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By all accounts, Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) is virtually synonymous with process thought, including its more specific expressions as process philosophy and theology. This is most often assumed with little regard for the origins of modern process thought itself. Nicholas Rescher, reflecting on this fact, has called the pluralization of the field the "cardinal task" of all process proponents. This charge, given nearly thirty years ago, remains unfulfilled. Despite the fact that other candidates are available, the preeminence of this singular figure, and subordinately his later interpreter Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), has led to what may be called "The Whitehead/Hartshorne Factor" in virtually all aspects of process thought. This has functioned as a limiting factor in the promotion of processual ideas, a phenomenon noted during the earliest years of modern process history. This historiographical review will outline the features of these limitations and suggest a broader process approach that works to the benefit of its theological branch in particular. This paper dares to ask the "heretical" question, what would process philosophy and theology look like without Whitehead? Ironically, with the most recent analysis of Whitehead scholarship, the answer is hidden in plain sight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the different interpretations of the distinction between closed and open societies put forward by Henri Bergson, Leo Strauss, Karl Popper, and Gilles Deleuze. These vary both in the features attributed to the two kinds of society, especially to openness, and in the authors' evaluations of what they describe. The similarities and differences between their views are documented in detail, and their significance considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores bells, and objects in general, from a philosophical perspective. More specifically, it explores the way objects orient our being, but only partially as aspects of things always remain withdrawn from access. Through an exploration of the elemental forms of bells, this article positions object exploration as a wholly spiritual and pleasurable undertaking. No matter how much we delve into something there will always be unknowable aspects to a thing. Our experience of things is an intensely metaphysical experience that only living in the world (through) time can elucidate. In this case, the long standing object bell, with all its historical and cultural uses and meanings, becomes our gateway to the metaphysical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the machine is often seen as a powerful agent and enabler of extractive technologies, pollution and climate change, it can also be a necessary ally in resurrecting complex landscape rejuvenation projects that target potentially beneficial, catalytic natural hotspots. Daniela Atencio and Claudio Rossi, both architects and Associate Professors at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, show us how. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I examine the intersection between the concepts of freedom, the self, God, and creativity in the works of one of the most prominent twentieth-century Jewish thinkers, Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook (1865–1935), exploring his use of these concepts through the lens of the Lebensphilosophie of the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941). I first draw a historical and thematic parallel between Bergson's and Kook's philosophies that to date has not been considered extensively. I then argue that five different interpretative puzzles related to the topic of freedom in Kook's teachings can be explained against the background of Bergson's thought. This Bergsonian interpretation enables the reader to appreciate in what way different aspects of Kook's thought—the metaphysical, ethical, epistemological, and theological—are interconnected and can be understood as an organic whole. I thereby show that the Bergsonian philosophical and systematic models are an important, and yet unexplored, interpretative tool for the study of Kook's theological and philosophical thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the common elements between literature and cinema is the subject of time, for which two characteristic features are observed; quantitative time, which is objective and qualitative time, which has a mental existence. Henri Bergson based his philosophical views of the concept of time on subjective consciousness. Later, Gilles Deleuze extended Bergson's view of time to cinema. The current research, a descriptive-comparative study, aims to investigate the concept of qualitative time based on the opinions of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze in Sadeq Hedayat's novel, The Blind Owl (Būff Cūr) and its film adaptation, directed by Raúl Ruiz. According to this research, despite the difference in the written and visual media of literature and cinema, the concept of quality time is discerned as a common element in both works. To this end, the author and filmmaker have used a variety of internal time techniques, including diurnal cycles, intuition, reminiscences, time interferences, and time crystal components. Ruiz's film is a free adaptation, and its main plot and subplot are different from the novel. However, regarding the concept of time and the characteristics of mental time, it is consistent with Hedayat's effect. Among the findings of the present research, in addition to revealing the differences and similarities between the novel and the film from the perspective of qualitative time, it is possible to point out the common elements that can be adapted in literature