Beyond the Human Condition: Bergson and Deleuze

Abstract

In his interpretations of Hume, Bergson, Nietzsche and Spinoza, Deleuze is engaged in the search for a superior human nature. In this essay my focus is on Deleuze’s interpretation of Bergson and the attempt to think and go beyond the human condition. In his essay on Bergson and difference of 1956, in his lecture course on Creative Evolution of 1960, in his text of 1966 entitled Bergsonism, and in subsequent writings such as his collaboration with Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze reveals his interest in Bergson’s effort to think beyond the human condition. This is perhaps expressed most remarkably and intriguingly in Bergsonism when Deleuze writes of the human as the being that has the capacity ‘of scrambling the planes, of going beyond his own plane as his own condition, in order finally to express naturing Nature’ (Deleuze 1988: 107). In short, the question at hand is the following: how can the human become a creator equal to the whole movement of creation and invent a society of creators? How are we to think such a possibility? That is, by what means or methods of philosophy and of action can such a superior human nature become accessible to us? This is what I set out to explore and enlighten in this essay. I shall proceed by focusing largely on Bergson’s text of 1907, Creative Evolution, and shall draw heavily on Deleuze’s readings of this text as well as advancing my own interpretation of it and as one that endeavors to add support to Deleuze’s insights.