Abstract
Despite Bergson’s immense fame,1 Bergson never produced a movement;2 Bergson never produced a Heidegger. The lack of a movement explains why Husserl’s phenomenology continues to overshadow Bergsonism. Phenomenology looks to be so much more important than Bergsonism that Derrida, in his 1967 study of Husserl, mentions Bergson only in passing, implying that that his criticism of Husserl should be able to strike at Bergson as well.3 Foucault does the same, as early as 1963 in The Birth of the Clinic and as late as 1984 in an essay called ‘Life: Experience and Science/4 Derrida and Foucault are able to subordinate Bergson’s thought to phenomenology not only because phenomenology virtually dominated twentieth-century thinking. They can do this also because Bergsonism seems to be conceptually similar to phenomenology. Bergsonism is an intuitionism, and Bergson’s central concept of ‘the duration’ (la durée) looks to be equivalent to Husserl’s concept of Erlebnis (lived-experience). In 1965 however, Deleuze asserted that Bergson holds a unique position — different from Husserl and even from Heidegger — in the Western philosophical tradition.5 This assertion distinguishes Deleuze from Derrida and Foucault. Indeed, Deleuze might be Bergson’s Heidegger. In What is Philosophy? for instance — a text co-authored with Guattari — Deleuze says that Bergson is the only philosopher who was mature enough for the inspiration Spinoza gives us.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Legend has it that Bergson’s first American lecture in 1913, in New York City at Columbia University, attracted such a large crowd that Broadway experienced its first-ever traffic jam. See T. Quirk, Bergson and American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 1.
At this moment Bergsonism is undergoing a kind of renaissance. A sign of this renaissance is that Etudes bergsoniennes came back into existence in 2002 as Annales bergsoniennes. See F. Worms, Annales bergsoniennes I. Bergson dans le siècle (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002).
See G.W. Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, trans, and ed. P. Remnant and J. Bennett (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1996), 53.
As always, this dualism is what Merleau-Ponty cannot accept in any philosopher, even in Bergson. See M. Merleau-Ponty, La nature (Paris: Seuil, 1995), 91–3
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2010 Leonard Lawlor
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lawlor, L. (2010). Intuition and Duration: an Introduction to Bergson’s ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’. In: Kelly, M.R. (eds) Bergson and Phenomenology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230282995_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230282995_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-30045-7
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-28299-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)