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Life Philosophy Principle Works Influence and Critique Bibliography
Bergson, Henri Louis
Life:
French philosopher who overthrew the exaggerated
scientisni and mechanistic evolutionism of the 19th cen-
tury and advanced a new theory of evolution acknowl-
edging the spiritual dimension of man; b. Paris. Oct.
\S". 1859: d. Paris, Jan. 4. 194). Educated at the Lycec
Condorcet and the Ecole Normale Superieure, where
he distinguished himself in mathematics and physics.
Bergson turned to philosophy, receiving the ii;^'ri''i;i' in
1881. After teaching at Angers and Clermont-Ferrand.
he returned to Paris in 1888 to teach at the Lycee Henri
Quatre and the Ecole Normale Superieure.' At the Ccil-
lege de France he held the chair of the history of philos-
ophy from 1900 to 1921, attracting huge crowds to his
lectures by the beauty and eloquence of his language
and by the extraordinary appeal of his message. He be-
came a member of the Academic Francaise in 1918,
was elected president of the International Commission
for Intellectual Cooperation after World War I, and
received the Nobel prize for literature in 1927. Al-
though born of Jewish parents, Bergson grew up with-
out religion and began his philosophical career as an
enthusiastic follower of Herbert "Spencer. However,
his attempts to give a full and accurate account of real-
ity led him to abandon Spencer's evolutionary theory,
and the subsequent development of his thought
brought him closer and closer to Catholicism. In his will
he confessed his moral adhesion to the Catholic Church
and revealed that he would have become a convert had
he not felt obliged to remain with his Jewish brethren,
then being persecuted under Hitler. Shortly before his
death he arose from his sickbed to appear for the regis-
tration of Jews in Paris. A Catholic priest said the
prayers at his funeral, as he had requested.
Philosophy. Although deeply influenced by *evolu-
tionism and *empiricism, Bergson rejected the narrow
conception of man and of the world characteristic of
scientific *positivism, and sought to continue the meta-
physicospiritualist tradition of *Maine de Biran and
Felix Ravaisson (1813-1900). His philosophy con-
stitues a defense of spirit against "materialism, in-
tuition against "'rationalism, freedom against *deter-
minism (both physical and biological), creativity
against '"mechanism, and philosophy against *scien-
tism. Setting out from the "intuition of duration," which
is the dominant idea in his philosophy, Bergson offered
a renovated empiricism and a new and profoundly orig-
inal doctrine of evolution.
In a thoroughgoing critique of science Bergson
showed why, in his opinion, science does not and cannot
give a true picture of life or of reality as a whole. Sci-
ence is the product of intelligence, which evolved solelv
to assure man's physical survival and to make possible
his dominion over nature. Intelligence views all realitv
as solid, timeless, and spatial. Since its function is the
manipulation of matter for practical purposes, it seeks
exact formulas for things and expresses them in readv-
made concepts that serve as substitutes for the real. A
mechanistic explanation of the universe results. All real-
ity is described as static, homogeneous, discontinuous,
and predictable; nothing vital, dynamic, novel, or un-
foreseeable is admitted. The very structure of intelli-
gence renders it incapable of comprehending *life,
"•becoming, *spirit, and *freedom. The refusal to admit
the existence of *God, the human *soul, or "'free will
is the consequence of recognizing as real only what can
be grasped by intelligence.
Although Bergson held that intelligence is man's nat-
ural mode of knowing, he believed that the human mind
is also capable of '"intuition-a direct contact or coinci-
dence with things. To think intuitively is to think in
duration, thereby experiencing the inner dynamism of
being. Bergson regarded intuition as the kind of knowl-
edge proper to philosophy, and attributed the failures
of most philosophers to their having ignored intuition
and based their metaphysics on abstraction, generaliza-
tion, and reasoning. The true philosophy dispenses with
all ready-made concepts in order to achieve an inner
view of being. To communicate his intuition the philos-
opher must invent new words and employ those images
best suited to suggest the inexpressible. According to
Bergson. philosophy must be both empirical and intui-
tive. Although he rejected the prevailing empiricism, it
was not because it placed too high a value on *experi-
ence. Bergson believed that all philosophical problems
must be solved according to the experimental method,
since it is only experience that can give one certitude.
