the content may be an objective
picture, that of, imaging ourselves as other, from outside of ourselves, or
recursive (imaging ourselves imagining ourselves imagining… etc.). But ‘the
place’ is the same, our Eternal Present… (my ’Eternal Present’, to be precise –
my ‘now’… or even more, precise, yours, now reading this…).
Note this theme appears in Derrida, as the experience of
the self, (that can only be) re-experienced (pictured) as (an)other… the
experience of self, re-experienced as other.
*
Bergson
insists that the present is not, it (is) becoming, so leaving presence,
is-ness, to the past. stored and ‘fixed’… Bergson’s axiom is that only the past
or memory exists… whereas experience suggests that for us, only the present
exists (is present): a monism of reason versus a monism of experience (in this
case the former is actually scientific, objective, the latter is subjective,
where we are… always). Two models, contenders, for the explanation, two
aspects; complementary – so together a ‘general economy (a description that
does function by exclusion, but by inclusion, either of excluded difficulties,
axioms in logic and post-decimal point limitation in mathematics, nor of
parallel explanations, relativity and quantum physics, together but not
reducible to one ‘classical’ or ‘restricted’ -single centre- model, or again
like rational or emotional explanations of ritual or identity, rational
expenditure based on equivalence versus ‘irrational’ expenditure based on
non-equivalence or ‘non-reserve’ – a ‘disjunctive reciprocity’…).
The
experience of the present includes the process of fading, ‘fading out’ and
‘fading in’, of the past, of becoming past, and the future coming, of ‘just
past’ and ‘about to happen’; these two are to be differentiated from the recall
of memory (faded and gone, perhaps long gone, then retrieved), and the future
as projection (of a past or present image as an imagined or desired event)… So
we have two kinds of past and two kinds of future… The first kind as part of
the present as process, part of the Eternal Present as ‘becoming’, and its
others as ‘windows’ (into) the past and future… (‘other’, semi-present, beings)
So
the past recollected is not quite the past as again present, as if happening
again, in all its freshness, in all its full presence (as it once was;
literally returning in all its presence, filling our present, with a vividness
equal to – so overwhelming - our present) but returning as semi-presence,
marked for the past… Perhaps this is the true time image… marked as
semi-present… as ‘not present’ as ‘not now’… so suggesting a whole layer of
other meanings… first, past or future, then other connections, and variations;
fantasy, alternatives, wish-fulfillment (etc.)…
In
fact, the objective unification (of objects) as (the) present conceptualized as
the past, works if we note that perception comes after our sense organs input…
it is second… so always past, a split-second, past). But this correct
observation is not intuitive (nor does it imply the virtual /actual
metaphysic), it is the Eternal Present (with its semi-present subsets, the past
and the future) that is intuitive (ever present). Again we find a break in our
consciousness of the past as just gone (not fading but gone), and retrieved…
(‘mind the gap’)… as dis-unifying, to experience. Like a ‘window’ opened,
semi-present in the present (mixed qualities, ‘present’, ‘semi-present’, how we
recognize their difference).
*
By way of
a summary...
Bergson’s
other time, lies beyond both objective and subjective time; so beyond both
physics (relativity) and human temporality; as ‘virtual’ (one plane,
exchangeable, with simultaneities…). So constituting a self-admitted imaginary?
But we already have the time of our imagination (imagined past and future,
sometimes imagined in both senses of the world: in the imagination and unreal,
without basis). This virtual, metaphysical, ‘nowhere’ time is oddly similar to
Heidegger’s grandiose reflections on time (the ‘ontological difference’,
between ‘Being’ and ‘beings’ which we might read -again from the point of view
of experience- as the difference between the Eternal Present and others). All
interestingly similar to ‘Eternity’ as, again, the no-place derived from the
present (imaginary parallel of the Eternal Present) and basis for (‘hard
wired’) Natural Law/Nature or Gods and universals as ‘elsewhere'… So
metaphysical place-time is also based on ‘eternity’, the nowhere place of the
mind, now rubbish tip as last resort of metaphysics (in the bad sense…). In
place of these ‘nowhere’ places, we might find the ‘now-here’ of the Eternal
Present as useful, if subjective, axiom or starting point for deliberations on
temporality (including the ‘nowhere’ of ‘eternity’) augmented as necessary by
objective time, by quantifiable and empirical observations.
Or
again if look at Bergson’s rational Time as opposed to both objective science,
or empirical time (relativity and quantum) and to subjective temporality
(lived, experiential). This is what we get when we operate with reason alone…
counter intuitive findings are fine as an objective position, a result of
empirical data arrived at through scientific description - as the other side to
subjective experience. But not as part of this double rejection in favour of a
metaphysical, rational (scholastic) alternative! Bergson and Deleuze may
perhaps be read as the last scholastics… (reason alone… maybe Kant did this too
– doubling back after ‘The First Critique’…). For Bergson, the ‘virtual’ is
opposed to both, or found somewhere between both, between subjectively
experienced temporality and measurable objective time (real outside, or stored
in the mind… object ‘memory’, or subject memory before recall – both are
unlocatable, unconscious…. outside, again).
So
as we dig deeper Bergson’s and Deleuze’s ‘Time’ appears increasingly to be the equivalent
of the Eternal Present’s sense of ‘Eternity’ also acting like a guarantee or
ballast; something other to experience and science alike, something, ‘time’ as
always there, virtual (so like ‘Eternity an Absolute Outside’)…? An imaginary
necessity, a necessary fiction? But ‘Eternity’ is derived from the Eternal
Present, from our experience of the on-going present (a reversal of Heidegger
and Bergson). In the Eternal Present appearance is all: essence
(universal/eternal) is fiction… is secondary. Metaphysics or
rational concepts are, by definition, universal, eternal, are fictions… are
nowhere… (all time all space is no time, no space). The same reversal can be
found
in Kant in the case of the ‘Sublime’; a secondary effect
(reaction) made foundational, made prior, by reason…). So thinking with these
is indeed the equivalent of metaphysics, ‘in the bad sense’…
*
In time; the objective exists as measure; this is not
true of human temporality which is experienced as a quality different to the quantitative
measure. But an measure we can objectify and so count in the Eternal Present as
duration… one laid on the other… (as in ‘boredom’). A quantitative operation
and out temporality itself, past, present, future (eternity and dream ‘time’).
‘Duration’ often confuses two things, experience of temporality, in-side and
on-going… (becoming, quality) and a sense of ‘countability’ (‘roughly 5 mins
ago’) of time passing and measurable (quantitative) as when we watch clocks…
(cf. ‘boredom‘ again…). Heidegger was right to focus on boredom, but drew the
wrong conclusions (a matter of metaphysics versus ‘everyday’ experience… of
grandiose guruism as opposed to simple explanations).
*
Copyright Peter Nesteruk, 2019