Henri Louis Bergson

1. Introduction

Henri Louis Bergson (1859–1941) was a French philosopher whose work reoriented key debates in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of life during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is best known for the concepts of durée (duration), intuition, and élan vital, and for a distinctive attempt to reconcile scientific insight with a non-mechanistic, processive view of reality.

Bergson argued that much of Western philosophy had mistaken the structure of the intellect—adapted to practical action and to dealing with solid objects—for the structure of reality itself. Against this tendency, he claimed that the most fundamental features of experience and of life are continuous change, creativity, and the irreducibility of time to homogeneous, spatial units. His method of intuition was proposed as a way of entering into this flow from within, complementing but not simply rejecting analytical, conceptual thought.

His major works—Time and Free Will (1889), Matter and Memory (1896), Creative Evolution (1907), and The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932)—develop interconnected accounts of conscious experience, memory and perception, biological evolution, and moral and religious life. During his lifetime Bergson was one of Europe’s most widely read and publicly celebrated philosophers, eventually receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927 for the stylistic clarity and imaginative power of his French prose.

Interpretations of Bergson vary widely. Some view him primarily as a vitalist metaphysician positing a life-force beyond science; others emphasize his engagement with contemporary psychology and biology, seeing him as a sophisticated critic of reductionism rather than an enemy of science. Later philosophers have alternately criticized his appeal to intuition as anti-rational and hailed him as a precursor of process philosophy, phenomenology, and certain strands of twentieth-century French thought. The sections that follow trace his life, works, and the main lines of debate surrounding his ideas.

2. Life and Historical Context

Bergson’s life spanned the collapse of the Second Empire, the Third Republic, two world wars, and the rise of fascism, situating his thought amid rapid scientific, political, and cultural transformations in France and Europe.

Biographical Outline

Intellectual and Cultural Milieu

Bergson’s formation occurred within the French Third Republic’s secular educational system, shaped by debates over positivism, republicanism, and laïcité. Philosophically, he emerged from the French spiritualist tradition (e.g., Maine de Biran, Ravaisson, Boutroux), which emphasized inner experience and the irreducibility of consciousness, while also responding to Comtean positivism and neo-Kantianism.

His work engaged with:

• New sciences of mind: experimental psychology, psychophysics, and neurology.
• Biology and evolution: Darwinism, neo-Lamarckian theories, and debates over mechanism versus finalism.
• Relativity and physics: the rise of Einstein’s theory of relativity prompted his late intervention in Duration and Simultaneity.

Historically, his mature career coincided with the Belle Époque, when Parisian intellectual culture fostered large public lectures and media attention for philosophers. World War I and its aftermath shifted attention to questions of nationalism, international cooperation, and the crisis of European civilization, in which Bergson participated via the League of Nations’ Committee for Intellectual Cooperation.

In the 1930s, the growth of antisemitism and authoritarian regimes, including Vichy France, gave a stark political backdrop to his personal identity as a Jew with strong sympathies toward Catholicism. These historical contexts inform later interpretations of his ethics, his views on society and religion, and his final political stance under occupation.

3. Early Education and Formative Influences

Bergson’s early education combined rigorous training in mathematics, classical studies, and philosophy, providing both the tools and the tensions that would shape his mature thought.

Schooling and Early Aptitudes

At the Lycée Condorcet in Paris, Bergson excelled in both literary and scientific subjects. He reportedly won a school prize for a solution to a mathematical problem later published in the Annales de mathématiques, an episode often cited as evidence of his early mathematical promise. Proponents of a “scientifically engaged” reading of Bergson emphasize this background to counter portrayals of him as simply anti-scientific.

After entering the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in 1878, he studied under leading figures of French philosophy and philology. He prepared the agrégation in philosophy and later taught in Angers and Clermont-Ferrand. His early scholarly work included a Latin thesis on Theocritus and a French dissertation on Aristotle’s theory of place, situating him within classical philology and Aristotelian metaphysics.

Philosophical and Scientific Influences

Several strands of influence are typically highlighted:

Many scholars argue that Zeno’s paradoxes of motion played a decisive role: Bergson’s later claim that motion and time are misrepresented when “cut into” instants may be traced to early meditations on these puzzles. His attraction to Lucretius and ancient atomism has been interpreted as an initial encounter with mechanistic explanations of nature that he would later reinterpret rather than simply reject.

The ENS milieu, marked by debates between positivism, Kantianism, and spiritualism, exposed Bergson to sharply opposed models of knowledge. Some commentators see his mature philosophy as an attempt to reconcile the spiritualist insistence on consciousness and freedom with the scientific demand for empirical grounding, a tension already visible in his early lecture notes and student essays.

