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Mysticism and the Foundation of the Open Society

Bergsonian Politics

Paola Marrati

In his 1920 Oxford lecture ‘‘The Possible and the Real’’ (published in
1934 inLa Pense ́e et le mouvant, rather unhappily translated asThe
Creative Mind^1 ), Bergson returns to a question of method: the impor-
tance of the position of problems in philosophy. Solutions, or answers
to problems, are implied in the way in which problems are stated; they
are their empirical results. It is critical, then, to avoid the danger of
the confusion resulting from ‘‘badly put or badly analyzed problems.’’
Philosophy, or at least its significance, stands or falls with the problems
it is capable of setting up.
Among the examples of badly analyzed problems that Bergson pro-
vides, the one of the category of the possible is certainly one of the most
striking. In the history of philosophy, as well as in everyday language, it
is usually assumed that the category of the possible contains less than
the category of reality. In other words, we have the habit of thinking
that a possibility is necessarily and obviously something less than its
corresponding reality, even though in fact, Bergson argues, the possible
‘‘contains more than the real.’’^2 How is this mistake made? Where does
its supposed evidence come from? And, more importantly, what is the
‘‘badly put problem’’ from which this mistake results? Let me cite the
following passage:

During the great war certain newspapers sometimes turned aside

from the terrible worries of the day to think of what would have

happened later once peace was restored. They were particularly

preoccupied with the future of literature. Someone came one day

to ask me my ideas on the subject. A little embarrassed, I declared

I had none. ‘‘Do you not at least perceive,’’ I was asked, ‘‘certain

possible directions?’’ I shall always remember my interlocutor’s

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