On April 6, 1922, in Paris, Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson publicly debated the nature of time. Einstein considered Bergson's theory of time to be a soft, psychological notion, irreconcilable with ...the quantitative realities of physics. Bergson, who gained fame as a philosopher by arguing that time should not be understood exclusively through the lens of science, criticized Einstein's theory of time for being a metaphysics grafted on to science, one that ignored the intuitive aspects of time.The Physicist and the Philosophertells the remarkable story of how this explosive debate transformed our understanding of time and drove a rift between science and the humanities that persists today.
Jimena Canales introduces readers to the revolutionary ideas of Einstein and Bergson, describes how they dramatically collided in Paris, and traces how this clash of worldviews reverberated across the twentieth century. She shows how it provoked responses from figures such as Bertrand Russell and Martin Heidegger, and carried repercussions for American pragmatism, logical positivism, phenomenology, and quantum mechanics. Canales explains how the new technologies of the period-such as wristwatches, radio, and film-helped to shape people's conceptions of time and further polarized the public debate. She also discusses how Bergson and Einstein, toward the end of their lives, each reflected on his rival's legacy-Bergson during the Nazi occupation of Paris and Einstein in the context of the first hydrogen bomb explosion.
The Physicist and the Philosopheris a magisterial and revealing account that shows how scientific truth was placed on trial in a divided century marked by a new sense of time.
This collection of 16 essays brings 20th-century French philosopher Henri Bergson's work on immanence together with the latest ideas in art theory and the practice of immanent art as found in ...painting, photography, film and performance.
The work of Henri Bergson, the foremost French philosopher of the early twentieth century, is not usually explored for its political dimensions. Indeed, Bergson is best known for his writings on ...time, evolution, and creativity. This book concentrates instead on his political philosophy—and especially on his late masterpiece, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion —from which Alexandre Lefebvre develops an original approach to human rights.We tend to think of human rights as the urgent international project of protecting all people everywhere from harm. Bergson shows us that human rights can also serve as a medium of personal transformation and self-care. For Bergson, the main purpose of human rights is to initiate all human beings into love. Forging connections between human rights scholarship and philosophy as self-care, Lefebvre uses human rights to channel the whole of Bergson's philosophy.
Henri Bergson is frequently cited amongst the holy trinity of major influences on Modernism-literary and otherwise-alongside Sigmund Freud and William James. Gilles Deleuze's Bergsonism has ...re-popularized Bergson for the twenty-first century, so much so that, perhaps, our Bergson is Deleuze's Bergson. Despite renewed interest in Bergson, his influence remains understudied and consequently undervalued. While books examining the impact of Freud and James on Modernism abound, Bergson's impact, though widely acknowledged, has been closely examined much more rarely. Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism remedies this deficiency in three ways. First, it offers close readings and critiques of six pivotal texts. Second, it reassesses Bergson's impact on Modernism while also tracing his continuing importance to literature, media, and philosophy throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. In its final section it provides an extended glossary of Bergsonian terms, complete with extensive examples and citations of their use across his texts. The glossary also maps the influence of Bergson's work by including entries on related writers, all of whom Bergson either corresponded with or critiqued.
Du 14 au 20 octobre 2012 s’est tenu, à Tokyo et à Kyoto, un colloque sur les "Deux sources de la morale et de la religion" d’Henri Bergson, sous le titre "Considérations inactuelles. Bergson et la ...philosophie du XIXe siècle". Il s’inscrit dans le prolongement des précédents dont la totalité a le nom de "Projet Bergson au Japon" (PBJ). Le présent volume fait objet des actes de ce colloque. L’idée était assez simple : il s’agissait de relire les Deux Sources de Bergson sous les prismes du XIXe siècle, en faisant écho avec un passage célèbre de "Considérations inactuelles" écrit par Nietzsche : "Car je ne sais quel sens la philosophie pourrait avoir aujourd’hui, sinon celui d’exercer une influence inactuelle, c’est-à-dire d’agir contre le temps, donc sur le temps, et, espérons-le, au bénéfice d’un temps à venir". Nous pourrions en superposer un autre passage célèbre cette fois de Bergson : "Mais il y aurait une dernière entreprise à tenter. Ce serait d’aller chercher l’expérience à sa source, ou plutôt au-dessus de ce tournant décisif où, s’infléchissant dans le sens de notre utilité, elle devient proprement l’expérience humaine". Le défi est relevé entre ces deux phrases.***From 14 to 20 October 2012, a symposium on Henri Bergson's "Two Sources of Morals and Religion" was held in Tokyo and Kyoto under the heading "Untimely Meditations. Bergson and the philosophy of the nineteenth century". It is a continuation of precedent conferences merging in the "Project Bergson in Japan" (PBJ). This volume comprises the conference proceedings. The idea was to reread Bergson's "Two Sources" under the prisms of the nineteenth century, echoing a famous passage of "Untimely Meditations" written by Nietzsche: "For I do not know what sense philosophy could have today, if not that of exerting an inactive influence, that is, of acting against time, and therefore on time, and, hopefully, for the benefit of a time to come." We could superimpose this line with another famous passage, this time from Bergson: "But there would be one last venture to try. It would be to go and seek the experience at ist source, or rather above this decisive turning point where, in the direction of our utility, it becomes properly the human experience. " The challenge lies between these two sentences.
