Causality and its metaphysical counterparties in bergsonism: a complex epistemology of becoming

• Grant number: 13/22169-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate (Direct)
• Start date: March 01, 2014
• End date: February 28, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Franklin Leopoldo e Silva
• Grantee: Marcos Daniel Camolezi
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 14/16474-4 - Causality in Henri Bergson: formation of a thought in contact with the experimental sciences, BE.EP.DD

Abstract

We aim to investigate the issue of causality in Bergson's work. On the one hand, causality is criticized and methodically relocated within the epistemological framework built by Bergson, suffering a reduction of the universal scope attributed to it in the history of philosophical thought and especially in Kantian architectonics. It will be shown that causality - neither real principle nor mere mental process - becomes thus relative to matter, and only in matter does it achieve absolute scope. On the other hand, upon expanding the ontological field as the meaning of the concepts of length and time is itself expanded, we understand that Bergson offers schemes and epistemological concepts analogous - according to the role they play in theory of knowledge - to the concept of causality operating at the level of matter, so to understand the reopened metaphysical universe. They are the theory of multiplicities, the concept of virtual and of élan vital. Thus, we will investigate, at first, a critical framework of causality exposed along Bergson's opera; then we will expose counterparties of knowledge hypothesized to replace the conception of causality, to which it was previously attributed a universal and objective scope, especially by Kant. Our broader goal consists in showing how Bergsonian ontology comes to spouse a way of knowing which is renewed by the reconstitution of the epistemological and conceptual role of causality. (AU)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

CAMOLEZI, Marcos Daniel. Causality in Henri Bergson: the formation of a thought in contact with the experimental sciences. 2017. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) São Paulo.