Knowra Henri Bergson Henri Bergson Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was a French philosopher who distinguished lived time, or duration, from measurable clock time and defended intuition as a way of knowing. He received the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Duration (philosophy) : In Bergson’s philosophy, duration is lived time: continuous, qualitative change that cannot be divided into identical units. This is Bergson’s central alternative to treating time as a sequence of measurable points.
Matter and Memory : Matter and Memory is Bergson’s 1896 book on perception, memory, body, and the relation between mind and matter. It develops his theories of perception and memory through the problem of mind and body.
William James : William James was an American philosopher and psychologist known for pragmatism and for treating consciousness as a stream. James and Bergson shared interests in lived experience and criticized overly static accounts of reality.
Newtonian mechanics : Newtonian mechanics is a classical framework describing motion through laws of force, mass, and absolute space and time. Bergson contrasts measurable, uniform time with duration as experienced change.
Intuition (Bergson) : For Bergson, intuition is a method of entering into the continuous movement of reality rather than analyzing it from outside. Bergson presents intuition as a philosophical method for grasping duration.
Creative Evolution : Creative Evolution is Bergson’s 1907 book proposing that evolution involves genuine novelty rather than mechanical unfolding alone. It is the major work where élan vital becomes an account of biological evolution.
Émile Durkheim : Émile Durkheim was a French sociologist who studied social facts, institutions, and collective forms of life. Durkheim’s social-scientific approach differed from Bergson’s emphasis on intuition and individual experience.
Mechanism (philosophy) : Mechanism is the view that natural phenomena can be explained through matter, motion, and deterministic causal laws. Bergson rejects mechanism as a complete account of life’s emergence and novelty.
Élan vital : Élan vital is Bergson’s proposed creative impetus that accounts for novelty and divergent forms in evolution. It extends Bergson’s account of duration into a theory of life’s creative evolution.
Laughter (Bergson) : Laughter is Bergson’s 1900 essay explaining comedy through the perception of rigidity in human behavior. It applies his account of life and habit to comic effects and social correction.
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