Henri-Louis Bergson (1859 – 1941) was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that the processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality.
He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented". In 1930 France awarded him its highest honour, the Grand-Croix de la Legion d'honneur.
Bergson lived the quiet life of a French professor, marked by the publication of his four principal works:
in 1889, Time and Free Will
in 1896, Matter and Memory
in 1907, Creative Evolution
in 1932, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
In his Introduction to Metaphysics Bergson gives a succinct and vivid statement of his conception of philosophic method, which is now well known as implying the transcendence of abstract or external analysis and synthesis by intellectual sympathy or intuition. "To philosophise," he says, "is to invert the habitual direction of the work of thought". Habitually thought tends to take the direction of concepts that are already made and are familiar through their application to the practical needs of life. But any new insight that can be the point of departure for an advance of knowledge must be obtained by re-entering into the inner nature of the thing itself, although this is possible only after much patient use of the ideas and symbols by which it has already been partially interpreted.
The fundamental point of coincidence between Bergson's doctrine and pragmatism is, therefore, that the ideas that persist or get accepted are those which have been found practically useful. But while the emphasis of pragmatism is on the relativity of thought to action, and the testing of ideas by their practical application, Bergson emphasises the consequence that ideas that have become habitual and are readily applicable to action are not easily changed or replaced by others, of which the value is still doubtful. The two doctrines thus fit into each other. Knowledge must begin from concrete experience. It begins in intuitive apprehension or suggestion, which must be verified by detailed application. Modes of apprehension that have become habitual through their successful working are apt to get stereotyped, to be those "rigid and ready-made concepts" that must be transcended by a fresh intuition, and undergo modification and improvement in order to yield further results. It is by this twofold process that knowledge arises out of and again returns to the concrete fulness of life.
It is no new theory, he remarks here, that we have “two profoundly different ways of knowing things.” Nearly all philosophers agree on this point, but not all see wherein the difference consists, nor how much depends upon it. To Bergson’s mind the essential difference now seems to be simply this: that “in the first mode of knowledge one hovers about the object; in the second, one enters into it.” If the knowledge of a horse’s action obtainable by an analytic observer with his moving-pictures is typical of the first mode, the direct and sympathetic knowledge of that same motion possessed by the skillful rider may be typical of the second. Both kinds of knowledge are “empirical”; both go to “the facts”; but one is external knowledge; the other, by contrast, internal. To this second way of knowing, Bergson now gives the name of “intuition.”
In Bergson ’s larger works the fundamental ideas of his philosophy are complicated by so much detail that they are often difiicult to grasp. The present essay, stating them as it does simply and clearly, saves the student a good deal of unnecessary trouble.
He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented". In 1930 France awarded him its highest honour, the Grand-Croix de la Legion d'honneur.
Bergson lived the quiet life of a French professor, marked by the publication of his four principal works:
in 1889, Time and Free Will
in 1896, Matter and Memory
in 1907, Creative Evolution
in 1932, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
In his Introduction to Metaphysics Bergson gives a succinct and vivid statement of his conception of philosophic method, which is now well known as implying the transcendence of abstract or external analysis and synthesis by intellectual sympathy or intuition. "To philosophise," he says, "is to invert the habitual direction of the work of thought". Habitually thought tends to take the direction of concepts that are already made and are familiar through their application to the practical needs of life. But any new insight that can be the point of departure for an advance of knowledge must be obtained by re-entering into the inner nature of the thing itself, although this is possible only after much patient use of the ideas and symbols by which it has already been partially interpreted.
The fundamental point of coincidence between Bergson's doctrine and pragmatism is, therefore, that the ideas that persist or get accepted are those which have been found practically useful. But while the emphasis of pragmatism is on the relativity of thought to action, and the testing of ideas by their practical application, Bergson emphasises the consequence that ideas that have become habitual and are readily applicable to action are not easily changed or replaced by others, of which the value is still doubtful. The two doctrines thus fit into each other. Knowledge must begin from concrete experience. It begins in intuitive apprehension or suggestion, which must be verified by detailed application. Modes of apprehension that have become habitual through their successful working are apt to get stereotyped, to be those "rigid and ready-made concepts" that must be transcended by a fresh intuition, and undergo modification and improvement in order to yield further results. It is by this twofold process that knowledge arises out of and again returns to the concrete fulness of life.
It is no new theory, he remarks here, that we have “two profoundly different ways of knowing things.” Nearly all philosophers agree on this point, but not all see wherein the difference consists, nor how much depends upon it. To Bergson’s mind the essential difference now seems to be simply this: that “in the first mode of knowledge one hovers about the object; in the second, one enters into it.” If the knowledge of a horse’s action obtainable by an analytic observer with his moving-pictures is typical of the first mode, the direct and sympathetic knowledge of that same motion possessed by the skillful rider may be typical of the second. Both kinds of knowledge are “empirical”; both go to “the facts”; but one is external knowledge; the other, by contrast, internal. To this second way of knowing, Bergson now gives the name of “intuition.”
In Bergson ’s larger works the fundamental ideas of his philosophy are complicated by so much detail that they are often difiicult to grasp. The present essay, stating them as it does simply and clearly, saves the student a good deal of unnecessary trouble.
