O PROBLEMA DA CAUSALIDADE EM BERGSON:: DUAS INTERPRETAÇÕES BRASILEIRAS

In order to make a punctual contribution to the history of Bergsonism in Brazil, I try to understand how the interpretation of the causality problem evolves in Bergson’s philosophy. For that purpose, I revisit two studies of recognized relevance: Bento Prado Junior’s Présence et champ transcendental and Franklin Leopoldo e Silva’s Bergson: intuição e discurso fi losófi co. The guiding questions of this paper are “How have both authors interpreted the problem of causality?”; “What are its importance and its philosophical consequences?”; “In what ways do they pose and answer it along their interpretation of Bergson’s work; “How is it that their interpretative alternatives are both distinguished and complementary at the same time?”. Bento Prado Jr. reveals in 1965 that Bergson’s attempt tends to identify the causal determinism, as well as his endeavor to relocate the problem of causality in its proper “region of reality”, require a reinterpretation of Kant’s fi rst critique. In his turn, Franklin Leopoldo e Silva enforces Bento Prado Junior’s interpretation and concludes, by extension, that causality in Bergson’s philosophy is precisely replaced by the concept of creation in the “region of reality” of Time. According to Franklin Leopoldo e Silva, causality duly symbolizes time in science, whereas creation is the concept that expresses the temporality of conscience and the specifi city of art.