Bergson’s Creation of the Possible

“The Possible and the Real,” Bergson insisted to Isaac Benrubi, is an important part of his philosophy (Benrubi, 306-307).1 Far from a mere, perhaps interesting adjunct to his thought, this essay (originally given at Oxford in 1920)2 both demarcates his fundamental ideas and brings out their meaning. It is therefore surprising that this essay has suffered from relative neglect. In The New Aspects of Space and Time, Milic Capek writes, “Space does not permit us to discuss here the precise meaning of the Bergsonian views on possibility which, in appearance were seemingly contradictory” (160). Unfortunately, Capek never responded to this challenge. In the text cited to above he refers the reader to the last chapter of Jankélévitch’s Henri Bergson. But here Jankélévitch, besides reviewing Bergson’s ideas on the possible, remarks only that besides our ordinary ideas of possibility, there is in Bergson a quite different concept of “organic” possibility – a concept which, however, Jankélévitch never worked out (Jankélévitch, 215-228).