Bergson’s Virtual Freedom
by Owen Sayre
The philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) has enjoyed a resurgence of interest across disciplines. Due to past interest by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze, this resurgence is split into two groups: one working with Deleuze’s conceptual scheme of the potential and real against the virtual and actual and the other working with the contemporary metaphysical libertarianism debate. I attempt to cross cut these camps of Bergsonism; in clarifying Bergson’s role within contemporary metaphysical debates, I see the focus on multiple fluid uses of the term virtual as a necessary corrective to the ossifying recapitulation of the term, while seeking to avoid repeating Deleuze’s reading and implementing his alternative scheme of virtuality. I focus on three applications of virtuality: 1) to the concept of alternative possibilities within libertarian and determinist debates 2) to Gale Strawson’s apriori determinist argument against moral responsibility 3) to universalizable laws of causation. To that end, I make use of Bergson’s scientific work on the phenomena hyperaesthesia and aphasia and his continual reference to ancient philosophy. By demonstrating the meaningful connections between these discourses across time, I argue that Bergson’s method rewrites philosophy into our new historical discourse, demonstrating the need to update his cannon.