Henri Bergson: Key Writings (Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers)

415 Pages·2002·10.29 MB·English

by  Keith Ansell Pearson

Henri Bergson
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Henri Bergson
Key Writings
Edited by
KEITH ANSELL PEARSON
and
JOHN MULLARKEY
Melanges translated by
MELISSA McMAHON
continuum
NEW YORK • LONDON
CONTINUUM
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First published 2002
Introduction and this selection of texts © Keith Ansell Pearson and
John Mullarkey 2002
Extracts © Presses Universitaires de France 2001
Melanges extract translation © Continuum 2002
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 0-8264-5728-2 (hardback)
0-8264-5729-0 (paperback)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Typeset by Aarontype Limited, Easton, Bristol
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bookcraft (Bath) Ltd
Contents
Abbreviations vii
Chronology of Life and Works viii
Introduction 1
Time and Free Will
The Idea of Duration 49
Matter and Memory
Introduction 81
Images and Bodies 86
The Persistence of the Past 124
Planes of Consciousness 136
Mind-Energy
Memory of the Present and False Recognition 141
Brain and Thought: A Philosophical Illusion 157
Creative Evolution
The Endurance of Life 171
Mechanism and Finalism 187
Life as Creative Change 191
Duration and Simultaneity
Concerning the Nature of Time 205
The Creative Mind
The Possible and the Real 223
Philosophical Intuition 233
The Perception of Change 248
On the Pragmatism of William James: Truth and Reality 267
Introduction to Metaphysics 274
vi Contents
Bergson and Kant
Beyond the Noumenal 285
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
Morality, Obligation and the Open Soul 295
Frenzy, Mechanism, Mysticism 329
Melanges
Good Sense and Classical Studies 345
Letter to G. Lechalas 354
Bergson-James Correspondence 357
Letter to Harald Hoffding 366
Letter to Floris Delattre 369
Message to the Descartes Congress, 1937 372
Notes 376
Guide to Further Reading 389
Index 395
Abbreviations
CE Creative Evolution
CM The Creative Mind
DS Duration and Simultaneity, with Reference to Einstein's Theory
EP Ecrits et Paroles
M Melanges
MEa Mind-Energy
MM Matter and Memory
OE Oeuvres
RDM Revue des Deux Mondes
TSMR The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
TFW Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of
Consciousness
Chronology of Life and Works
1859 18 October: Henri-Louis Bergson born, 18 rue Lamartine, Paris, the
second son of four boys and three girls to Polish father, Michael
Bergson (originally Berek-son) and English mother, from Doncaster
in Yorkshire, Katherine Levison.
1869 Bergson family move to London (21 Shirland Road), Bergson
remains in Paris and educated at lycee Fontaine (lycee Condorcet).
1877 Bergson wins first prize in mathematics for the Concours General,
and the 'plane solution of Pascal' is published the following year in
\hzNouvellesAnnalesdeMathematiques. Bergson's teacher, Desboves,
would recount the solution in his Etude sur Pascal et les geometres
contemporains. At the time Bergson's future is seen to lie in geometry
as he viewed things spatially. Bergson also distinguishes himself in
philosophy, winning first prize with the essay 'Perceptions reelles et
perceptions acquises'. Bergson expected to enter the Ecole Normale
to study mathematics and his decision to study philosophy instead
disappoints Desboves, who wrote to him, 'you will only be a philos-
opher and have missed your vocation'.
1878 Enters the Ecole Normale, in the same class as Jean Jaures, and
Emile Durkheim is a fellow student. Bergson reads John Stuart Mill
and Herbert Spencer, studying carefully the latter's First Principles,
and initially attracted to materialism and mechanism. Bergson
studying under the influence of his tutor, Emile Boutroux (author of
works on the contingency of nature and the idea of natural law) and
also Felix Ravaisson and Jules Lachelier.
1881 Leaves the Ecole Normale with an agrege de philosophic. Begins a
teaching post in Angers and enrols for a doctorate at the University
of Paris.
1882 Takes up teaching post at the lycee Blaise-Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand.
1883 While at the lycee Blaise-Pascal publishes an edition of Lucretius'
De Rerum Natura under the title of Extraits de Lucrece with a com-
mentary and notes.
In a letter to William James of 9 May 1908, Bergson singles out
the years 1881-3 as a decisive period in his intellectual development:
'Until that point I had remained completely steeped in the mechan-
istic theories to which I had been introduced very early on by reading
Herbert Spencer, the philosopher to whom I adhered more or less
Chronology of Life and Works ix
unreservedly'. He tells James that he was awoken from his dogmatic
mechanistic slumbers by the realization that 'scientific time has
no duration'.
1886 Bergson publishes his first essay, 'De la simulation inconsciente dans
1'etat d'hypnotisme', in Revue Philosophique.
1888 Returns to Paris to teach, first at the College Rollin, then at the lycee
Henri-Quatre as Professor of Rhetoric, where he remains until 1897.
Submits two theses to the University of Paris: Quid Aristoteles de loca
sensorit? (What is Aristotle's Conception of Place?} and Essai sur les
donnees immediates de la conscience (Time and Free Will}.
1889 Bergson marries Louise Neuburger, aged 19, and cousin of Marcel
Proust, who was a page-boy at the wedding. Later, on the publication
of Swann 's Way, the first volume of A la recherche du temps perdu,
Proust would resist attempts to describe him as a Bergsonian novelist.
1896 Publishes Matter and Memory. William James wrote to Bergson that
the work makes a Copernican Revolution and compares it to
Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge and Kant's Critique of
Pure Reason.
1897 Applies unsuccessfully, and second time round, for a post at the
Sorbonne. Assumes position of maitre de conferences at the Ecole
Normale.
1900 Appointed Chair of Ancient Philosophy at the College de France,
having been rejected the previous year, in favour of Gabriel Tarde,
for the Chair of Modern Philosophy.
Publication of Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic.
1901 Made a member of the Academic des sciences morales et politiques.
20 March: Presents a lecture on 'Dreams' at the Institut Psycho-
logique, Paris.
1903 Publishes 'Introduction to metaphysics' in Revue de metaphysique et
de morale.
1904 Transfers to Chair of Modern Philosophy at the College de France
on the death of Gabriel Tarde.
1907 Publishes Creative Evolution. William James described the book as
'a real wonder in the history of philosophy'.
1908 William James lectures on Bergson as part of his 'Hibbert Lectures'
delivered at Manchester College, Oxford, attacking Oxford idealism
and calling for a 'radical empiricism' (published as A Pluralistic
Universe in 1909).
1911 English translation of Creative Evolution appears, and in France a
translation of James's Pragmatism is published with an Introduction,
'Verite et realite', by Bergson.
Delivers a paper on 'Philosophical intuition' at the Fourth Interna-
tional Congress of Philosophy, held in Bologna. Papers also delivered
by Hans Driesch, Paul Langevin and Henri Poincare. The same year