L’errore del determinismo e l’illusione dei suoi avversari

ABSTRACT: “THE ERROR OF DETERMINISM AND THE ILLUSION OF ITS OPPONENTS”. THE “MEGARIAN” ANTIMECHANISM OF BERGSON In the third chapter of the Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience, Bergson puts forward a purely megarian thesis on freedom. In order to found real freedom, he says, it must be emended from the possible. Only in this way will freedom be preserved from deterministic objection. To found metaphysical freedom by purifying it of contingency is a very paradoxical thesis to which, however, Bergson will always remain faithful. Bergson’s “megarism” has remained largely unnoticed despite the fact that it has been lying, like the purloined letter from Poe’s tale, on his desk since 1889. After Bergson we can therefore reconsider the meaning of megarian philosophy. We are, so to speak, “allowed” to ask ourselves whether those bizarre thinkers were really intransigent Eleatics or early process philosophers, pantheists and radical immanentists.