4. Academic Career and Public Reception

Bergson’s academic trajectory moved from provincial teaching posts to the pinnacle of the French intellectual establishment, paralleled by an unusual level of public fame for a philosopher.

Institutional Positions

After passing the agrégation in philosophy (1881), Bergson taught at lycées in Angers and Clermont-Ferrand, where he completed Time and Free Will. In 1890 he returned to Paris as a teacher at the Lycée Henri-IV, gaining a reputation as a gifted lecturer.

In 1900 he was appointed to the Collège de France, initially to a chair in Greek and Latin philosophy, later reoriented toward modern philosophy. His lectures there, open to the public, became major events in Parisian cultural life.

Public Lectures and Media Attention

Reports from contemporaries describe Bergson’s lectures at the Collège de France as so crowded that students and members of the public filled corridors and staircases. Journalists, writers, and foreign visitors were among the audience. Supporters interpreted this phenomenon as evidence of philosophy’s renewed cultural role and of the accessibility of his style; critics sometimes dismissed it as a “Bergson fashion” (la mode bergsonienne), suggesting that popularity risked superficiality.

Translations of his works into English, German, Italian, and other languages, along with lecture tours in Britain and the United States, extended his influence abroad. His 1911–1913 lectures at Oxford and at Columbia University, for example, were widely reported and sometimes controversial.

Academic and Extra-Academic Roles

Bergson served on commissions for educational reform and, after World War I, on the League of Nations’ Committee for Intellectual Cooperation. Some scholars see this as aligning him with liberal internationalism and the ideal of “intellectual diplomacy”; others note that he remained cautious about overt political partisanship.

Within academic philosophy, his success provoked varied responses. Admirers within French spiritualism and among some Catholic thinkers saw him as renewing metaphysics. Others, including emerging French neo-Kantians and later phenomenologists, regarded him as a rival to their own projects. Internationally, he was discussed in psychology, literary circles, and early analytic philosophy, reflecting both the breadth of his appeal and the divergent assessments of his work.

5. Major Works and Their Development

Bergson’s major works form a loosely unified project, but each book emphasizes different problems and audiences. The development of his thought is often traced through four principal works, alongside significant essays and lectures.

Main Books

Key Essays and Collections

• Introduction à la métaphysique (1903) clarifies his method of intuition and redefines metaphysics as entering into duration rather than constructing systems from abstract concepts.
• Le Rire / Laughter (1900) analyzes the comic, often cited in aesthetics and social theory.
• Durée et simultanéité (1922) engages with Einstein’s relativity and attempts to reconcile physical time with philosophical duration.
• L’Énergie spirituelle / Mind-Energy (1919) collects essays on consciousness, psychical phenomena, and related topics.

Developmental Trajectories

Some interpreters view Bergson’s oeuvre as moving from the analysis of individual consciousness (Time and Free Will) to an increasingly cosmic and social perspective (Creative Evolution, Two Sources). Others stress continuity: from the start, he treats duration, creativity, and freedom as fundamental, merely applying them successively to psychology, biology, and ethics–religion.

Debates also concern whether Creative Evolution marks a “metaphysical turn” toward speculative vitalism. While some commentators see in it a bolder, less empirically grounded metaphysics, others argue that Bergson remained committed to engagement with contemporary science, using élan vital as a heuristic notion to express the irreducible creativity of life rather than as a strictly scientific hypothesis.

The late Two Sources is sometimes read as a departure into moral theology, and sometimes as the natural extension of his earlier themes—duration and élan vital—into the domains of social cohesion, obligation, and love.

6. Core Philosophical Method: Intuition and Analysis

Bergson’s philosophy is structured around a methodological dualism between analysis (or intellect) and intuition. He does not call for the abandonment of analysis but redefines its scope and limits.

Analysis and the Spatializing Intellect

By analysis, Bergson means the ordinary work of the intellect: breaking reality into stable elements, classifying, and representing relations. He argues that the intellect evolved to deal with solid objects and practical action, not with fluid processes.

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“Our intellect is not framed to comprehend the life of the spirit; it is made to grasp matter, and in the course of evolution it has been shaped by the necessities of action.”

— Henri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics

According to Bergson, analysis tends to spatialize what it studies, turning temporal flows into sequences of discrete states and thus misrepresenting phenomena—like consciousness and life—that are intrinsically continuous and changing. This claim underlies his critique of certain scientific and philosophical models that treat time as a set of instants.