An integral empiricism, however, must admit not only
the knowledge of matter, but also all that man knows
through introspection, all the vague suggestions of
'"consciousness, all that is revealed in the intuition of
duration.
To start with the intellect's view of reality meant for
Bergson to attempt a reconstruction of life and move-
ment out of concepts appropriate only to inert matter.
He sought to reverse the order and to start with life and
movement grasped in intuition. Life (or consciousness)
is then seen to be the primordial reality, and matter but
its degradation or descending motion. From this fresh
perspective reality appears to be ever moving and grow-
ing, a ceaseless flux. It is essentially dynamic, qualita-
tive, creative, and unpredictable. To know existing
things as they really are is to grasp them intuitively,
that is, sub specie durationis. The implications of this
approach to reality so impressed William *James that
he hailed it as a new Copernican revolution comparable
in its significance for philosophy to that of G. '"Berkeley
or I. "Kant.
Principal Works. Bergson's leading ideas are encom-
passed in four principal works. In Time and Free Will
he showed that free will is the most evident of facts and
that its denial follows upon the confusion of succession
with simultaneity, duration with intensity, and quality
with quantity. In Matter and Memory he proved that
spirit as well as matter exists. By demonstrating that
consciousness is not identical with cerebral activity, he
paved the way for a proof of the survival of the soul
after death. In Creative Evolution, his most famous
work. he showed that the mechanistic interpretation of
evolution is not justified by the facts. Viewing the data
of evolution in the light of his intuition of duration, he
described the evolutionary process as the forward
thrust of a great spiritual force, the life impulse (elan
vital), rushing through time, insinuating itself into mat-
ter. and producing the various living forms culminating
in man. Its movement is not predetermined but creative,
ever generating novel and unpredictable forms. The
Two Sources of Morality and Religion represents the
full flowering of Bergson's thought. Morality and reli-
gion are traced back to their double source in the evo-
lutionary process. Bergson distinguished two separate
moralities and religions-the open and closed moralities,
the static and dynamic religions. Closed morality per-
tains to social cohesion. It is static and rooted in social
pressure, the morality of a group enclosed upon itself.
It represents a halt in the evolutionary process. Open
morality transcends the group to unite all mankind in a
common brotherhood. It is progressive and creative, a
forward thrust of the elan vital. Whereas closed moral-
itv and static religion originate in the instinct for sur-
vival, open morality and dynamic religion are inspired
by the moral heroes, saints and mystics, those superior
representatives of the human race who, like a new spe-
cies, foreshadow the future condition of man. They
draw man upward to a higher spiritual level by their
vision of human destiny and of God, the source of all
love. It is in the experience of the mystics that Bergson
found the most convincing evidence for the existence
of God.
Influence and Critique. Bergson's manner of philoso-
phizing-his repugnance for definition and for a techni-
cal vocabulary and his method of attacking each
problem separately-did not lend itself to the formation
of a Bergsonian school. Yet his influence on 20th-cen-
tury thought has been profound. Among the philos-
ophers whose works reflect a strong Berasonism are
Edouard *LeRoy, Maurice *Blondel. Max *Scheler. and
Maurice Pradines. Many Catholic scholars, notably Jac-
ques Maritain, Etienne Gilson. and Gabriel Marcel,
though voicing disagreement on certain points of doc-
trine, have acknowledged with gratitude his great in-
spiration. Bergson's influence is also discernible in the
thought of numerous scientists, including Alexis "•Carrel,
Pierre *Lecomte du Noiiy, and Pierre *Teilhard de
Chardin; in many literary works, including those of
Marcel *Proust and Charles *Peguy; and in some
schools of painting and music. From the start his books
gained unprecedented fame. Appealing to a wide read-
ing public, they were translated into many languages
and have been reprinted again and again.
