Abstract

The tension between subject and object achieved importance in the modern era; indeed, this schism can be seen as the fundamental dispute between empiricists and rationalists. In fact, it can be claimed that this particular problem is what truly caused the current bankruptcy of metaphysics. ;One of the major themes of "post-modernism" is the attempt to develop a discourse which escapes this dualism. Likewise, in Matter and Memory, Bergson seeks to find the in-between of things and representations. The term by which he designates this in-between is the 'image'. An image is more than a representation which resides in the mind, and less than a thing residing in the container which we call space. The image is both self-generating and self-perpetuating, existing entirely as movement. ;By changing the framework of philosophical discourse from a spatial perspective to a mobile perspective, Bergson solves two nagging problems of philosophy in one stroke. The first is the relation between our bodies and our minds. Mental images are akin to physical things in that both can be considered images. The problem no longer is that of the relation between the unextended and the extended, but rather between the direction of memory and the direction of the body-image. The relation between these flows is known and experienced as tension. ;Secondly, the gulf between ourselves as subjects and the world as objects is bridged by the idea of the image. As images, we and the world are of a like kind. Our knowledge of the world is based upon our interaffective movement within the world. It does not stand in a relation of appearance and reality, but rather, in one of part to whole. In this way our access to reality is immediate and absolute . ;The dissertation itself argues for and explores the affects of the doctrine of images as paramount in the philosophy of Henri Bergson as well as the ramifications of this doctrine as it pertains to metaphysics and the philosophy of history