Intuition as Sympathetic Insight

Intuition (intuition philosophique) is presented as a complementary method: a direct, “sympathetic” entering into a process to grasp its movement from within. Bergson contrasts:

In Introduction to Metaphysics, he suggests that to understand a melody, one must experience its unfolding, not just consider separate notes. Intuition is likened to this lived grasp of a whole movement.

Relation Between the Two

Bergson does not entirely oppose intuition and analysis. He maintains that:

• Intuition provides the initial contact with reality-in-motion.
• Analysis then maps aspects of this reality for communication, science, and practical use.
• Concepts and symbols are necessary but must be periodically “checked” against intuition to avoid reification and distortion.

Critics contend that Bergson’s distinction risks devaluing rational argument and obscuring criteria for correctness in intuition. Supporters reply that he envisages a disciplined, communicable intuition, more akin to phenomenological description or artistic insight than to vague feeling, and that his own analyses exemplify a back-and-forth between intuitive grasp and conceptual articulation.

7. Metaphysics of Time and Duration

Bergson’s metaphysics centers on the claim that time, properly understood as durée (duration), is the basic form of reality, especially in consciousness and life.

Duration vs. Spatialized Time

He distinguishes:

In Time and Free Will, he argues that inner states (feelings, thoughts) do not succeed one another like beads on a string; they interpenetrate, forming an indivisible whole. Measuring time in seconds or minutes abstracts from this lived continuity and is useful for action but metaphysically misleading.

Zeno, Movement, and Misrepresentation

Bergson revisits Zeno’s paradoxes, contending that they arise from confusing movement with its spatial representation. For him, motion is not a series of positions but an indivisible act. When time is cut into instants, motion appears paradoxical; when grasped as duration, the paradox dissolves.

Duration and Freedom

Duration underpins his account of freedom. A free act, in his view, is not the outcome of a calculable chain of discrete psychological states but the expression of the whole person as it has developed over time:

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“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.”

— Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution

On this view, determinism based on past states misses the creative synthesis by which the self continually re-makes itself in duration.

Cosmic and Psychological Time

While duration is first analyzed at the level of conscious experience, Bergson often extends it to reality at large, suggesting that the universe itself is a vast process of becoming. Interpretations diverge:

• Some read him as positing a universal duration, a metaphysical time underlying both matter and mind.
• Others hold that he retains a distinction between time in consciousness and time in physics, particularly in his engagement with relativity in Duration and Simultaneity.

In that work, he seeks to reconcile Einstein’s relativistic spacetime, which concerns measurable relations between events, with the irreducible qualitative aspect of lived duration. Critics argue that he misunderstood key aspects of relativity; defenders emphasize that his main point concerns the phenomenological character of time rather than physical theory as such.

8. Mind, Memory, and Perception

In Matter and Memory (1896), Bergson presents a distinctive theory of mind, memory, and perception that rejects both materialist reduction and dualistic separation.

Perception-for-Action

Bergson argues that perception is not a passive reception of images but an active selection of what matters for action:

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“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”

— Attributed to Bergson; related ideas in Matter and Memory

On this view, the material world is a field of images; the body is one image among others that selects, through its sensory-motor apparatus, aspects relevant to possible movements. Thus, perception is “perception-for-action”, shaped by interests and capacities rather than mirroring all properties of objects.

Virtual Memory and the Past

Bergson’s theory of memory distinguishes:

He claims that the past does not vanish but coexists with the present as a virtual whole. Remembering is not retrieving stored traces from the brain but actualizing a portion of this virtual past in response to present needs.

This leads to a controversial view of the brain: it does not store memories but functions as an organ of selection and motor preparation. Neurological damage affects access to memories, not their existence as such, according to Bergson. Supporters see this as an early non-reductive account of mind–brain relations; critics argue that subsequent neuroscience strongly supports storage-like models.

Mind–Body Relationship

Bergson’s overall stance is often described as “dualistic but interactionist” or as a form of dual-aspect monism:

• He insists on the irreducibility of consciousness and duration.
• Yet he rejects absolute separation: matter and mind are seen as different “tensions” or degrees within a single reality, with the brain mediating between consciousness and action.

Interpretations differ on the exact ontological status of matter and mind in his system. Some read Matter and Memory as leaning toward idealism (reality as images linked to consciousness), others toward a realist acknowledgment of matter independent of perception, with consciousness supervening in a distinct way.

His ideas on perception and memory have influenced later discussions in phenomenology, cognitive science, and film theory, particularly concerning the temporality of experience and the active, selective nature of perception.

