Bergson makes a distinction between two kinds o f concepts.69 The first kind o f concept is the one which has so far been discussed: it is stable and fixed. This type o f concept is opposed to "... fluid concepts, capable o f following reality in all its windings and o f adopting the very movement o f the inner life o f things." (CM, 190) (Lacey, p. 163) General concepts are fixed. They negate difference and homogenise, unlike the perceptions they ultimately refer to - the concept and perception do not coalesce. Fluid concepts, according to Bergson, are opposed to such fixity in that they involve a constant recasting o f the categories o f thought in order that reality, that is, perception, may be followed as closely as possible. If the mind continually recasts its categories then "[i]n so doing it will arrive at fluid concepts, capable o f following reality in all its windings and o f adopting the very movement o f the inner life o f things." (CM , p. 190) For Mullarkey, as we have already indicated, one example o f a fluid concept would be a metaphor. He argues that a metaphor is capable o f "... adopting the very movement o f the inner life o f things" and can actually be a part o f reality, not in terms o f a solid object, but as a movement.
A metaphor, according to Mullarkey, shares something in common with its two sides, that there is, for example, something in common between
69 In representing Bergson's position such that language acts merely to linguistically grid the fluid 'real', Battersby over-simplifies his position. (Christine Battersby, The Phenomenal Woman - Feminist Metaphysics and Patterns o f Identity (Oxford: Polity Press, 1998.) p. 34.
an immense wave and life. This is not to say that there is one or more common features which can be found in both, but instead that a metaphor imitates the movement animating the lines of both life and a wave. By this Mullarkey suggests not that the specificity and difference between waves and life be reduced, that things always be generalised and seen in terms of other things and never for themselves, an accusation which Mandelshtam made against the symbolists (RM, p. 70), but instead that the movement which each instantiates and individuates be given without being abstract. (Mullarkey, pp. 152-3) This in effect means that a metaphor identifies the same generative process on both its sides and additionally, Mullarkey argues, the metaphor is itself part o f a generative movement, so its boundaries are as yet unfixed. (Mullarkey, p. 154) This means that a concept can coincide with a movement because it is part of a reality and an instantiation o f this movement as opposed to being a relationship o f signifier to signified, in this sense expression is creative of what is expressed. (Mullarkey, pp. 154-5) Mullarkey refers to Delhomme in this regard, and some o f her other comments are relevant to the current discussion.
Firstly words are independent o f thought, according to Delhomme, as a thought can be phrased in multiple ways, (Delhomme, p. 23) this is because there is a tendency which is realised in the very act o f writing, whose meaning is not pre-existent, as Janketevitch argues. (Janketevitch, p. 233) So it is not a pre-existing idea which finds expression but instead the continuity o f a certain direction o f attention, a movement towards, or an intentionality. (Delhomme, p. 144) So it is a case o f actualising the virtual, (Delhomme, p. 145) rather than revealing the hidden already pre existing possible. So in the case o f metaphor the actual creation o f a
metaphor is a realisation o f a tendency which already existed but whose individuation creates something genuinely new.
The impression might have been given in the above that metaphor was superior to scientific concepts, and indeed Mullarkey does extol the fact that metaphors move away from a logic o f rigid duality's. (Mullarkey, p. 154) However Mullarkey cautions us that in fact it is a case o f two different types o f concepts which function in different spheres. Scientific concepts apply to one sphere where they, according to Merleau-Ponty, form a mathematical and linguistic expression, rather than a direct notation,70 whilst metaphor, which appears vague and indistinct applies in another realm. (Mullarkey, p. 154) Although metaphor is taken as an example at this point, there is no unique mode o f expression for philosophical thought, as different levels o f reality translate into emotion, images or concepts, for example. (Mourelos, p. 62) What is important is that the ease o f rearranging fixed ready made concepts does not trick us into thinking that we are doing philosophy.
Given the importance o f metaphor and the creative use o f language the next section will focus on Bergson's account o f poetry and examine the relation between intuition and art.
70 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "K inste in and the Crisis o f Reason". Signs ( 1 960). trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press. 1964) (Henceforth ECR) p. 197