Henri Bergson(1859 — 1941)

Bergson's founding thesis in which he introduces the concept of 'duration' as the inner experience of time, irreducible to the time measured by science. This work constitutes the starting point of his entire philosophy.

A major work exploring the relationships between the brain, memory, and perception. Bergson distinguishes habit-memory (mechanical) from pure memory (spiritual), laying the foundations of a philosophy of mind.

A brilliant essay in which Bergson analyzes laughter as a social reaction to 'the mechanical encrusted upon the living.' An accessible work frequently studied in secondary education for its clarity and depth.

Bergson's masterpiece, in which he develops the concept of the élan vital to propose a creative reading of biological evolution against pure Darwinian mechanism. This work earned him immediate international recognition.

Bergson's last major work, distinguishing closed morality (tribal, mechanical) from open morality (universal, creative), and exploring mysticism as the culmination of the élan vital in humanity.

A collection of essays and lectures in which Bergson revisits his philosophical method and defends intuition as a mode of knowledge superior to analytical intelligence for grasping living reality.

Pure duration is the form which the succession of our conscious states assumes when our ego lets itself live, when it refrains from separating its present state from its former states.

The vital impetus we speak of consists, in short, in a need for creation. It cannot create absolutely, because it encounters matter before it, that is to say the movement inverse to its own.

Any incident is comic that calls our attention to the physical side of a person when it is the moral side that is at stake. Why does one laugh at an orator who sneezes at the most pathetic moment of his speech? Because something mechanical is encrusted upon something living.

A philosopher worthy of the name has never said more than a single thing; and even then it is something he has tried to say rather than actually said, and what he has said he has only half said.

Humanity lies groaning, half crushed beneath the weight of its own progress. It does not sufficiently realize that its future is in its own hands. It is for humanity to see first whether it wants to go on living.

Institution where Bergson taught from 1900 to 1921 and where his lectures on the philosophy of duration drew considerable crowds, making him the most celebrated intellectual figure of the Belle Époque.

Elite graduate school where Bergson pursued his brilliant studies from 1878 and forged his philosophical training, rubbing shoulders with the future intellectual elites of France.

School where Bergson taught as a philosophy professor from 1883 to 1888, a formative provincial period during which he wrote his foundational thesis on consciousness and time.

Institution to which Bergson was elected a member in 1914, cementing his status as a major figure in French letters and thought, where he delivered several widely noted speeches.

Bourgeois residential district where Bergson lived for much of his adult life, in an apartment that served as the setting for numerous intellectual conversations with the leading figures of his time.