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Over the past few decades, there has been a renewal of scholarly interest in the work of Henri Bergson (1859–1941). At once a commentary and a stark re-evaluation of Bergson’s philosophy, Updating Bergson: A Philosophy of the Enduring Present argues that time should be thought of as a hierarchy of simultaneous durations, the shifting reality of which can be revealed by the philosophical method of intuition. A duration is a perpetually dynamic flow situated in the now. Put simply, for Bergson, change is the substance of things. Nothing exists apart from alteration. Adam Lovasz analyzes Bergson’s philosophy of time, encompassing the three basic types of duration—material, organic, and subjective—and also touches on themes such as relativity, evolution, the problem of materialism and idealism, and the topic of free will. Lovasz connects key questions addressed by Bergson to contemporary scientific debates and paradigms. Shedding new light on the various aspects of Bergson's philosophy, this book is both a provocation and an invitation to think in terms of the enduring present, rather than committing ourselves to a dead past or an absent future.
This book argues for an actualist and presentist reading of Bergson's philosophy of time. Instead of the past or future, what matters is the self-realization of diverse durations. Through both philosophical and interdisciplinary means, Adam Lovasz actualizes Bergson's work and brings it into dialogue with contemporary scientific debates.
"This volume of essays is the first collection in twenty years in English to address the whole of Bergson's philosophy, including his metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of life, aesthetics, ethics, social and political thought, and religion. The essays explore Bergson's influence on a number of different fields, and also extend his thought to pressing issues of our time, including philosophy as a way of life, inclusion and exclusion in politics, ecology, the philosophy of race and discrimination, and religion and its enduring appeal. The volume will be valuable for all who are interested in this important thinker and his continuing relevance"--
First Published in 1987. This book explores the implications of Henri Bergson's philosophy for contemporary science, discussing the misinformed view that Bergsonism stands for a romantic revival of anti-scientific vitalism notwithstanding. Likewise, this study draws value in that Bergson's philosophy appears to offer guidelines as to how to restore paradigmatic cohesiveness between modern physics and the life sciences. The authors argue that Bergson's ideas stand a better chance of being appreciated and their heuristic value harnessed today because the infra-structure alluded to before, is now in place.
"Under the aegis of time Suzanne Guerlac displaces matter, intuition, memory, and vitalism of the early twentieth century into the wake of poststructuralism and the dilemmas of nature and culture here and now. This book is a landmark for anyone working in the currents of philosophy, science, and literature. The force and vision of the work will enthuse and inspire every one of its readers." ―Tom Conley, Harvard University "In recent years, we have grown accustomed to philosophical language that is intensely self-conscious and rhetorically thick, often tragic in tone. It is enlivening to read Bergson, who exerts so little rhetorical pressure while exacting such a substantial effort of thought.... Bergson's texts teach the reader to let go of entrenched intellectual habits and to begin to think differently--to think in time.... Too much and too little have been said about Bergson. Too much, because of the various appropriations of his thought. Too little, because the work itself has not been carefully studied in recent decades."--from Thinking in Time Henri Bergson (1859-1941), whose philosophical works emphasized motion, time, and change, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927. His work remains influential, particularly in the realms of philosophy, cultural studies, and new media studies. In Thinking in Time, Suzanne Guerlac provides readers with the conceptual and contextual tools necessary for informed appreciation of Bergson's work. Guerlac's straightforward philosophical expositions of two Bergson texts, Time and Free Will (1888) and Matter and Memory (1896), focus on the notions of duration and memory--concepts that are central to the philosopher's work. Thinking in Time makes plain that it is well worth learning how to read Bergson effectively: his era and our own share important concerns. Bergson's insistence on the opposition between the automatic and the voluntary and his engagement with the notions of "the living," affect, and embodiment are especially germane to discussions of electronic culture.
An examination of the philosophy of Henri Bergson (1859-1941) showing how relevant Bergson is to much contemporary philosophy.
At the threshold of the twentieth century, Bergson reset the agenda for philosophy and its relationship with science, art and even life itself. Concerned with both examining and extolling the phenomena of time, change, and difference, he was at one point held as both "the greatest thinker in the world" and "the most dangerous man in the world." Yet the impact of his ideas was so all-pervasive among artists, philosophers and politicians alike, that by the end of the First World War it had become impossibly diffuse. In a manner imitating his own cult of change, the Bergsonian school departed from the scene almost as quickly as it had arrived. As part of a current resurgence of interest in Bergson, both in Europe and in North America, this collection of essays addresses the significance of his philosophical legacy for contemporary thought.
This book studies various perspectives in the history of European philosophy on the relationship between time and movement. Ever since the pre-Socratic thinker Zeno of Elea linked time and space to understand bodily movement, his so-called paradoxes of motion have remained unsolved. One of his most important critics, the French philosopher Henri Bergson, criticized the usual connection between time and space and established a new way of understanding time as duration (durée). Whereas Zeno presented an objectivist understanding of time, Bergson emphasized its subjectivist meaning. Both contradictory positions seem incompatible, referring to pure intellect (Zeno) on the one hand or pure sensation (Bergson) on the other. Looking at Hegel's Phenomenology, this book shows that the outer and inner consciousness of time became crucial to his principle of movement and change. In his view, time is an integral part of dialectical processes that are historically substantiated. Hegel sought to subordinate pure concepts and ideas so that they would become indispensable moments of the self knowing spirit. Cassirer appreciated the idealism of coming into being but rejected Hegel's concept of the absolute. Instead, he established his philosophy of symbolic forms, in which the development of different perceptions and conceptions of time - from situational affective experience to the mathematical system of relations - determines the direction of the symbolic formation process. In the end, the sensitive concept of time is replaced by the relational concept of natural numbers, in which all here-and-now experiences are embedded. Finally, Bourdieu attempts to reintegrate symbolic forms into social processes. The book reflects on the concepts mentioned here by discussing their pros and cons in order to shed more light on the relationship between time and movement in European thought.