Habit as a Force of Life in Durkheim and Bergson

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Habit as a Force of Life in Durkheim and Bergson

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Article

Habit as a Forceof Life in Durkheimand Bergson

Melanie WhiteUniversity of New South Wales, Kensington, Australia

AbstractEmile Durkheim and Henri Bergson, two of the most important thinkers of early20th-century France, give us different accounts of the relationship between habits,society and life. The article focuses on their use of embodied metaphors to illus-trate how each thinker conceives of habit as a force of life. It argues that Durkheimuses the metaphor of ‘lifting’ to describe how social life creates habits capable oftranscending bodily instinct. Bergson also recognizes the force of habits; he usesthe language of leaping to describe the kind of action required to transcend them.The article makes three claims. First, it argues that these metaphors are central toeach thinker’s understanding of the means by which habits attach us to life. Second,they offer a means of revisiting, and explicating, Bergson’s tacit critique of Dur-kheim in his Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Third, they both symbolize pro-cesses of conversion that inform each thinker’s diagnosis of the moral challengesfaced in modern social life.

KeywordsBergson, classical sociology, Durkheim, habit, life, morality, society

Two of the most important thinkers of early 20th-century France

have given us interesting, but quite different, accounts of the relation-

ship between habits, society and life. According to Emile Durkheim,

the founder of French sociology, collective habits are sustained, reg-

ular ways of thinking, acting and feeling. Habits ensure the relative

Corresponding author:Melanie White, University of New South Wales, Morven Brown 162, Kensington, 2052,Australia.Email: [email protected]://www.sagepub.net/tcs/

19(2&3) 240–262ª The Author(s) 2013

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stability of social life, and to the extent that they exercise constraint

over individual desires, they enable human beings to overcome their

‘natural’ instincts. In short, habits reflect the discipline required for

human beings to self-actualize as moral beings. Henri Bergson, a

contemporary of Durkheim’s, acknowledges the constraining moral

pressure of habits in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion(1977 [1932]). But, in contrast to Durkheim, who argues that the

formation of collective habits establishes a difference in kind

between human and non-human animals, Bergson claims that habits

and instincts differ merely by degree. The singularity of human

beings is not to be found in our capacity to form social habits, but

in our ability to transcend them.

Despite their different perspectives, it is interesting that Durkheim

and Bergson both use active, embodied terms such as ‘lifting’, ‘raising’,

‘leaping’ and ‘jumping’ to describe how human beings orient them-

selves to the kind of regular, sustained practices we call ‘habits’. This

article claims that it is possible to use these terms as heuristic devices

to explain how each thinker understands habits as constitutive of vital

life forces, independent of whether they are social or biological. As

such, the article draws on recent studies that argue that metaphorical

language is not only grounded in ordinary embodied experience (Gibbs

et al., 2004: 1190), but that this experience also shapes the meaning we

give to our concepts (Gibbs, 1996, 2006; Wilson and Gibbs, 2007). In a

very general way, I want to suggest that the relationship between meta-

phor and embodied concepts intersects with what Latour has called

‘body talk’, understood as the way that the body is exhorted in accounts

about what it is and does (Latour, 2004: 206). And here we might say

that, for both Durkheim and Bergson, habits are a constitutive dimen-

sion of our embodied experience in the world.

I want to argue that Durkheim repeatedly uses the metaphor of

‘lifting’ (elever) to describe how our habitual association with one

another creates a force capable of transcending our bodily instincts.

Bergson uses the language of the ‘leap’ (bond) or a ‘jump’ (saut) as a

metaphor to describe the kind of action required to transcend the

force of habits. The article makes three claims. First, I want to argue

that these metaphors are central to each thinker’s understanding of

the means by which habits attach us to life. Second, these metaphors

give us a powerful way to read the Two Sources as – among other

things – a sustained interrogation of Durkheim’s understanding of

White 241



society and the role of habits within that theory. Third, these meta-

phors represent processes of conversion. Durkheim uses the language

of lifting to describe the conversion from individual instinct to

collective habits, and Bergson uses the ‘leap’ to describe how the

creative emotion of love can facilitate a leap from habit. As meta-

phors for conversion, they play an important role in each thinker’s

diagnosis of the ethical and moral challenges of the 20th century and

beyond.

