Memory and the being of the subject

pp. 175-214

in: Messay Kebede, Bergson's philosophy of self-overcoming, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Abstract

This chapter tackles the mind–body problem. It shows that the prolongation of the past into the present, namely, memory is the basis for the continuity of the subject. Thanks to the ability of the brain to focus consciousness on the needs of the present, memory acquires practical role through the function of forgetting. This entails the distinction between pure memory, which is imageless, and memory-images, which condition memory's passage into the conscious present. Going against Deleuze's recourse to "word-memory" and the phenomenologist reduction of the past to retention, the chapter shows that memory is the ontological continuity of the being-made. Accordingly, mind–body union is how the mind both overflows the body but also limits itself to the body to support action.