On the same page, both of these points are used to speak of the lack of virtuality in matter, and if the above statements are accepted , then outcome seems easy enough to accept as well. But, then when using the example of mathematical number as being "divisible without changing in kind," and therefor being considered extended (42), things start to get a bit more confused and abstract for me.
On these points I have two questions. Firstly, if the objective has no virtuality and that it is always what is actual, then how do we associate it to matter? Is it not that our perception of matter is always dependent on our actualizing in relation to it? Is this considering that matter is actual independently of all perception?
Secondly, How can we use this argument to claim that number has extension just because it is "divisible without changing in kind" as is matter? I can potentially see number being considered as objective, but have a hard time reconciling it to matter and having extension.
Perhaps I will rue having written this passage five minutes after the lecture this afternoon, where the simple elegance and genius of Bergson's thought will be made explicit (to a simple mind such as my own). But, until then, I will try and understand how matter can can have no virtuality and number can be extended.
2 comments:
Unfortunetly I didn't read yet Bergsonism by Deleuze, but I think you are raising interesting questions about the objective and the virtual and perhaps some insights from Bergson himself, from the first chapter of Matter and Memory, may help to clarify the implications of Deleuze's argument of the objective as purely actual. By objective, I guess Deleuze is referring to the objects/images of Bergson, which can definitively be considered as forming an actual system, even if Bergson never clearly use the term actual to characterize them. According to Bergson, this actual system, «où chaque image varie pour elle-même et dans la mesure bien définie où elle subit l'action réelle des images environnantes» (Bergson, Matière et Mémoire, 20), coexists with another system, where those same images «varient pour une seule, et dans la mesure variable où elles réflechissent l'action possible de cette image privilégiée» (Bergson, 20-21). The question Bergson is asking here is how objects/images can pass through those two different system, the actual one where images are and are present, and the virtual one where images are perceived and represented. And one of his answer to this problematic is that between the presence of images and their representation, between the actual and the virtual, what happens is not a addition, but a diminution, a subtraction. The representation is thus fundamentally an operation of isolation and neutralization, a diminution of the action that is passing through actual images. Bergson eliminates the possibility of the perception as an addition from the matter; this would mean a difference of nature between matter and perception, this would be admitting that at the chore of perception lie a unsolvable mystery. Instead, Bergson see a difference of degree (and not of nature) between images that are and images that are perceived (Bergson, 35). So, considering your first set of question, I think what we can understand from Bergson is that our perception of matter has more to do with virtualizing images than with actualizing them, and that, yes, matter is actual independently of all perception. But then a whole set of other problems and questions arise around the role of the body and of the conscience in this operation of perception and representation...
Thanks Genevieve for the comment. I tried to read Bergson along with Bergsonism, but due to the language barrier, did not make much progress.
I will perhaps re-read part of Bergsonism with your comments in mind.
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