Henri Bergson - Icon Profile | Alexandria
Henri Bergson (1859-1941) stands as one of the most influential philosophers of the early 20th century, whose revolutionary concepts of time, consciousness, and creative evolution challenged the mechanistic worldview of his era and continue to resonate in contemporary discussions of consciousness and free will. A French philosopher and Nobel laureate in Literature (1927), Bergson developed a philosophical system that privileged immediate experience and intuition over abstract rationalism, introducing the concept of "durée" (duration) - a radical reimagining of time as a fluid, indivisible flow rather than a series of discrete moments.
Born in Paris to a Polish-Jewish musician and an English-Jewish mother, Bergson emerged during a pivotal moment in European intellectual history, when positivism and scientific materialism dominated academic thought. His first major work, "Time and Free Will" (1889), appeared amid fierce debates about determinism and human agency, offering a powerful defense of free will based on his notion of duration as lived experience. This work, along with "Matter and Memory" (1896) and "Creative Evolution" (1907), established Bergson as a leading voice in European philosophy and attracted an unprecedented public following, with his lectures at the Collège de France drawing crowds that spilled into the streets.
Bergson's philosophy proved particularly influential in modernist literature and art, inspiring writers like Marcel Proust and William James, while his concept of élan vital (the vital impulse) resonated with artists seeking to capture life's dynamic essence. His ideas challenged both mechanistic science and traditional metaphysics, suggesting that reality was fundamentally creative and evolutionary, characterized by constant emergence and novelty. This perspective influenced fields ranging from psychology to religious studies, though his popularity waned with the rise of analytical philosophy and logical positivism.
Today, Bergson's thought experiences a remarkable renaissance, as contemporary discussions in consciousness studies, quantum physics, and artificial intelligence grapple with questions he presciently addressed. His insights into the nature of time, memory, and consciousness find new relevance in cognitive science and neuroscience, while his critique of spatial thinking's limitations speaks to current debates about the limits of computational models of mind. The enigmatic quality of his core concepts - duration, intuition, and the élan vital - continues to challenge and inspire, suggesting that Bergson's philosophical legacy, like his conception of time itself, remains vitally dynamic and unfolding.