Henri Bergson (1859-1941) was one of the most celebrated and influential philosophers of the twentieth century. He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature for his philosophical work, and his ...controversial ideas about time, memory and life shaped generations of thinkers, writers and artists.
In this clear and engaging introduction, Mark Sinclair examines the full range of Bergson's work. The book sheds new light on familiar aspects of Bergson's thought, but also examines often ignored aspects of his work, such as his philosophy of art, his philosophy of technology and the relation of his philosophical doctrines to his political commitments. After an illuminating overview of his life and work, chapters are devoted to the following topics:
the experience of time as duration
the experience of freedom
memory
mind and world
laughter and humour
knowledge
art and creativity
the élan vital as a theory of biological life
ethics, religion, war and modern technology.
With a final chapter on his legacy, Bergson is an outstanding guide to one of the great philosophers. Including chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary, it is essential reading for those interested in metaphysics, time, free will, aesthetics, the philosophy of biology, continental philosophy and the role of European intellectuals in World War I.
Within the Western tradition, it was the philosophers Henri
Bergson and Max Scheler who laid out and explored the nonrational
power of "intuition" at work in human beings that plays a key role
in ...orienting their thinking and action within the world. As author
Adriana Alfaro Altamirano notes, Bergon's and Scheler's
philosophical explorations, which paralleled similar developments
by other modernist writers, artists, and political actors of the
early twentieth century, can yield fruitful insights into the ideas
and passions that animate politics in our own time.
The Belief in Intuition shows that intuition (as
Bergson and Scheler understood it) leads, first and foremost, to a
conception of freedom that is especially suited for dealing with
hierarchy, uncertainty, and alterity. Such a conception of freedom
is grounded in a sense of individuality that remains true to its
"inner multiplicity," thus providing a distinct contrast to and
critique of the liberal notion of the self.
Focusing on the complex inner lives that drive human action, as
Bergson and Scheler did, leads us to appreciate the moral and
empirical limits of liberal devices that mean to regulate our
actions "from the outside." Such devices, like the law, may not
only carry pernicious effects for freedom but, more troublingly,
oftentimes "erase their traces," concealing the very ways in which
they are detrimental to a richer experience of subjectivity.
According to Alfaro Altamirano, Bergson's and Scheler's
conception of intuition and personal authority puts contemporary
discussions about populism in a different light: It shows that
liberalism would only at its own peril deny the anthropological,
moral, and political importance of the bearers of charismatic
authority. Personal authority thus understood relies on a dense,
but elusive, notion of personality, for which personal authority is
not only consistent with freedom, but even contributes to it in
decisive ways.
Winner of the 2012 Godbey Authors' Awards presented by the Godbey Lecture Series in Southern Methodist University's Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences Living Consciousness examines the ...brilliant, but now largely ignored, insights of French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941). Presenting a detailed and accessible analysis of Bergson's thought, G. William Barnard highlights how Bergson's understanding of the nature of consciousness and, in particular, its relationship to the physical world remain strikingly relevant to numerous contemporary fields. These range from quantum physics and process thought to philosophy of mind, depth psychology, transpersonal theory, and religious studies. Bergson's notion of consciousness as a ceaselessly dynamic, inherently temporal substance of reality itself provides a vision that can function as a persuasive alternative to mechanistic and reductionistic understandings of consciousness and reality. Throughout the work, Barnard offers "ruminations" or neo-Bergsonian responses to a series of vitally important questions such as: What does it mean to live consciously, authentically, and attuned to our inner depths? Is there a philosophically sophisticated way to claim that the survival of consciousness after physical death is not only possible but likely?