9. Biology, Élan Vital, and Creative Evolution

Creative Evolution (1907) is Bergson’s most extensive engagement with biology and the theory of evolution, and the primary source for his notion of élan vital.

Critique of Mechanism and Finalism

Bergson addresses two dominant explanatory models:

He proposes creative evolution (évolution créatrice) as a third path: evolution is neither fully determined in advance nor random in a purely mechanical sense; it is a process of continuous invention.

Élan Vital

The controversial concept of élan vital (vital impetus) expresses the idea of a creative drive immanent in life:

• It is not presented as a measurable physical force but as a metaphysical principle accounting for the unpredictable diversification of forms.
• Bergson likens it to a stream that splits into divergent currents, giving rise to different evolutionary lines (e.g., plants, animals, humans).

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“Life altogether is like an impulsion, an élan, which passes from generation to generation through the organisms, and which is transmitted, at the same time as life itself.”

— Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution

Some commentators interpret élan vital as a heuristic metaphor for the cumulative, inventive character of evolutionary processes rather than as a literal vital fluid. Others, especially early critics, saw it as a regression to pre-scientific vitalism incompatible with modern biology.

Relation to Darwinism and Biology

Bergson engages with Darwin and subsequent evolutionary theories, acknowledging natural selection but arguing that it cannot by itself explain the qualitative directionality and convergence of functions (e.g., the evolution of vision in different lineages). He emphasizes phenomena like instinct and intelligence as divergent outcomes of life’s creative push.

Reactions among biologists and philosophers of biology have been mixed:

• Some early twentieth-century thinkers found in Bergson an ally against crude mechanistic interpretations of evolution.
• Others argued that his views misrepresented the explanatory range of natural selection and ignored emerging genetics.

Contemporary scholars sometimes revisit his account in light of evo-devo, complexity theory, and discussions of emergence, exploring whether his insistence on open-ended creativity can be reformulated without invoking a metaphysical life-force.

Life, Time, and Metaphysics

Creative Evolution extends the notion of duration from individual consciousness to life as a whole, portraying evolution as a temporal, creative unfolding. This has led to divergent readings:

• One emphasizes a shift toward a broader, cosmic metaphysics centered on life.
• Another stresses continuity with his earlier analyses of time and freedom, now applied to biological phenomena.

The book’s synthesis of biology, metaphysics, and a philosophy of creativity has made it central both to Bergson’s admirers and to his harshest critics.

10. Epistemology, Science, and Critique of Mechanism

Bergson’s epistemology examines the scope and limits of scientific knowledge and its relation to metaphysics. He criticizes certain mechanistic assumptions while affirming the legitimacy of scientific inquiry within its proper domain.

Intellect and Science

Bergson situates the intellect as the organ of science: it abstracts, measures, and constructs concepts suited to dealing with matter and practical action. Science, in his view, excels in predicting and controlling phenomena but tends to treat reality as composed of stable, quantifiable units.

He argues that problems arise when this mode is extended to phenomena whose essence is temporal and qualitative—such as consciousness, life, and freedom. For these, metaphysics employing intuition is needed to complement analytic science.

Critique of Mechanism

His critique targets a mechanistic philosophy of science, not empirical science itself:

Bergson insists that these are ontological extrapolations from scientific practice, not necessary conclusions of science. Some philosophers of science view his stance as an early formulation of anti-reductionist and emergentist themes; others regard it as underestimating the unifying power of physical explanation.

Engagement with Specific Sciences

• Psychology and neurology: In Time and Free Will and Matter and Memory, he challenges psychophysics and associationist psychology, arguing that quantifying sensations misrepresents their qualitative structure.
• Biology: In Creative Evolution, he engages with evolutionary theory, as discussed in Section 9.
• Physics and relativity: In Duration and Simultaneity, Bergson analyzes Einstein’s relativity, distinguishing physical time (operationally defined through clocks) from lived duration. Einstein and many physicists criticized this work; commentators continue to debate whether Bergson misunderstood relativity or correctly highlighted a difference between physical models and temporal experience.

Science and Metaphysics

Bergson proposes a division of labor:

• Science describes relations and functions among phenomena, enabling control and prediction.
• Metaphysics, guided by intuition, aims to understand what reality is in itself, especially where becoming and creativity are central.

Critics maintain that this division risks insulating metaphysics from empirical constraint; supporters argue that he envisions an ongoing dialogue in which metaphysics is continually informed by scientific discoveries but not reduced to them.

11. Ethics, Society, and the Two Sources of Morality

In The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932), Bergson offers a distinctive account of ethics and social life centered on the contrast between closed and open morality.

