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I would like to talk about the normal and the pathological in the work of Henri Bergson, but from a particular point of view. Readers of Bergson are familiar with a notion that appears in Matter and Memory and that then returns in a number of different articles. It is the notion of "attention to life" [attention à la vie]. It first appears in the third chapter of Matter and Memory, then in Laughter (1900), then in the texts about dreaming (1901), and, in reference to false recognition in "La fausse reconnaissance" (1908), in "L'âme et le corps" (1912), and in "Les fantômes de vivants" (1913). We find this notion in every important text of Bergson. But, most importantly, in the foreword of Matter and Memory in 1911, Bergson insists on this concept and declares: ". . . notre vie psychologique peut se jouer à des hauteures différentes . . . , selon le degré de notre attention à la vie. Là est une des idées directrices du présent ouvrage, celle même qui a servi de point de départ à notre travail."1 One can understand why this concept is so important for Bergson. He first uses it to give an account of our constant strain of adjustment, whether conscious or unconscious, to real situations. Attention to life is the operation through which we adapt ourselves to the exigencies of the outer world, through a kind of equilibrium. This is why Bergson can say that "attention to life" is the "sense of the real" [sens du reel]. But, above all, with this concept, one can draw a line in Bergson between the normal and the pathological that crosses the divide between the real and the unreal (dreams, deliriums, etc.). This explains why the concept is so important in those texts.
This is, however, not precisely the notion I want to talk about, but rather a similar notion, and one that, at first sight, some commentaries have considered to be synonymous with "attention to life." It is a concept that appears only in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion: the concept of "attachment to life." One can even suppose that "attachment to life" plays as central a role in The Two Sources as "attention to life"...