Excerpt: ...of a better medium of expression, we are driven to employ. Our whole intellectual bias urges us towards describing everything that comes within our experience, even if the description is only for our own private benefit Unfortunately the language in which these descriptions have to be expressed is so full of logical implications that, unless we are constantly on our guard, we are liable to be carried away by them, and then, at once, we lose contact with the actual facts. In order to get round this almost ...
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Excerpt: ...of a better medium of expression, we are driven to employ. Our whole intellectual bias urges us towards describing everything that comes within our experience, even if the description is only for our own private benefit Unfortunately the language in which these descriptions have to be expressed is so full of logical implications that, unless we are constantly on our guard, we are liable to be carried away by them, and then, at once, we lose contact with the actual facts. In order to get round this almost universal tendency to confuse abstractions with facts Bergson sometimes tries to get us to see the facts as they actually are by using metaphor instead of description in terms of abstract general notions. He has been much criticised for this but there is really a good deal to be said for attempting to convey facts by substituting metaphors for them rather than by using the ordinary intellectual method of substituting abstractions reached by analysis. Those who have criticised the use of metaphor have for the most part not realized how little removed such description is from the ordinary intellectual method of analysis. They have supposed that in analysis we stick to the fact itself, whereas in using metaphor we substitute for the fact to be described some quite different fact which is only connected with it by a more or less remote analogy. If Bergson's view of the intellectual method is right, however, when we describe in abstract terms arrived at by analysis we are not sticking to the facts at all, we are substituting something else for them just as much as if we were using an out and out metaphor. Qualities and all abstract general notions are, indeed, nothing but marks of analogies between a given fact and all the other facts belonging to the same class: they may mark rather closer analogies than those brought out by an ordinary metaphor, but on the other hand in a frank metaphor we at least stick to the concrete, we substitute fact for 'fact...
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PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
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PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
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Seller's Description:
PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
PLEASE NOTE, WE DO NOT SHIP TO DENMARK. New Book. Shipped from UK in 4 to 14 days. Established seller since 2000. Please note we cannot offer an expedited shipping service from the UK.