This article claims that the debate between Durkheim and Bergson

is worth revisiting for three reasons.1 First, it contributes to the cur-

rent rethinking of familiar and long-standing dualisms between the

social and the natural, the mind and the body, and the cognitive and

the affective. Second, the debate adds texture to the current interest in

Gabriel Tarde (1903 [1895]), who conceives of invention and imita-

tion as immanent to any modality of association whether human or

non-human.2 Tarde’s conception of the social was addressed by

Durkheim, negatively and explicitly, and later by Bergson, positively

and implicitly in Two Sources. Third, it forces us to think about how

habits shape the relationship between what a body is (or does) and the

way it is affected, that is how it is moved or put into motion (Black-

man and Venn, 2010: 9; Despret, 2004; Latour, 2004). It contributes

to an appreciation of the affective forces that shape our feelings of

attachment to what David Stern (1985: 57) calls the ‘vital processes

of life’, whether these processes are conceived as primarily social (as

for Durkheim) or biological (as for Bergson).3

Durkheim’s Lift

Emile Durkheim’s (1858–1917) central contribution to social theory

is a conception of society as a reality sui generis. Society is not a bio-

logically conditioned reality, but a human achievement. For Dur-

kheim, it is an accomplishment insofar as it represents the human

ability to transcend the physical constraints of our bodily organism

through cultivating collective habits and representations that are

external to any given individual. In short, society is the collective

overcoming of our animal nature. Throughout his writing, Durkheim

often uses the French verb elever which means ‘to raise’ in order to

convey this sense of ‘accomplishment’, ‘overcoming’ or ‘transcend-

ing’ the organic limits of our physical bodies. According to the

242 Body & Society 19(2&3)



Grand Larousse (Guilbert et al., 1977) the word elever can be used to

describe the process by which one attains a higher degree of moral

and intellectual development. This accords with the derivation of the

word eleve, which translates as ‘student’ or ‘pupil’. But there is a

more physical sense of the word that is used when we ‘raise our arms’

(elever les bras) or when we ‘raise something from the ground up’

(faire monter verticalement a partir du sol). In the English transla-

tions of Durkheim’s work, and here I am thinking of The Elementary

Forms of Religious Life (1995 [1912]) in particular, the word elever

is translated into English as ‘lifting’.4 And if we consult the Oxford

English Dictionary, the English verb ‘to lift’ imparts the two senses

implied by the French term: a sense of physical exertion or effort and

the sense of moral improvement.5

Let us consider two quotations from The Elementary Forms:

Precisely because society lifts us above ourselves [eleve au-dessus de

nous-memes], it does constant violence to our natural appetites. So

that we can fulfill our duties toward it, our conditioning [dresses]

must ready us to overcome our instincts at times – when necessary,

to go up the down staircase of nature [a remonter, quand il le faut,

la pente de la nature]. (1995 [1912]/1960: e321, f452)

However complex the outward manifestations of religious [i.e.

social] life may be, its inner essence is simple, and one and the same.

Everywhere it fulfills the same need and derives from the same state

of mind. In all its forms its object is to lift man above himself [d’elever

l’homme au-dessus de lui-meme] and to make him live a higher life

than he would if he obeyed only his individual impulses. (1995

[1912]/1960: e417, f592)

In the first quotation, elever is used to describe how society over-

comes our embodied, biological rootedness, for it is this rootedness

that persistently checks any individual attempts to transcend the

organism. The French conveys something of the requirement to ‘ele-

vate’ above ourselves insofar as ‘we draw ourselves upwards’ or

‘build upwards in height’; this is the sense of the term adequately,

if not precisely, conveyed by the more physical sense of ‘lifting’. The

second quotation evokes the sense of spiritual fulfilment and

emotional satisfaction found in the impulse to correct and improve

oneself. Again, Durkheim uses the verb elever, but this time he uses

it to express the sense of intellectual or moral growth that stems from

White 243



society’s capacity to lift us above ourselves to a higher form of life.

Both quotations give us a first impression of the hierarchical and

oppositional relationship Durkheim establishes between society and

the individual, a relationship that illuminates the link I’d like to draw

between lifting and habit.

Let us deepen these reflections by turning to consider Durkheim’s

argument in the essay titled ‘The dualism of human nature and its

social conditions’ (2005 [1914]). This essay develops his observa-

tions about the dualistic nature of man scattered throughout Elemen-

tary Forms (1995 [1912]: 14, 267, 297, 370). Essentially, he claims

that man comprises two competing and irreducible tendencies that

express different ‘states of consciousness’:

There really are in [man] two groups of states of consciousness that

contrast with one another in their origins, their nature, and the ends

toward which they tend. One expresses only our organism and the

objects with which it is most directly in relationship. Strictly individ-

ual, these states of consciousness attach us only to ourselves, and we

can no more detach them from us than we can detach ourselves from

our body. The others, on the contrary, come from society; they trans-

late it in us and attach us to something that goes beyond us. Being

collective, they are impersonal; they turn us toward ends [ils nous

tournent vers des fins] that we share in common with other men; it

is through them and through them alone that we can commune. (Dur-

kheim, 2005 [1914]: 43; emphasis added)

Granted, Durkheim does not use the language of elever here to

depict the process of elevating or lifting one to a higher moral life

as he does in the two passages I noted from Elementary Forms. But

there is nonetheless a sense of transformation at work, one that

depends upon the strength of the collective forces to ‘turn us’ (ils

nous tournent) toward a qualitatively different form of being, a being

that ‘we share in common’ with others. The capacity for transforma-

tion is premised on a difference in kind between innate tendencies

governed by instinct and those socially conditioned forms of conduct

found in collective habits. Put somewhat differently, human beings

are capable of forming cohesive and durable relations with one

another that are not based on hereditary ties or biological instinct, but

on habits that develop and change over time. Where instincts attach

us to our innermost selves, habits – at least those that are collective




and shared – attach ourselves to others. Even if both provide a degree

of regularity and stability to the way we experience the world, the

important point is that instincts are individual and immutable while

the latter are collective and, consequently, open to change.

