Key Writings

Description

The 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. Cover HalfTitle Series Title Copyright Contents Abbreviations Chronology of Life and Works Introduction Duration and the two multiplicities Is time space? Bergson and Russell on continuity Towards an ontology of duration Life as a virtual multiplicity Bergson and relativity Intuition beyond Kant Morality and sociobiology Mélanges Time and Free Will The Idea of Duration Matter and Memory Introduction Images and Bodies The Persistence of the Past Planes of Consciousness Mind-Energy Memory of the Present and False Recognition Brain and Thought: A Philosophical Illusion Creative Evolution The Endurance of Life Mechanism and Finalism Life as Creative Change Duration and Simultaneity Concerning the Nature of Time The Creative Mind The Possible and the Real Philosophical Intuition The Perception of Change First lecture Second lecture On the Pragmatism of William James: Truth and Reality Introduction to Metaphysics Bergson and Kant Beyond the Noumenal The Two Sources of Morality and Religion Morality, Obligation and the Open Soul Frenzy, Mechanism, Mysticism Mélanges Good Sense and Classical Studies Letter to G. Lechalas End of 1897 Bergson–James Correspondence Villa Montmorency, 6th January 1903.13 Villa Montmorency, 25th March 1903.18 15th February 1905.22 Villa Montmorency, 20th July 1905.26 Villa Montmorency, 27th June 1907.33 Villa Montmorency, 9th May 1908.37 Chalet Ferdinand de Reynier, Chaumont-Sur-Neuchatel (Switzerland), 23rd July 1908.39 Villa Montmorency, 21st January 1909.42 9th April 1909.46 30th April 1909.48 Villa Montmorency, 31st March 1910.51 Letter to Harald Höffding 15 March 1915 Letter to Floris Delattre 24th December 1935. Message to the Descartes Congress, 1937: ‘One Must Act like a Man of Thought and Think like a Man of Action’ Laughter An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic Notes Guide to Further Reading Index