The Role of Language in the Metaphysics of Bergson : the Linguistic Paradoxicality of the Mediation of Duration

The present essay aims to offer an introduction to Henri Bergson’s linguistic critique. Since Bergson’s metaphysical philosophy largely rests on the notion of duration, la durée, which is something one cannot express, there arises a paradoxical aspect in Bergson as regards the actual mediation of this ‘duration’. The essay will continually dwelve in a problematization of the role of language in Bergson’s kind of metaphysics, but eventually it promises a glimpse of a methodologically sound form of linguistic transmission, in the words of Bergson himself. Although one should not mistake the image-based way of talking about duration, which this essay propagates, with the way of the analytic, precise nature of scientific discourse, the latter will also be shown to be flawed. This is because of language’s evolutionary genesis, being coupled with that of the intellect, which means that it was created for practical purposes, which, as will be shown, in turn implies that language is only applicable to the geometrically utilitarian patterning of said intellect. And so, the essay will explore the question of the role of language in bergsonian metaphysics, keeping close to its inborn paradoxicality