How do habits simultaneously ‘lift us up out of ourselves’ and

‘turn us away from ourselves’? From where do they derive the

strength to shift our primary attachment from the self to others? It

is helpful to consider habits in relation to the notion of collective

representations. Durkheim argues that human beings are unique

because we share representations of the world around us. He calls

these ideas values and beliefs, ‘collective’ representations. They are

the ‘concepts with which we routinely think’ (1995 [1912]: 436). He

argues that it is impossible for us to ‘live without representing to our-

selves the world around us and the objects of every sort that fill it.

But by this alone, that we represent them to ourselves, they enter into

us and thus become part of ourselves’ (2005 [1914]: 37–8; emphasis

in original). What is significant for me is the sense in which these

representations ‘enter into us’ and ‘become part of ourselves’. To the

extent that collective representations constitute a ‘we’, they ‘become

something else’ by means of the ‘sui generis forces developed in

association’ with other human beings (1974 [1898]: 26; emphasis

in original). The process by which they ‘enter’ us and ‘become’ part

of us, I’d like to suggest, is a process of conversion insofar as they

‘become something else’. Durkheim remarks in Rules of Sociological

Method that society facilitates this process of conversion by virtue of

the fact that it calls forth conduct automatically. In short, habits

‘crystallize’ social practices, habits and actions, and as such trans-

form the nature of one’s attachment to self and to others (1982

[1895]: 82). Society is a source of the range of ‘habitual’ representa-

tions and actions that ‘enter us’ and ‘transform us’ by lifting us out of

ourselves (1995 [1912]: 209).

The metaphor of lifting brings into relief the difference in kind that

Durkheim seeks to draw between human collective habits and animal

biological instincts. Two points are important to note here. First,

these oppositions (e.g. human–animal, collective–biological and

habit–instinct) are not natural. The distinction between human and

animal is based on the capacity to lift us out of our biological, instinc-

tive nature. This process establishes a hierarchy, and the very capac-

ity to form hierarchies is a ‘social thing’, for, as Durkheim remarks in

White 245



Elementary Forms, ‘only in society do superiors, subordinates and

equals exist’ (1995 [1912]: 149). Second, the ability to lift us away

from our biological tendencies toward even more robust social

attachments requires persistent, sustained effort. The power of the

social is continually checked by the force of our biological instincts.

To overcome the exigencies of our so-called ‘animal nature’, we

must do them a constant violence. It is society that provides suffi-

cient strength to resist the force of nature. This social conditioning

is expressed by the two senses of the word elever. It is society that

lifts us out of, and away from, the persistent pull of biological instinct

by means of collective habits; in so doing, it elevates us in relation to

other living beings – i.e. animals – whose solidarity and cohesion

with one another is based on instinct. Our collective habits ground

the moral life of society and give shape to our goals, aspirations and

ideals. Society lifts us to a moral way of life, and in the process, we

are reborn: we are no longer ruled by our physiology as we once

were, but we are transformed into the human beings that our habitual

relations and practices enable us to become. Our habits create new

potentialities for transformation. For Durkheim, in short, they make

us human (Jones, 1999: 47, 83, 108).

Bergson’s Leap

Now let us consider the way Bergson uses metaphors such as ‘leap’

[bond] and ‘jump’ [saut] to explain the relationship between habits,

society and life as he presents it his last book The Two Sources of

Morality and Religion (1977 [1932]).6 Before doing so, it is helpful

to articulate the aims of this book and the nature of its critical dispen-

sation at some length for two reasons: first, to make sense of the way

that Bergson uses embodied metaphors on his own terms; and,

second, to contrast Bergson’s use of the metaphor ‘leaping’ with

Durkheim’s penchant for ‘lifting’. The argument in Two Sources is

especially significant for our purposes because it gives a critique

of Durkheim’s theory of society.7 This critique is implicit because

the book rarely mentions Durkheim by name, and yet the emphasis

on concepts such as ‘pressure’, ‘moral obligation’, ‘discipline’ and

‘habit’ in the first part of the book is so extensive and deliberate that

it unmistakably bears Durkheim’s signature.8 Bergson gives a cri-

tique of the science of ‘society’ – represented in the book by the




disciplines of ‘sociology’ and ‘ethnography’ – by means of extending

the argument he lays out in Creative Evolution (1998 [1907]).

It is worthwhile to give an overview of the argument Bergson

advances in Creative Evolution before proceeding to Two Sources,

since the former establishes the philosophical ground for the latter.

Bergson’s overarching aim in Creative Evolution – as with all of his

work – is to establish ‘precision’ in philosophical concepts. The dif-

ficulty is that human understanding is limited by an intelligence that

cannot think the reality of time. We cleave to measuring time as a

sequence of intervals or moments that eludes the irreducible flow

of real time. The knowledge that we produce, grounded as it is in this

limited, but necessary intelligence, is always already inadequate to

the reality it seeks to represent. Bergson argues that this ‘reality’ is

a composite of that which our intelligence can grasp (the manifesta-

tion of an object) and that which eludes it (the object as it is in time).

Thus, in the search for knowledge:

[t]he only explanation we should accept as satisfactory is one which

fits tightly to its object, with no space between them, no crevice in

which any other explanation might equally well be lodged; one which

fits the object only and to which alone the object lends itself. (1974: 1)

An adequate explanation must combine an interrogation of the

object under investigation with an appreciation of the reality of time

as an active, transformative force.

