JBSP Online: Florian Vermeiren on Bergson and Kant

journal update

New article by Vermeiren for the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, online in advance of the print edition.

Florian Vermeiren – ‘Bergson and the Kantian Concept of Intensive Magnitude’: JBSP (Originally published online: 14 April 2021).

Abstract: Bergson’s critique of intensive magnitude in Time and Free Will mainly targets Kant’s “Anticipations of Perception”, in which the Kantian distinction between matter and form is lowered. Bergson praises precisely this distinction for safeguarding sensation as something extra-intellectual. As the concept of intensity is the main tool of neo-Kantian intellectualism, in which the whole of reality is determined by the intellect, younger Bergson forcefully rejects intensive magnitude. However, his relation towards Kant changes. In Creative Evolution, Bergson proposes a genetic correction to Kantianism in which the distinction between matter and form is weakened. By comparing Bergson’s theory with the genetic Kantianism of Salomon Maïmon, who heavily relies on the concept of intensity, I argue that the concept fits his later project of renewing the Kantian theory. I thus demonstrate how the critique of intensive magnitude merely belongs to a provisional stage of Bergson’s relation to Kant.

Full article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2021.1910854

Florian Vermeiren, Husserl-Archives: Centre for Phenomenology and Continental Philosophy, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

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