"I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment"
About this Quote
Bergson doesn’t sound like he’s delivering a comforting insight about human complexity; he sounds cornered by a stubborn fact he can’t politely philosophize away. “I cannot escape the objection” frames the line as an argument he’s forced to take seriously, the kind that punctures tidy systems. It’s a concession with teeth: any attempt to pin down consciousness as a stable object is already outdated by the time you name it.
The point isn’t merely that moods fluctuate. Bergson is pushing against the era’s prestige model of knowledge: the scientific, spatial way of thinking that treats reality as if it can be measured in fixed units. His subtext: the mind is not a thing, not a container of discrete states, but a flow. Even “however simple” states refuse to stay still. Simplicity doesn’t save you; purity doesn’t save you; introspective minimalism doesn’t save you. Time intrudes.
This is Bergson’s larger project in miniature: duration (la duree) as lived time, irreducible to clock time. The line is designed to embarrass the intellect’s habit of freezing movement into concepts. Language wants nouns, categories, snapshots. Experience arrives as continuous alteration. The rhetorical rhythm even performs the thesis: “no state of mind... however simple... does not change” keeps postponing closure, delaying the landing, mimicking the way consciousness refuses to be neatly concluded.
Context matters. In a modernizing world newly enchanted by measurement, efficiency, and lab-style certainty, Bergson insists the most intimate evidence we have is that the self is never identical to itself. The objection he can’t escape becomes his weapon: philosophy must start from flux, not deny it.
The point isn’t merely that moods fluctuate. Bergson is pushing against the era’s prestige model of knowledge: the scientific, spatial way of thinking that treats reality as if it can be measured in fixed units. His subtext: the mind is not a thing, not a container of discrete states, but a flow. Even “however simple” states refuse to stay still. Simplicity doesn’t save you; purity doesn’t save you; introspective minimalism doesn’t save you. Time intrudes.
This is Bergson’s larger project in miniature: duration (la duree) as lived time, irreducible to clock time. The line is designed to embarrass the intellect’s habit of freezing movement into concepts. Language wants nouns, categories, snapshots. Experience arrives as continuous alteration. The rhetorical rhythm even performs the thesis: “no state of mind... however simple... does not change” keeps postponing closure, delaying the landing, mimicking the way consciousness refuses to be neatly concluded.
Context matters. In a modernizing world newly enchanted by measurement, efficiency, and lab-style certainty, Bergson insists the most intimate evidence we have is that the self is never identical to itself. The objection he can’t escape becomes his weapon: philosophy must start from flux, not deny it.
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