This observation allows us to appreciate Creative Evolution as a

critique of an evolutionary biology that treats species variation as

either accidental (rather than constitutive of life) or indicative of

individual efforts (rather than the whole of life). Such accounts lack

precision for Bergson because, as above, they exhibit an inadequate

grasp of the reality of time. The corrective offered by Creative

Evolution is to develop a theory of knowledge in relation to a theory

of life. Bergson makes the simple, but provocative point that life is in

time, it exists in time:

The theory of knowledge and the theory of life seem to us inseparable

from one another. A theory of life that is not accompanied by a cri-

tique of knowledge is obliged to accept as they stand, the concepts

that the understanding [l’entendement] puts at its disposal: it can but

enclose the facts, willing or not, in pre-existing frames which it

White 247



regards as definitive. It thus obtains a symbolism which is convenient,

perhaps even necessary to positive science, but not a direct vision of

its object. On the other hand, a theory of knowledge which does not

replace the intellect in the general evolution of life will teach us

neither how the frames of knowledge have been constituted nor how

we can enlarge or go beyond them. It is necessary that these two inqui-

ries, theory of knowledge and theory of life, should join each other,

and, by a circular process, push each other unceasingly. (1998

[1907]: xii/492–3; translation modified)

Put simply, if the faculty of intelligence is a product of evolution

then it cannot be studied independent of its evolutionary context in

order to produce an accurate, or rather, ‘precise’, explanation of the

nature of life. Any theory of life must be accompanied by a theory of

knowledge that interrogates the conceptual terms of the explanations

it advances (e.g. mechanism and finalism).

Thus, Creative Evolution presents an understanding of evolution

that accounts for the tendency of life to create new forms that are

simultaneously continuous and discontinuous. Bergson seeks to

establish a continuity between different forms of life (insofar as they

are all living beings) and a discontinuity between them (insofar as

one must be able to account for variation and change between spe-

cies). Life, defined more precisely, is thus characterized by an

unstable balance between two opposing, yet complementary tenden-

cies. In a living being, they take the form of tendencies toward

‘reproduction’ on the one hand, and ‘individuation’ on the other

(1998 [1907]: 13). To survive, living beings must endure. It is this

capacity for endurance that becomes a singular characteristic of life.

This forms the basis for his claim that the tendencies contained in a

living organism can be compared to the evolution of life as a whole:

‘Like the universe as a whole, like each conscious being taken sepa-

rately, the organism which lives is a thing that endures. Its past, in its

entirety, is prolonged into its present, and abides there, actual and

acting’ (1998 [1907]: 15).

Bergson builds on these founding premises in Two Sources when

he claims that attempts to explain morality independent of evolution-

ary accounts are error-ridden. In the same way that evolutionary biol-

ogists tend to use intelligence – itself a product of evolution – to

explain evolution, so too do sociologists tend to use society – also

an evolutionary outcome – to explain morality. Sociologists follow




a tradition of thinkers who rarefy intelligence and sociability in their

efforts to explain social and moral life. Bergson’s remedy is to call

‘for a biological interpretation’ in order to return ‘intelligence and

sociability’ to ‘their proper place back in the general evolution of

life’ (1977 [1932]: 116). Thus, one of the aims of Two Sources is

to claim that the theory of morality and the theory of life must not

be separated if we are to achieve precision in our explanation of

moral life. If we extend the logic of Creative Evolution, it is possible

to see that Bergson argues for an evolutionary theory of society and,

by extension, an evolutionary theory of morality. Indeed, a theory of

morality that is not accompanied by a theory of life is unable to

explain its generative principle, and, further, how it might be devel-

oped or enhanced. Similarly, a theory of life that is obliged to accept

an understanding of morality that is restricted to moral obligation

without a theory of morality will be limited. In short, as with Creative

Evolution, the goal of the Two Sources is precision. It is to present us

with an evolutionary account of morality, one that does not dispense

with moral obligation, but situates it within a theory of life, so as to

explicate what Bergson terms a ‘complete morality’.

We are now in a better position to consider Bergson’s use of the

metaphor of ‘leaping’. Both Creative Evolution and Two Sources use

the English word ‘leap’ to translate the French sauter ‘to jump’ and

bond en avant ‘leap forward’.9 Both texts rely on this metaphor to

connect the two opposing, yet fundamental tendencies of life –

expressed as ‘continuity’ and ‘discontinuity’ in Creative Evolution,

and now as ‘pressure’ and ‘aspiration’ in Two Sources. Let’s examine

how Bergson uses the metaphor of ‘leaping’ in each of these texts in

more detail.