Closed Morality: Pressure and Social Obligation

Closed morality is grounded in social cohesion and the survival of the group:

• It arises from habit, custom, and pressure exerted by the community.
• Its aim is to maintain order, discipline, and solidarity within a relatively bounded group (family, tribe, nation).
• It operates through obligation and often through fear of sanctions or exclusion.

Bergson associates closed morality with instinct and with the needs of societies that must secure internal cooperation against external threats. He does not dismiss it as useless; it is, in his account, a necessary foundation for social life.

Open Morality: Aspiration and Love

Open morality emerges from the creative impetus of exceptional individuals—saints, heroes, moral geniuses—whose love extends beyond the group:

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“There are two sources of morality and religion: pressure and aspiration; the one expresses itself in obligation, the other in love.”

— Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion

Characteristics of open morality include:

• Orientation toward humanity as a whole rather than a particular group.
• Inspiration by love, generosity, and creativity, not merely by rules.
• Tendency to overflow existing social structures, opening them toward greater inclusiveness.

He links open morality to dynamic religion and to the action of mystics (discussed in Section 12), though he also acknowledges secular figures who embody similar openness.

Social and Political Dimensions

Bergson applies the closed/open distinction to forms of society:

Later thinkers, including Karl Popper, have interpreted and critiqued Bergson’s notion of the open society. Some see in it a precursor to liberal and cosmopolitan ideals; others question whether his reliance on exceptional individuals underestimates structural and institutional factors in ethical progress.

Nature of Moral Obligation

Bergson thus proposes two sources of morality:

1. Social pressure (closed): rooted in biological and social instincts.
2. Creative aspiration (open): an extension of élan vital into the moral sphere.

Debates persist over whether his theory sufficiently addresses conflicts between these sources, and whether it provides criteria for resolving moral disagreements in complex modern societies. Nonetheless, the distinction between obligation-based and love-inspired moralities has influenced later reflections on ethics, altruism, and the role of exemplars in moral change.

12. Religion, Mysticism, and Open Society

The Two Sources of Morality and Religion also advances a nuanced theory of religion, distinguishing static and dynamic forms and linking the latter to mysticism and the ideal of an open society.

Static Religion

Static religion corresponds to closed society and closed morality:

• Its primary function is social: to maintain cohesion, obedience, and morale.
• It relies on myths, rites, and beliefs that often involve surveillance by supernatural agents, threats of punishment, and promises of reward.
• Bergson views it as a kind of “protective reaction” of the species against the anxiety produced by intelligence and foresight (e.g., fear of death).

Static religion, in his account, is not simply superstition; it is a quasi-biological adaptation that helps stabilize communities. Critics, however, argue that this functionalist approach may underplay the intellectual and spiritual content of many religious traditions.

Dynamic Religion and Mysticism

Dynamic religion arises from the experiences of mystics, who have an intense, loving union with the divine or with the source of life. Bergson emphasizes:

• Immediate experience: The mystic claims direct contact with an ultimate reality, often described in terms of love.
• Overflowing energy: This experience translates into concrete action—charity, reform, and sometimes radical critique of existing institutions.
• Universality: Mystical love tends to transcend particular groups, aligning with open morality.

He gives particular attention to certain Christian mystics (e.g., St. Teresa of Ávila, St. Francis of Assisi) as paradigmatic cases, though he recognizes analogous figures in other traditions. Some commentators see here a Christian bias; others argue that his conceptual framework can be generalized beyond Christianity.

Religion and the Open Society

Dynamic religion, through the action of mystics, contributes to the opening of societies:

Bergson suggests that the open society—oriented toward humanity as a whole and toward peace—is made possible by the influx of mystical love into social life. This has led some interpreters to see him as offering a theologically informed theory of social progress, while others argue that he underestimates secular sources of openness.

Relation to Philosophy and Theology

Bergson’s account has been read both as:

• A philosophical psychology of religion, explaining its functions and varieties in largely naturalistic terms (especially static religion).
• And as a metaphysical theology, particularly in its treatment of mysticism as an expression of élan vital at its highest, where life becomes love.

The balance between these aspects is debated. Religious thinkers sympathetic to Bergson have drawn on his dynamic religion to interpret mysticism and charity, while critics—both secular and religious—question whether his theory oversimplifies doctrinal and institutional dimensions of religious traditions.

13. Style, Literary Merit, and Nobel Recognition

Bergson’s writing style is widely regarded as integral to his influence, contributing to his Nobel Prize in Literature (1927) and to the popular reach of his philosophy.

