時間中的認識：柏格森論述直觀觀念的根源

Knowledge in Time: Bergson on the Origin of the Idea of Intuition

本文探究柏格森透過時間視角切入對物的認識，闡釋其中潛藏物我共感的可能性，有助於世界從二元回歸一元。認識事物有兩種認識方式：空間的或時間的。空間的認識在於通過測度物的廣延，形構有輪廓、佔體積且固定不變的客體，可供科學進行分解與研究分析。時間的認識萌生於對於一系列變化的記憶，變化的積累動搖了固定不變的物的邊界，使同一物在時間中形成多重影像的疊加態，亦即所有影象相互滲透的呈現。可見，時間認識必然涉及對影像的重新詮釋，這是本文欲討論的議題之一。在時間中展開的認識模糊了物的實體邊界，卻不斷參與周遭環境的變化過程，使認識展現為物我調和的結果。這種時間的認識同時也是柏格森融合感性經驗與智能分析的直觀認識。本文探索柏格森如何從笛卡兒與康德思想中繼承時間的思考，並且通過直觀消彌精神與物質的分裂。柏格森的這種物我一體的思辨或有助於突破物自身不可知的康德防線，使人類主體重返與周遭環境相互契合的萬物世界。

This article explores Henri Bergson’s cognition of the thing through the perspective of time, and explains the potential opportunity of the sympathy between humans and nature, thereby recovering unity from the duality of the world. There are two ways to comprehend things: spatially or temporally. Spatial comprehension involves measuring the extension of objects, shaping phenomena with outlines, determining volume, and identifying entities as fixed and unchanging, thus allowing science to decompose and analyze them. By contrast, temporal comprehension consists in a series of changes in memory. The accumulation of changes destabilizes the fixed boundaries of things, producing a superimposition of states, an interpenetrating presentation of all images. It is evident that temporal cognition inevitably involves the reinterpretation of images, which is one of the topics discussed in this paper. The cognition unfolded in time blurs the physical boundaries of an entity that appears to be stable; However, it is continuously involved, along with its environment, in the process of change, so that the understanding of the thing simultaneously reveals the outcome of the harmony between humans and nature. This temporal cognition thus understood is Bergson’s idea of intuition, which integrates sensory experience and intellectual analysis. This article tries to explore how Bergson inherits the idea of time from Descartes and Kant and, through intuition, resolve the dichotomy between spirit and matter. Bergson’s notion of the harmony between humans and nature offers a way to break through Kant’s blockade which limits the thing-in-itself to being unknowable, thereby allowing the human subject to return to a state of mutual attunement with the environment.