Creative Evolution

Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was born in Paris, the year Darwin’s Origin of Species was published. Initially drawn equally by the sciences and philosophy, at the age of eighteen Bergson won a prestigious prize for solving a mathematical problem. Choosing philosophy, he attended the École Normale Supérieure and the University of Paris before working as a school teacher in Angers and Clermont-Ferrand while completing his doctorate at the University of Paris in 1889. He worked for eight years at the Lycée Henri-IV before taking a position as Chair of Greek and Roman Philosophy at the Collège de France in Paris 1900. His weekly lectures soon attracted beyond capacity crowds, and his visits abroad to England and the United States filled venues and reportedly caused the first-ever traffic jam on Broadway in New York City. Bergson engaged with some of the leading contemporary thinkers, including a famous debate with Einstein in 1922 over the nature of time. He influenced Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, and the philosopher William James, and was a pioneering figure in the Modernist intellectual movement of the early twentieth century.

Foreword Elizabeth Grosz Translator’s Introduction Donald A. Landes Creative Evolution, by Henri Bergson, translated by Donald A. Landes Bilingual Table of Contents Introduction 1. On the Evolution of Life. Mechanism and Finality 2. The Diverging Directions of Life: Torpor, Intellect, and Instinct 3. On the Meaning of Life, the Order of Nature, and the Form of the Intellect 4. The Cinematographic Mechanism of Thought and the Mechanistic Illusion. A Glance at the History of Systems. Real Becoming and False Evolutionism Correspondence, Reception, and Commentaries Introduction 1. Correspondence James–Bergson Correspondence (1907) Letter to H. Wildon Carr (1908) Letter to Florian Znaniecki (1911) 2. Critical Reception in Biology Bergson and Le Dantec in Dialogue Ruyer as Reader of Bergson 3. Critical Reception in Mathematics Bergson and Borel in Dialogue 4. Critical Reception in Theology Bergson and Tonquédec in Dialogue 5. Notable Commentaries Canguilhem as Reader of L’évolution créatrice Merleau-Ponty as Reader of L’évolution créatrice Deleuze as Reader of L’évolution créatrice Critical Apparatus Editorial Endnotes Bibliographies Index