Abstract

The article proposes a comparison between the “retrograde” conception that Bergson has of truth and his atypical interpretation of the concept of possibility. These conceptions are developed in two articles collected in La pensée et le mouvant. The “retrograde” conception of truth starts from the observation of the temporal gap between an event and the formulation of the judgment that relates it and finds its condition of truth in it. The retrograde movement consists in putting aside the temporality proper to the judgment and to “eternalize” it, so that the truth precedes the event. With respects to the possible Bergson has a similar conception: the events that are realized in the present are conceived by language as realization of previous possibilities. According to Bergson, language has thus the “magic power” of influencing the past retroactively.