Bergson uses the language of leaping in Creative Evolution to

express the quality of the effort required to grasp both tendencies

of life. Our ordinary intelligence allows us to see the products of

evolution in the diversity of species that surrounds us, but it cannot

capture the reality of life. Bergson forces us to appreciate that each

species is a composite of continuous and discontinuous tendencies,

and to grasp this requires us to think intuitively, to think beyond the

constraints of the intellect:

The act by which life goes forward to the creation of a new form, and

the act by which this form is shaped, are two different and often

White 249



antagonistic movements. The first is continuous with the second, but

cannot continue in it without being drawn aside from its direction, as

would happen to a man leaping [un sauteur], if, in order to clear the

obstacle, he had to turn his eyes from it and look at himself all the

while. (1998 [1907]: 129)

If life comprises two ‘different and often antagonistic’ move-

ments, it is instructive that Bergson uses the metaphor of ‘leaping’

here rather than, say, ‘extending’ or ‘reaching’ to move from one

to the other. What the metaphor of leaping accomplishes that the lan-

guage of extending does not, is to draw attention to the fact that these

two movements, these two acts of life, are fundamentally different in

kind. One cannot move from one to the other by a simple means of

‘extending’, ‘reaching’ or even ‘lifting’. These latter metaphors are

suggestive of movement by degree, of a general incremental move-

ment from one to another. They are useful as means of describing the

composite reality of life but they fail to reflect the qualitative change

required to move from one tendency to the other. In other words,

metaphors of ‘extension’ tend to describe objects at rest rather than

in motion; they present objects as clearly defined rather than in flux.

Let us consider these points in relation to another passage from

Creative Evolution:

He who throws himself into the water having known only the resis-

tance of the solid earth, will immediately be drowned if he does not

struggle against the fluidity of the new environment: he must perforce

still cling to that solidity, so to speak, which even water presents. Only

on this condition can he get used to the fluid’s fluidity. So of our

thought when it has decided to make the leap [le saut]. But leap it must

[il faut quelle saute], that is leave its own environment. Reason,

reasoning on its powers, will never succeed in extending them, though

the extension would not appear at all unreasonable once it were

accomplished. (1998 [1907]: 193; emphasis added)

This passage is instructive because it describes the instinctive

tendency to struggle against a new environment, to ‘cling to solidity’

even when presented with ‘fluidity’. We cannot appreciate the expe-

rience of the simultaneity of ‘solidity’ and ‘fluidity’, even though we

think we can. Accordingly, we resist fluidity as a matter of instinct. In

short, the intellect is capable of apprehending ‘solidity’, but it cannot

appreciate ‘fluidity’.




To demonstrate that both tendencies are not mere extensions of

the other, Bergson must adopt a metaphor that underscores the dif-

ference in kind between them. We ‘jump’ from discontinuity to

continuity, and so we must ‘leap’ from what the intellect ‘knows’

to what is ‘unknown’. The metaphor of leaping illustrates the means

by which we must leave the comfort and security of that which is

‘already made’ in order to attach ourselves to something that is in

the process of ‘being made’. Such a leap is not easy; it is a painful

effort that does a violence to our nature. It is not a permanent vio-

lence, but sudden and spontaneous. It involves a ‘turning back on

itself’, a sudden ‘twisting’ that is infrequent, and can only be sus-

tained for moments at a time given the strength and force of the

instinctive tendency to struggle against the new (1998 [1907]:

237). Thus, for Bergson, leaping is a metaphor for conversion – it

represents a turning away from one tendency of life at the same

time that it turns towards the other.

Bergson also uses the metaphor of leaping to signal a process of

conversion in the Two Sources. But a conversion from what, to what?

Two Sources develops the central argument of Creative Evolution

that life has two different and opposing tendencies. In Two Sources,

they take the form of ‘closed’ and ‘open’ tendencies of life (Bergson,

1977 [1932]: 51; Worms, 2004a, 2004b).10 The closed tendency

exhibits a pressure that is associated with habitual obligation: it is

‘the more perfect as it becomes more impersonal, closer to those nat-

ural forces which we call habit or even instinct’ (1977 [1932]: 50).

The open tendency expresses the aspiration of a love that is indepen-

dent of any object: it is more powerful insofar as ‘it apparently tri-

umphs over nature’ (1977 [1932]: 50). These tendencies are rarely,

if ever, experienced ‘purely’. Typically, we experience them as a

composite of the full spectrum of ‘social life’, and so, consequently,

we would be mistaken to think that there are actually existing soci-

eties that we could call ‘closed’ or ‘open’.

Let us examine each of these tendencies in order to understand the

conversion that the ‘leap’ seeks to effect in Two Sources. The closed

tendency is organized by a natural pressure that culminates in a web

of obligations that assumes the form of ‘habits’ in humans and

‘instinct’ in non-human animals. A habit may start as an intelligent

activity, but insofar as it is automatic and unthought, it assumes the

form that necessity demands by nature:

White 251



an activity which, starting as intelligent, progresses toward an imita-

tion of instinct is exactly what we call, in man, a habit. And the most

powerful habit, the habit whose strength is made up of the accumu-

lated force of all the elementary social habits is necessarily the one

which best imitates instinct. (1977 [1932]: 26)

Although Bergson seeks to establish a continuity between habit

and instinct, he does not collapse one into the other. He repeatedly

insists that although the content of human habits is always contingent,

in aggregate, the habit of contracting habits bears a profound resem-

blance to instinct. As such, habits ‘have a force comparable to that

of instinct in respect of both intensity and regularity’, and it is this

force that Bergson calls the ‘totality of obligation’ (1977 [1932]:

27). Like instincts, habits exert a ‘pressure on our will’, and each indi-

vidual habit corresponds to some kind of social necessity. They are

together entwined to form obligations that ‘at once actualize social

pressure into a diffuse network of everyday practices, and at the same

time, draw strength from the whole, such that the whole of obligation

is immanent to each habit’ (Lefebvre and White, 2010: 467).

