I am still studying Dabrowski. It is a slow process, because I like to chew on sentences and follow-up on references, all of which takes place in between everything else (trying to make a living, renovating the garden, dillydallying in my studio, doing household chores, raising children – the works).
This afternoon, I sat in the garden, read for a while, then took a nap on an old, soon to be given-away children’s mattress, read some more, and came across a quote by Henri Bergson. Immediately, I added this French philosopher to my ever-growing list. (For somebody who contrives to think through a philosophical theory of her own, I am remarkably ill-read, meaning I have only read works by a dozen or so philosophers, and most of these I consumed over two decades ago).
The quote stems from “L’évolution creatrice” (Creative evolution), apparently Bergsons most acclaimed work, which has led to him being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927, and it goes like this:
Intuition, at first sight, seems far preferable to intellect, since in it life and consciousness remain within themselves. But a glance at the evolution of living beings shows us that intuition could not go very far. On the side of intuition, consciousness found itself so restricted
by its envelope that intuition had to shrink into instinct, that is, to embrace only the very small portion of life that interested it; and this it embraces only in the dark, touching it while hardly seeing it. On this side, the horizon was soon shut out. On the contrary, consciousness, in shaping itself into intelligence, that is to say in concentrating itself at first on matter, seems to externalise itself in relation to itself; but, just because it adapts itself thereby to objects from without, it succeeds in moving among them and in evading the barriers they oppose to it, thus opening to itself an unlimited field. Once freed, moreover, it can turn inwards on itself, and awaken the potentialities of intuition which still slumber within it.
I have yet to find out where Bergson is going with this train of thought, but I like his view very much. Indeed, embedded in a layered physical system with a highly capable and therefore often high-handed database for a brain, consciousness does find itself restricted. I never thought of intuition as a separate member of the team, but should one do so, then yes, over the course of life in many individuals it will be expelled to a strip of wasteland, so far off the playing field that its magical powers, waxing and waning like the moon at first, dwindle down to two-dimensional trickery long before the other members of the team go into that night. (I dare not claim it to be a “good night”, as the famous poet so eloquently does.)
What Bergson seems to be saying here, is that intuition just isn’t strong enough at birth, which leaves consciousness no other option than to embrace the brain and go with shaping and reshaping matter. In some, this goes on at infinitum, but in others, clearly it does not. There is no developmental potential in the sheer act of shaping and reshaping.
I wonder what, in Bergsons mind, are the trigger points for consciousness to open itself up to the unlimited field, as he calls it. This might be where Dabrowski links in, because the latter states that there is a third factor, that drives people to start using their creative powers for self-perfection at a higher level, thus abandoning the lower-level need for self-preservation.
One of the reasons I am studying Dabrowski, is that his Theory of Positive Disintegration snugly fits the process our society is going through this very moment. I’d love to find all of the trigger points that will steer us, as a collective, from self-preservation to self-perfection. I think I’m right there with Bergson when I say that one of the first steps we should take is to kindly ask intuition to come join our team once more.