Key WritingsThe twentieth century – with its unprecedented advances in technology and scientific understanding – saw the birth of a distinctively new and 'modern' age. Henri Bergson stood as one of the most important philosophical voices of that tumultuous time. An intellectual celebrity in his own life time, his work was widely discussed by such thinkers as William James, Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, as well as having a profound influence on modernist writers such as Wallace Stevens, Willa Cather and Wyndham Lewis and later thinkers, most notably Gilles Deleuze. Key Writings brings together Bergson's most essential writings in a single volume, including crucial passages from such major work as Time and Free Will, Matter and Memory, Creative Evolution, Mind-Energy, The Creative Mind, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion and Laughter. The book also includes Bergson's correspondences with William James and a chronology of his life and work. |
Contents
| 1 | |
Time and Free Will | 57 |
The Idea of Duration | 59 |
Matter and Memory | 95 |
Introduction | 97 |
Images and Bodies | 103 |
The Persistence of the Past | 151 |
Planes of Consciousness | 167 |
Truth and Reality | 327 |
Introduction to Metaphysics | 337 |
Bergson and Kant | 349 |
Beyond the Noumenal | 351 |
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion | 359 |
Morality Obligation and the Open Soul | 361 |
Frenzy Mechanism Mysticism | 403 |
Mélanges | 419 |
MindEnergy | 171 |
Memory of the Present and False Recognition | 173 |
A Philosophical Illusion | 193 |
Creative Evolution | 207 |
The Endurance of Life | 209 |
Mechanism and Finalism | 229 |
Life as Creative Change | 235 |
Duration and Simultaneity | 249 |
Concerning the Nature of Time | 251 |
The Creative Mind | 269 |
The Possible and the Real | 271 |
Philosophical Intuition | 285 |
The Perception of Change | 303 |
Good Sense and Classical Studies | 421 |
Letter to G Lechalas | 433 |
BergsonJames Correspondence | 437 |
Letter to Harald Höffding | 449 |
Letter to Floris Delattre | 453 |
One Must Act like a Man of Thought and Think like a Man of Action | 457 |
Laughter | 463 |
An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic | 465 |
Notes | 481 |
Guide to Further Reading | 501 |
| 511 | |
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Common terms and phrases
abstract action actual afferent nerves appears associationism become Bergson body brain centre cerebral Collège de France complete conception consciousness continuity Creative Evolution Descartes distinct doctrine duration effect elements emotion empiricism evolution existence experience external fact feeling Gilles Deleuze give habits homogeneous homogeneous space human hypothesis idea idealism imagine individual indivisible instant intellect intelligence interval intuition Kant kind knowledge living material mathematical matter Matter and Memory means mechanism metaphysics mind morality motion movement multiplicity nature object obligation organism ourselves past perceive perception philosophy position positive science possible precisely present problem psychical pure memory realism reality reason recollection relation representation sensations sense simple simultaneity social society sociobiology soul space speak succession suppose tendency theory theory of relativity things thought Translator’s note truth TSMR unextended universe virtual visual perception whole word