Here we can establish a first point of contrast with Durkheim. For

Durkheim, what distinguishes habits from instincts is their inherent

malleability and flexibility; Bergson also acknowledges the contin-

gency of habit. But Bergson begins from the perspective of the whole

of life. Thus, he is able to claim that instinct and habit are similar in the

effect of their power to constrain. It is from the perspective of the total-

ity of obligation that he can claim that habits differ from instinct by

degree and not in kind. We must insist on their difference – in the case

of instinct, ‘each rule is laid down by nature, and is necessary’,

whereas with habit the only necessity is having a rule (1977 [1932]:

28). But again, from the perspective of obligation in general we can

see that habit is nothing other than a ‘virtual instinct’ akin to ‘that

which lies behind the habit of speech’ (1977 [1932]: 28). Habit renders

obligation as natural and unthinking as instinct, and it is through habit

that human societies achieve their necessary stability and durability.

A second point of contrast between Durkheim and Bergson follows

from the first, and has to do with the role of collective representations

in forming habits. As we saw for Durkheim, the ability of the intelli-

gence to create collective representations is a resolutely human capac-

ity. Yet from the perspective of the totality of obligation, Bergson




argues that social life is immanent to both instinct and intelligence

(1977 [1932]: 27). This is because instinct and intelligence are tools

or implements that organize a living being’s orientation to life:

[l]et us merely recall the fact that life is a certain effort to obtain cer-

tain things from raw matter, and that instinct and intelligence, taken in

their finished state, are two distinct means of utilizing a tool for this

object; in the first case, the tool is part of the living creature; in the

other, it is an inorganic instrument which man has had to invent, make

and learn to handle. (1977 [1932]: 118)

Even though instinct is organized by necessity and habit by the

necessity of contracting habits, at root they both share a fundamental

orientation to life. This orientation is actualized according to the

basic needs of life – cohesion, preservation, and obligation – regard-

less of whether the life in question is animal or human. Thus, for

Bergson, it is impossible to lift the individual up and away from their

root biological tendencies and into society because the basic

tendency toward pressure is found in both animals and humans from

the perspective of obligation in general.11

Bergson argues that where habit and instinct affirm an attachment

to life, the intellect inadvertently weakens it. Intelligence encourages

reflection and egoism. In the first instance, reflection engenders an

awareness of the inevitability of death. And, second, this same reflec-

tion counsels egoism and self-preservation above all else. The conse-

quence is that we feel insecure and anxious:

For the intelligent being was not living in the present alone; there can be

no reflexion without foreknowledge, no foreknowledge without inquie-

tude no inquietude without a momentary slackening of the attachment

to life. Above all, there is no humanity without society, and society

demands of the individual an abnegation which the insect, in its auto-

matism, carries to the point of an utter obliviousness of self. Reflexion

cannot be relied upon to keep up this selflessness. (1977 [1932]: 210)

What restores the deficiency of attachment to life is the capacity of

the intelligence to create myths and stories of reassurance about an

‘afterlife’ or ‘reincarnation’. The fabulation function is found in static

religion: it is ‘that element which, in beings endowed with reason, is

called upon to make good any deficiency of attachment to life’ (1977

[1932]: 210).

White 253



We can now begin to appreciate what Bergson means by the open

tendency of life. It takes the form of an appeal or aspiration that coin-

cides with the generative principle of life itself. It is an emotional

spark, a ‘leap’ of faith, a trust or belief. It galvanizes our attachment

to life. This spark is love. For Bergson, it is inseparable from joy

(1977 [1932]: 212). The open tendency is an aspiration to love with-

out object, to love beyond family and nation; it is an appeal to love

beyond definite, particular objects of affection. The love of family

and nation expressed by the closed tendency is one way of preserving

our attachment to life in the face of threat. It defends against hostili-

ties, betrayal, hurt. And in so doing, it assumes a ‘progressive expan-

sion of feeling [that] keeps pace with the increasing size of the object

we love’ (1977 [1932]: 31). But this extensive logic to love all of

humanity is incompatible with the natural instinct to defend one’s

family and nation against enemy threat.12 Bergson observes – some-

what snidely – that nothing makes this clearer than times of war. We

might assume that our social obligations are obligations to humanity

writ large, but ‘under exceptional circumstances, regrettably una-

voidable, they are for the time being inapplicable’ (1977 [1932]: 31).

Not everyone can experience open love in its pure, unmediated

form. Only one who is capable of moving beyond the natural impera-

tive to love one’s brother, mother, neighbour and citizen can do so.

Only one who has the strength to resist the pull of habit can do so.

Only ‘a soul strong enough, noble enough to make this effort’ can

do so (1977 [1932]: 212; emphasis added). Throughout history, Berg-

son notes that there have been instances of individuals – mystics and

other great souls – who have been able to activate this creative

impulse. They impart an unmediated, objectless love in contrast to

those who might simply receive it:

But whichever way we look at it, life is a thing at least as desirable,

even more desirable, to man than to the other species, since the latter

receive it as the effect, produced in passing, by the creative energy,

whereas in man life is that successful effort itself, however precarious

and incomplete this success may be. (1977 [1932]: 211)

Non-mystics may feel the ‘whisper’ of open love when our spirits

are touched, and in such moments feel an attachment to life increas-

ing in strength, resilience and fortitude (1977 [1932]: 212).