Features of Bergson’s Style

His French prose is often described as:

• Clear and elegant: Avoiding technical jargon, using everyday language to explain complex ideas.
• Metaphor-rich: Frequent use of images (e.g., the melody for duration, the cinematograph for spatialized representation of motion) to render abstract notions concrete.
• Rhythmic and persuasive: Long, carefully structured sentences that build analogies and contrasts.

Supporters argue that this style is not mere ornament but a deliberate attempt to adjust language to the fluidity of duration and to convey processes rather than static states. Critics sometimes charge that his rhetorical power risks obscuring argumentative gaps or fostering “illusion of understanding.”

The Nobel Prize in Literature

In 1927, Bergson received the Nobel Prize in Literature “in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented.” He is one of the few philosophers to have received the prize primarily for philosophical writings.

Interpretations of this recognition differ:

Influence on Literature and the Arts

Bergson’s style and imagery influenced writers and artists, particularly in early modernist circles. While details belong to broader reception history, commentators note that his expressive metaphors for time and consciousness resonated with novelists, poets, and filmmakers searching for new ways to represent inner life and temporal flow.

Some later philosophers have held up Bergson as an example of philosophical writing that bridges scholarly and general audiences, while others warn that the demands of analytic clarity and literary flourish can be in tension. The Nobel recognition has thus become a focal point in debates about the relationship between philosophical content and literary form.

14. Relations with Contemporary Philosophers and Movements

Bergson’s thought developed in dialogue—sometimes friendly, sometimes polemical—with a variety of philosophical currents and individual thinkers.

French Spiritualism, Positivism, and Neo-Kantianism

Bergson is often associated with French spiritualism (Ravaisson, Lachelier, Boutroux), sharing its emphasis on inner experience and freedom. However, he departs from it by:

• Giving a central place to time and becoming, rather than to substance-like “spirit”.
• Engaging more extensively with empirical sciences.

He opposed positivism insofar as it reduced knowledge to scientific facts and laws, and resisted neo-Kantian restrictions on metaphysics, arguing that intuition can grasp reality beyond phenomena.

Phenomenology and Existentialism

Later phenomenologists and existentialists, such as Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre, interacted variously with Bergson’s ideas:

• Some affinities exist regarding the analysis of lived time and conscious experience.
• Yet Husserl criticized Bergson’s appeal to intuition as insufficiently rigorous; Heidegger and Sartre tended to foreground existential and ontological issues differently.

In France, figures like Merleau-Ponty acknowledged Bergson’s insights on perception and embodiment, while also reworking them in phenomenological terms.

Pragmatism and James

Bergson had a well-known intellectual rapprochement with William James. Both emphasized experience, process, and pluralism. James admired Bergson’s concept of duration; Bergson appreciated James’s work on the stream of consciousness. Some commentators label Bergson a kind of French pragmatist; others caution that he retained a stronger metaphysical orientation and a different conception of intuition.

Early Analytic Philosophy

Reactions among early analytic philosophers were ambivalent:

These critiques contributed to his marginalization in Anglo-American analytic circles for much of the twentieth century.

Vitalism, Lebensphilosophie, and Process Thought

Bergson is frequently linked to vitalism and to Lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life) alongside figures like Nietzsche and Dilthey, though their approaches differ substantially. He is also an important precursor to process philosophy (e.g., Alfred North Whitehead), sharing the view that becoming and events are more fundamental than static substances.

Some scholars emphasize convergences between Bergson and Whitehead on time and creativity, while noting that they developed their ideas largely independently and in different idioms. Others draw connections to later French thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze, who saw Bergson as a major resource for rethinking difference and becoming.

Overall, Bergson’s relations with contemporary movements are characterized by overlap on certain themes—time, life, experience—combined with methodological and doctrinal divergences that have fueled both influential appropriations and sharp critiques.

15. Political Engagement and World War I

Bergson was not primarily a political philosopher, but he did participate in public affairs, particularly around World War I and its aftermath.

World War I Involvement

During the war, Bergson engaged in various roles:

• He wrote and spoke in support of the French war effort, framing the conflict in moral and civilizational terms.
• He undertook diplomatic missions, particularly to the United States (1917), to help secure and maintain Allied cooperation. His prestige as a philosopher was seen as an asset in “intellectual diplomacy.”

Some contemporaries welcomed his contributions as an expression of patriotic duty and moral leadership. Others later criticized such involvement as part of broader wartime intellectual mobilization that blurred lines between philosophy and propaganda.

Postwar International Cooperation

After the war, Bergson served on the Committee for Intellectual Cooperation of the newly formed League of Nations (often seen as a precursor to UNESCO). He participated from 1922 and briefly served as its president.

