Bergson Notes
Some Bergson from Matter and Memory (New York: Zone Books, 1991). Pure Perception: pure perception […] [a perception possessed by a being] absorbed in the present and capable, by giving up every form of memory, of obtaining a vision of matter both immediate and instantaneous (34). Perception, in its pure state, is, then, in very truth, a part of things. An, as for affective sensation, it does not spring spontaneously from the depths of consciousness to extend itself, as it grows weaker, in space; it is one with the necessary modifications to which, in the midst of the surrounding images that influence it, the particular image that each one of us terms his body is subject (64-5). — In short, affective sensation is one with the necessary modifications to which the body is subject. The act of both perception and sensation are in this formulation, embedded in the world and bound to the order of things and individual bodies. Pure perception bears, by definition, upon present objects, acting on our organs and our nerve centers … (75).
