ABSTRACT
Bergson’s philosophical project can be understood as reintroducing metaphysics after Kant’s and the positivists’ criticisms. His main strategy to do so may be called “metaphysical empiricism”. Metaphysical empiricism rejects all traditional metaphysical dualisms between the world of experience and the world beyond experience in favor of a unique plane of experiences. Nevertheless, it incorporates these dualisms in this plane by claiming a metaphysical difference between two regimes of experience. This paper analyses such dualism by showing how the inferior regime of experience is construed in terms of our interactions with our natural and social environments, while the superior type is conceived in terms of pure experience. It focuses especially on two cases of exceptional experience of perception and memory by emphasizing how Bergson attributes a metaphysical value to them in contrast to their practical counterpart. Such metaphysical empiricism is shown to be one of the main programmes operating in French philosophy from the 19th century to the present.