This work aimed to foster cultural and scientific collaboration across borders, with the hope that intellectual exchange could support peace and mutual understanding. Interpretations differ:

Political Positioning

Bergson generally avoided affiliation with specific political parties or ideologies. His writings rarely address concrete political programs. Nonetheless, commentators infer from his emphasis on open societies, moral creativity, and mystical love a sympathy for liberal, humanitarian, and internationalist orientations.

Some critics suggest that his focus on exceptional individuals and spiritual transformation sidelines structural analyses of power, class, and colonialism, central to other political theories of his time. Others argue that his caution about politics was consistent with a broader French academic tradition that separated high philosophy from partisan engagement, even as individual philosophers took public stances in moments of crisis.

World War I thus represents a period in which Bergson’s philosophical authority was explicitly mobilized for national and international causes, illustrating the entanglement of intellectual life with the political upheavals of early twentieth-century Europe.

16. Religious Sympathies, Judaism, and Final Years

Bergson’s personal religious orientation and his actions in his final years have been the subject of extensive interpretation, especially regarding his Jewish identity and sympathies toward Christianity.

Religious Sympathies

Although born into a Jewish family, Bergson’s mature writings and private remarks reveal a strong attraction to Catholicism, particularly to its mystical and charitable dimensions. In The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, he accords a prominent place to Christian mystics as exemplars of dynamic religion and open morality.

Later testimonies and diary entries suggest that Bergson considered conversion to Catholicism. However, he did not formally convert. Some scholars interpret his attraction as primarily philosophical and ethical, centered on the notion of love and mysticism; others see it as indicative of a deeper, though uncompleted, personal religious journey.

Jewish Identity

Despite his Christian sympathies, Bergson maintained his Jewish identity. In earlier decades he defended Jews against antisemitic attacks in France, notably during and after the Dreyfus Affair, aligning with broader republican and intellectual opposition to antisemitism.

His Jewish background also shaped how he was perceived: some Catholic admirers saw his interest in Christianity as confirming the appeal of Catholicism to a major Jewish intellectual, while certain critics within Jewish communities expressed concern about the centrality given to Christian mysticism in his religious philosophy.

Final Years under Vichy

The German occupation of France and the establishment of the Vichy regime in 1940 placed Jews under discriminatory laws. Bergson, by then in frail health, was offered exemptions due to his fame and advanced age. He reportedly refused special treatment, choosing to share the fate of other Jews.

Accounts indicate that he registered as a Jew and stood in line with others to comply with anti-Jewish regulations, despite the hardship. This decision has been widely interpreted as a deliberate moral act, consistent with his emphasis on solidarity and ethical responsibility.

Bergson died in Paris on 4 January 1941 from complications of bronchitis. Contemporary and later observers have often regarded his refusal of exemption and his continued identification as a Jew, despite earlier inclinations toward Catholicism, as a powerful witness. Some interpret it as an expression of his concept of open morality concretized in solidarity; others caution against retroactively framing his actions within his philosophical categories without more direct evidence.

Debate continues over how to situate Bergson’s personal religiosity: as primarily philosophical, as a complex negotiation between Judaism and Christianity, or as a trajectory that remained intentionally unresolved at his death.

17. Reception, Criticisms, and Mid-Century Eclipse

Bergson’s influence underwent a marked trajectory: from early celebrity and widespread impact to mid-twentieth-century eclipse, especially in Anglo-American philosophy.

Early Reception and Enthusiasm

In the early 1900s through the 1920s, Bergson enjoyed:

• Large audiences for his lectures in Paris and abroad.
• Translations of his major works into multiple languages.
• Influence in psychology, theology, literary studies, and emerging social sciences.

Many contemporaries praised his ability to synthesize science, metaphysics, and moral reflection, and to articulate a philosophy of life and creativity that resonated with modern anxieties about mechanization and determinism.

Major Lines of Criticism

Different schools of thought advanced critiques:

Mid-Century Eclipse

By the 1940s–1960s, several factors contributed to a relative decline in Bergson’s prominence:

• The rise of phenomenology, existentialism, and structuralism in continental Europe, which offered alternative frameworks for addressing time, subjectivity, and society.
• The consolidation of analytic philosophy in the Anglophone world, where Bergson’s style and methods were often seen as paradigmatically non-analytic.
• Advances in physics and biology that were interpreted as superseding or conflicting with aspects of his scientific engagements.

In France, Bergson remained a reference point but was often cast as representative of a previous generation. Textbooks and curricula tended to emphasize newer movements, though his work continued to be studied in specialized contexts.

