Bergson

Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was a French philosopher whose work centered on time, consciousness, and the creative capacity of life. He challenged mechanistic and spatialized accounts of reality by arguing that real time, or duration, is experienced as a flowing, qualitative continuity that cannot be fully captured by mathematical measurement. Bergson’s thought influenced a broad range of European philosophy in the early 20th century and helped shape discussions of freedom, memory, and creativity.

Bergson studied at the École Normale Supérieure and built a long career in Paris, where he held professorships and became a leading figure in French philosophy. His writing earned him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927. He participated in debates about science, religion, and culture, and his work was widely read in both philosophical and literary circles.

Central to Bergson’s philosophy is the concept of duration (la durée), a continuous, heterogeneous flow of time that underpins consciousness. He argued that intellect tends to spatialize time and rigidify experience, while intuition allows direct access to the living flux. Bergson also proposed the élan vital, a creative vital impulse driving evolution beyond purely deterministic mechanisms. In Matter and Memory, he explored how perception arises from the interaction between immediate experience and memory, linking body, perception, and past.

Bergson’s influence extended to phenomenology, process philosophy, and debates about free will and creativity. His ideas sparked both praise and critique and remained a reference point for discussions of time, life, and metaphysics throughout the 20th century.