The Intermediate Territory as a Dialogue: New Horizons of Philosophy Connected by Image 1900 to Today

The Intermediate Territory as a Dialogue: New Horizons of Philosophy Connected by Image 1900 to Today

The concept of image is neither a representation of an object abstracted in the mind nor a fixed physical fact. It is a unique form of reality positioned between these two extremes. Bergson believed that the epistemology of the early twentieth century was merely a back-and-forth between two positions, idealism and realism, and did not sufficiently reexamine the structure of the problem itself. Idealism draws the world toward consciousness and collects it as a representation, thereby weakening external resistance and chance. Realism, on the other hand, emphasizes matter so much that it is forced to assume extra capacities on the part of matter in terms of how it accounts for representation and perception. This back-and-forth between the two ultimately leads to a cycle of trying to explain the other by assuming one or the other. Imagery is an intermediate concept introduced to break this closed movement itself from the outside.

In this framework, the world is depicted as the totality of images from the beginning. The world does not become an image until it is perceived; it exists as an image even before it is perceived. Perception is merely a state in which the continuous whole is partially cut out in relation to the body. Perception and object are not opposed to each other as subject and object, but are understood as different functions within the same continuum. In this case, image is the medium that connects subject and object, and at the same time, it is the place where the distinction itself is relativized. Perception is not an act of adding something to the world, but a form of relationship established within the world.

This idea had the power to push epistemology away from a static theory of correspondences to a dynamic theory of interactions. Knowing is not a matter of copying the correct representation in one's mind, but of how the body is involved in the flow of imagery that fills the world, and what possibilities of action it opens up. In this sense, Image is a concept that has opened up a philosophical dialogue that goes beyond epistemology and crosses ontology and action theory. It has been pointed out that the influence of the Bergsonian notion of the middle has been behind the reappraisal of perception as a lived relation in phenomenology since the mid-twentieth century, especially in Merleau-Ponty's theory of the body.

In recent years, the Bergson entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and in studies of the history of French philosophy have reevaluated imagery as an important theoretical device for transcending the dichotomy between idealism and realism. It is also sometimes referred to in the dialogue between philosophy and cognitive science because of its contact with the position that understands perception as an interaction with action and the environment. Image is being reread not as a mere historical concept, but as an ongoing scaffold of thought that allows us to reexamine the relationship between the world and perception.