For Bergson, then, the leap is a metaphor for moving beyond that

which is most natural to us – our habits, our instincts, our self-

preservation. In passing, Bergson uses the Latin saltus, which finds

frequent expression in the scientific maxim natura non facit saltus

and translates roughly as ‘nature does not make leaps’. I take it that

Bergson is saying that if man is capable of leaping, then he can only

leap insofar as he transcends his nature. If this ‘nature’ is expressed

by the closed tendency and if there is evidence, however infrequent,

of extraordinary souls who are capable of transcending their ‘nature’

to love openly, then we might modify the maxim above along the fol-

lowing lines: ‘nature leaps, but only in man’ (natura facit saltus,

autem in homo).

Conclusion

In this article, I have argued that Durkheim and Bergson use embo-

died metaphors of conversion to show how habits attach us to life.

My focus on ‘lifting’ and ‘leaping’ has allowed us to see how each

thinker addresses the opposition between the social and the natural

world. These metaphors of embodiment illustrate the way that Dur-

kheim and Bergson each understand the complex relationship

between habit, life and society. They enable us to see that habits have

an affective quality that attaches us to vital life forces.

Let us briefly revisit the discussion. For Durkheim, human nature

is characterized by two opposed and antagonistic elements, presented

as a contrast between individual/social, animal/human and instinct/

habit. The only force able to exceed the individual–animal–instinct

is the combined effort of the collective group. As we have seen,

Durkheim uses the metaphor of ‘lifting’ (elever) to describe how

we must each abnegate our personal desires in order to lead a moral

life. As Durkheim remarks in Elementary Forms, it is only ‘[a]s part

of society [that] the individual naturally transcends himself both

when he thinks and when he acts’ (1995 [1912]: 16). For Durkheim

then, lifting is a metaphor of conversion that turns us toward habits.

We must lift ourselves to become human. Bergson argues, in contrast,

that the difference in kind that Durkheim seeks to establish between

animal and human is a false opposition. One must remember that

‘humanity is an animal species’ (1977 [1932]: 235). Our dependence

on habits for survival, that is on the ‘habit of habits’, conditions a

White 255



totality of obligation that differs from instinct merely by degree. For

Bergson then, leaping is a metaphor of conversion that turns us away

from habits. Leaping demands an effort that moves us beyond the

human.

But why must we engage in these efforts, different as they are?

Interestingly, both Durkheim and Bergson offer their metaphors of

lifting and leaping as responses to crisis. In Durkheim’s case, the

metaphor of lifting appears as a response to a crisis of morality.

He presents the terms of the crisis in The Division of Labour, where

the morality of traditional societies (i.e. mechanical solidarity) has

lost its influence, and its successor (i.e. organic solidarity) has not

developed quickly enough to fill the void (1984: 339). Durkheim

worries that our attachment to morality, that is to social life, has

consequently weakened. Accordingly, to respond to this deficit of

attachment, we must make the necessary effort to affirm and develop

our moral dispositions. To this end, he argues in Moral Education:

‘[W]e are living precisely in one of those critical, revolutionary

periods when authority is usually weakened through the loss of tra-

ditional discipline’ (1961: 54). Our task, put simply, is to salvage our

‘moral patrimony’ – something that is only possible by means of lift-

ing ourselves toward habits that subvert our natural tendencies. For

Bergson, however, the imperative to leap is episodic, it is now urgent

in its demand. He too, although, is responding to a moral crisis, if not

a crisis in morality. Our intelligence exhibits a tendency toward clo-

sure. It has outstripped the bounds of nature, now we have learned

how to annihilate ourselves as a species.13 In other words, our intel-

ligence has found yet another way to weaken our attachment to life.

We must then find a way to strengthen this attachment, but to do so,

we must leap from the habits that will lead to annihilation, and rekin-

dle the roots of a morality that can inhibit it. Bergson reminds us that

‘[t]he very root of morality is the creation of life in general’ (1977

[1932]: 270). This root is synonymous with the open tendency of

love. And so we must leap from the defensive attitude associated with

closed ‘society’ and adopt the attitude of the open (l’ame ouverte).

Such ‘a leap forward [bond en avant] . . . can take place only if

society has decided to try the experiment; and the experiment will not

be tried unless society has allowed itself to be won over, or at least

stirred’ (1977 [1932]: 74). Odd as it may seem, the crises to which

Durkheim and Bergson each respond are similar, as are the remedies




which they recommend. Both require an effort – it is simply that we

must decide whether we are to lift or to leap.

Notes

1. Although several authors have observed that Bergson’s Two

Sources offers critical commentary on Durkheim’s conception

of society (Guerlac, 2006, 2012; Kolakowski, 1985; Riley,

2002), there is still remarkably little work in French or English

that traces their engagement (see Keck, 2005, 2012; Lefebvre

and White, 2010; Worms, 2004a, 2004b, for exceptions). Indeed,

it is curious that their dispute has not garnered more attention

since Bergson elsewhere acknowledges Durkheim as a key

adversary in Two Sources (Belloy, 2002: 133, 133n2).