Acclaimed by many of his contemporaries as the
long-awaited liberator from the tyranny of materialism.
mechanism, and determinism, Bergson was criticized
by some for stopping short of the Christian conception
of God, creation, the human soul, and free choice. From
the viewpoint of Christian doctrine. Bergson's philoso-
phy remains at best-and in spite of his intentions per-
haps-ambiguous and incomplete. For the primacy of
"being as a reality accessible to intellect, he substituted
the primacy of becoming as a reality accessible only to
intuition. His depreciation of reason necessitated the
denial that the existence of God can be rationally dem-
onstrated. Man's approach to God can be only through
the intuitive experience of the mystic, he said. God is
described as Love and Creative Energy: but since the
relationship between Creative Energy and the elan vital
is never clearly defined, the distinction between God
and creatures remains blurred. The depreciation of ra-
tinnal Vnnwipdop akn led Rergson to base morality on
tional faculty of intuition. He allowed to reason no es-
sential role in moral obligation: its function is merely to
formulate and coordinate moral rules and to assure their
logical consistency.
Furthermore, having identified being with becoming,
Bergson was forced to deny the substantiality of the
soul and to define soul as a duration or participation in
the elan vital. While upholding the-distinction between
soul and body, he was unable to avoid a dualistic posi-
tion in fixing their mutual relationship. A champion of
free will, Bergson rejected all forms of determinism: yet
he regarded freedom not as the rational determination
of a human act but as the spontaneous bursting forth
of vital energy from the depths of the self, a creative
but nonrational act expressive of the total personality.
To the Catholic philosopher or theologian such points
of criticism, together with a misunderstanding of the
supernatural character of Christian mysticism, repre-
sent important deficiencies in Bergson's thought. Yet no
evaluation of his philosophy that is limited to pointing
out its metaphysical inadequacies will render it full
justice. It must also be seen as the sincere and arduous
endeavor of a great soul to discover the truth, a spiritual
itinerary from materialistic mechanism to the God
known and loved by the Christian mystics.
Bibliography: Works. Oeuvres, ed. H. GOUHIER and A. ROBI-
NET (Paris 1959), critical ed. of Bergson's major works; Time
and Free Will (Essais siir les Donnees linmediales de la Con-
science 1889) tr. F. L. POGSON (New York 1910; repr. 1950);
Matter and Memory (Matiere et Memoirs 1896), tr. N. M. PAUL
and W. S. PALMER (New York 1911); Creative Evolution
(L'Evolution creatrice 1907) tr. A. MITCHELL (New York
1911): Mind-Energy: Lectures and Essays (L'£nergie Spiriluelle
1920), tr. H. \V. CARR (New York 1920); The Two Sources of
Morality and Religion (Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la
religion. Paris 1932), tr. R. A. AUDRA and C. BRERETON (New
York 1935); The Creative Mind (La Pensee et Ie MouvanI
1934), tr. M. L. ANDISON (New York 1946), collected essays.
Studies. I. W. ALEXANDER, Bergson: Philosopher of Reflec-
tion (New York 1957). J. CHEVALIER. Henri Bergson, tr. L. A.
CLARE (New York 1928). E.. LE ROY, The New Philosophy of
Henri Bergson. tr. V. BENSON (New York 1913). L. ADOLPHE,
La Plulosophe religieiise de Bergson (Paris 1946). L. HUSSON,
L'liitelleclualisme de Bergson (Paris 1947). R. M. MOSSE-
BASTIDE. Bergson educaieur (These; Paris 1955), contains 90
pages of bibliog. M. T. L. PENIDO, La Methode intuitive de M.
Bervson (Paris^ 1918). B. A. SCHARFSTEIN, Roots of Bergson's
Philosophy (New York 1943). For evaluation of Bergson's
thought from the Catholic viewpoint, see esp. J. MARITAIN.
Bergsoiiian Philosophy and Thoiiiisni. tr. M. L. and J. G. AMU-
SON (New York 1955) and E. H. GILSON. The Philosopher and
Tlieologv, tr. C. GILSON (New York 1962). Illustration credit;
French Embassy, Press and Information Division, New York
City.
I. J. GALLAGHER
New Catholic Encyclopedia;
McGraw-Hill Book Company, NewYork,1967