Some scholars argue that aspects of his philosophy—particularly élan vital—were linked to vitalist or anti-rationalist ideologies that became suspect after the catastrophes of the first half of the twentieth century; others contend that such associations oversimplify his nuanced position.

Despite this eclipse, pockets of interest persisted, especially among those concerned with metaphysics of time, mysticism, and literary modernism, preparing the ground for later re-evaluations.

18. Contemporary Relevance and Revival of Interest

From the late twentieth century onward, Bergson has undergone a significant revival, with renewed attention across multiple disciplines.

Rediscovery in Philosophy

Several trends have contributed to this resurgence:

• Process philosophy and metaphysics: Philosophers interested in becoming, emergence, and non-reductive accounts of causality have revisited Bergson’s notions of duration and creative evolution. Some see him as a precursor to contemporary process metaphysics, while emphasizing differences in detail.
• Continental philosophy: Thinkers like Gilles Deleuze played a major role in rehabilitating Bergson, interpreting him as a philosopher of difference, multiplicity, and creativity. Deleuze’s Bergsonism (1966) reframed Bergson in ways that influenced post-structuralism and later French thought.
• Philosophy of mind and cognitive science: Bergson’s analyses of perception-for-action and memory have been revisited in relation to enactivist and embodied approaches, as well as debates about the phenomenology of time-consciousness.

Engagement with Science and Technology

Contemporary scholars have explored resonances between Bergson and:

While few contemporary scientists adopt Bergson’s metaphysical claims wholesale, his critiques of mechanistic reductionism and his emphasis on qualitative aspects of time and experience are used as stimuli for new conceptual frameworks.

Interdisciplinary and Cultural Impact

Bergson’s thought has been influential in:

• Literary studies: Analyses of modernist narrative techniques, stream-of-consciousness, and representations of time often draw on his concept of duration.
• Film theory and media studies: His ideas have informed theories of cinematic time and montage.
• Religious studies: His distinction between static and dynamic religion remains a reference point in discussions of mysticism and the social functions of religion.

Debates in the Revival

The contemporary revival is not uncritical. Ongoing debates concern:

• How to interpret élan vital: as a historically situated metaphor, a substantive metaphysical claim, or a heuristic for emergent complexity.
• The status of intuition as a philosophical method: whether it can be reconciled with contemporary standards of argumentation and empirical engagement.
• The political implications of his focus on exceptional individuals and mystics: whether this complements or conflicts with democratic and structural approaches to social change.

Nevertheless, the breadth of current engagement suggests that Bergson is increasingly seen not as a historical curiosity but as a resource for ongoing discussions about time, mind, life, and morality.

19. Legacy and Historical Significance

Bergson’s legacy spans philosophy, science, religion, and the arts, marked by both enduring concepts and contested interpretations.

Conceptual Contributions

His central ideas—duration, intuition, élan vital, and the distinction between closed and open morality—have become part of the broader vocabulary of twentieth- and twenty-first-century thought. Even critics often frame their positions in relation to these concepts, testifying to their formative role.

In metaphysics, Bergson is widely recognized as a key figure in the turn toward process and becoming, influencing or paralleling later developments in process philosophy, phenomenology of time, and philosophies of life. In philosophy of mind, his analyses of memory and perception anticipated themes in embodied and enactive approaches.

Influence Across Disciplines

Bergson’s impact extends beyond academic philosophy:

Historical Positioning

Historically, Bergson stands at the intersection of nineteenth-century spiritualism and twentieth-century modernism. He engaged deeply with the sciences of his time while resisting reductionist interpretations, offering an alternative model in which scientific knowledge coexists with a metaphysics of creativity and duration.

His early fame and later eclipse illustrate changing patterns in philosophical culture, especially the divergence between analytic and continental traditions. The contemporary revival underscores his capacity to speak to current concerns about technology, biological life, and the nature of experience.

Divergent Assessments

Assessments of Bergson’s overall significance vary:

• Some see him as a major classic whose reconceptualization of time and life ranks alongside the foundational contributions of Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche.
• Others regard him as a brilliant but ultimately superseded figure, whose specific scientific claims have been outpaced and whose method of intuition remains problematic.
• A growing number of scholars position him as a fertile interlocutor rather than a system-builder to be accepted or rejected wholesale, emphasizing selective appropriation of his insights.

Despite these divergences, there is broad agreement that Bergson occupies a central place in the history of twentieth-century thought. His efforts to articulate a world in which reality is fundamentally temporal, creative, and open-ended continue to inform debates about what it means to be a conscious, living, and social being in time.