2. Durkheim’s debate with Tarde is well known (Candea, 2010;

Latour, 2002, 2005; Vargas et al., 2008), and there is a growing

appreciation of Bergson’s debt to Tarde (Guerlac, 2012; Toews,

1999, 2003). See also Deleuze (1994), Blackman (2007), and

Barry and Thrift (2007).

3. To this end, Lisa Blackman observes that:

[t]he link between affect and life is often made through the concept

of movement; where the possibilities for enhancing or expanding

life are aligned to the flow of intensive energies or affects which

traverse, connect and disrupt the borders and supposed boundaries

between bodies, human and non-human. (2010: 166)

4. It might be interesting to pursue a genealogy of the uses of ‘lifting’

in social and political thinking. Such a project might begin with an

examination of J.-J. Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of

Inequality (1992 [1755]) in order to explore the transformation of

the human animal by society. It could also consider lifting in the

Freudian sense of how, in ‘Creative writers and daydreaming’

(1959 [1908]) art offers a relief in the form of a pressure being lifted

(aufgehoben) (see Chamberlain, 2000: 33). It might also take up the

sense of ‘lifting’ in the way that laughter may ‘lift’ cathexis in Jokes

and their Relation to the Unconscious (1960 [1905]).

5. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word ‘lift’ variously:

Consider its meaning as a verb: ‘To raise into the air from the

ground, or to a higher position; to elevate, heave, hoist. Also, to

erect, rear on high (a building)’. Compare this to its meaning as a

White 257



noun: ‘An elevating influence or effect; Also a cheering or encoura-

ging influence or effect, a sense of elation’ (see www.OED.com).

6. It is important to note that Bergson’s interest in habits is sustained

throughout his career. In Time and Free Will (2001 [1889]), for

example, Bergson argues that habits are sustained, regular ways

of thinking, acting and feeling that – although important for social

life – are nonetheless limited because they restrict, rather than

encourage freedom. They express the automatic, non-reflective

dimension of lived, bodily experience on a par with animal

instinct. Later, in Matter and Memory (1991 [1896]), his observa-

tions on habit are developed in conjunction with a new concept of

memory that seeks to resolve long-standing debates over the rela-

tion of consciousness to matter. It is with his final book, The Two

Sources of Morality and Religion (1977 [1932]), that his observa-

tions on habit are fleshed out in relation to a theory of society that

takes its inspiration from Creative Evolution (1998 [1907]). In

Two Sources, habits are the embodiment of an interconnected web

of obligations that tie us at once to ourselves and to others.

7. The publication of this book in 1932 came as a surprise even to

Bergson’s closest friends. Bergson had largely retired from

academic and public life due to debilitating arthritis. Bergson

was appointed to the College de France in 1896 where he taught

until 1919. In 1916, the French government entrusted him with a

diplomatic mission to Spain, and a year later, with another to the

United States. He went on to become president of the League of

Nations’ International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation,

which was precursor to UNESCO (Lefebvre and White, 2012).

Because so many years had passed since the publication of his

last major work, commentators often remark on the difficulty

of reconciling his earlier ideas with those in the Two Sources

(e.g. see Scharfstein, 1942).

8. See Lefebvre and White (2010) for a reconstruction of Bergson’s

critique of Durkheim in Two Sources. The argument in Two

Sources was developed over 25 years following the publication

of Creative Evolution in 1907. Its roots include a long and tense

institutional as well as intellectual relationship with Durkheim

(Fournier, 2008: 652–3, 821–5, 829–31, 865–6).

9. If one were to pursue a broader genealogy of the ‘leap’ in

philosophy, one would likely begin with an examination of




Kierkegaard, to whom the phrase ‘a leap of faith’ is commonly

attributed. Yet, as several commentators have remarked, Kierke-

gaard himself does not use the phrase in these specific terms. In

The Concept of Anxiety (1981 [1844]), for example, the leap is

used to describe sin which can have no moral justification of

explanation. Nietzsche also famously uses the language of ‘leap-

ing’ in conjunction with ‘dancing’ to describe the process of

overcoming in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (2006 [1883–5]). See

Gilles Deleuze’s discussion of the contrast between Kierkegaard

and Nietzsche in Difference and Repetition (1994 [1968]).

10. It is important to note that for Bergson ‘there is no particular

impulse towards social life, only the general movement of life

itself’ (1998 [1907]: 101).

11. In Two Sources Bergson specifically uses the term ‘uplift’ to

describe Durkheim’s dualistic conception of human nature,

albeit in an oblique fashion (1977 [1932]: 66–8).

12. See Lefebvre and White (2012, 2013) on the role human rights

play in mediating the extensive logic of the closed tendency

insofar as they aspire to love all of humanity openly.

13. With prescience Bergson anticipates the atomic bomb in Two

Sources:

But now intelligence, raising the construction of instruments to a

degree of complexity and perfection which nature . . . had not even

foreseen, pouring into these machines reserves of energy which

nature . . . had never even thought of, has endowed us with powers

beside which those of our body barely count: they will be altogether

limitless when science is able to liberate the force which is

enclosed, or rather condensed, in the slightest particle of ponderable

matter. (1977 [1932]: 312)

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Author biography

Melanie White is Senior Lecturer in Social Theory at the University of

New South Wales. She is co-editor of Bergson, Politics, and Religion

(Duke University Press, 2012).




Documents

Habit as a Force of Life in Durkheim and Bergson