and cinema based on the concept of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Henri Bergson critiques the traditional view of time as a mere succession of states, arguing that it fails to capture the crucial aspect of time's speed or pace. The paper explores Bergson's concept of time's speed through the lens of modern scientific insights and analytic philosophy, addressing critiques from cognitive science and logical analysis. By introducing the concept of "time qualia," which distinguishes between the quantitative and qualitative aspects of temporal experience, the author defends Bergson's position and provides a new theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between external motion, its measurement, and conscious duree. The formulation of this concept not only sheds light on the intrinsic connections between various related texts but also contributes to the differentiation between two distinct types of time speed -- time-qualia-based and flow-qualia-based. The author concludes that the qualitative aspects of time experience have an irreducible reality that complements, rather than opposes, the quantitative aspects, arguing that Bergson's perspective offers a more comprehensive understanding of time's nature and our experience of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to highlight the importance of spatial cognition in Bergson's Données immédiates by engaging with Robert Watt's reconstruction of Bergson's argument that every idea of number involves the idea of space. We focus on the second stage of Watt's reconstruction, where Bergson argues that only space can provide the distinction required for our counting of otherwise identical items. Watt bases his reconstruction on a premise regarding the possibility that identical objects, in the absence of spatial distinction, might remain identical across different "temporal locations". Our paper raises the prospect that Bergson is committed to a stronger thesis, namely one implying that identical objects would necessarily remain indistinguishable without the intervention of space. The paper thus concludes by emphasizing the indispensability of space for knowledge according to Bergson. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What happens when intuition becomes algorithmic? This article explores how approaching intuition as recursively trained sheds light on what is at stake affectively, politically, and ethically in the entanglements of sensorial, cognitive, computational and corporate processes and (infra)structures that characterise algorithmic life. Bringing affect theory and speculative philosophies to bear on computational histories and cultures, I tease out the continuing implications of post-war efforts to make intuition a measurable and indexable mode of anticipatory knowledge. If digital computing pioneers tended to elide the more ambivalent implications of quantifying intuition, this article asks what computational myths are at play in current accounts of machine learning-enabled sensing, thinking, and speculating and what complexities or chaos are disavowed. I argue that an understanding of more-than-human intuition which grapples meaningfully with the indeterminacy central to digitally mediated social life must recognise that visceral response is recursively trained in multiple ways with diverse, and often contradictory, effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aldous Huxley's work The Doors of Perception introduced the phrase 'Mind at Large' to the lexicon of psychedelic experience in 1954. I argue that its original presentation requires re-evaluation. I present evidence that Huxley manipulates the construction of the discourse he uses to present this phrase as a philosophically legitimate term. His choice of a pivotal quotation implies support from the conclusions of philosophers C. D. Broad and Henri Bergson. A hermeneutic analysis of this discourse highlights problems with this implication and shows that a reinterpretation of Huxley's methods and intentions is warranted. An increase in references to Mind at Large and related terms in studies of the effects of psychedelics motivates this re-evaluation of its implied philosophical value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I read the clash between predictive psychoanalytic theories and destabilizing queer theories on the subject of desire as a disagreement over probability. I point psychoanalysts and queer theorists towards four relevant episodes in the history of science: the debate on statistics and thermodynamics within the Victorian intelligentsia, the Einstein-Bergson feud, discussions within the cybernetics movement, and recent critiques of automated cars. Considering our sexual aims and objects as information, our desires would be due to the way we retrieve them. Psychoanalysis explains how such information is stored and queer theory how it is reorganized. In cases where repression is not accountable for lack of desire toward an external stimulus, such absence would be due to information not retrieved quick enough, rather than a genuine incapacity to desire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I propose a reading of Henri Bergson's Two Sources of Morality and Religion, centering on how mysticism transforms homo sapiens. For Bergson, the mystics are exemplars of social innovation, representatives of a "new species." The open society, far from being a distant utopian social ideal, is already immanent to static, closed society. Openness can be achieved now, in the moment of mystical experience, defined by Bergson as unity with the flow of life. Instead of a rigid dualism between closure and openness, Bergson proposes that social change is driven from the inside by new moral ideas. Moral heroes are those willing to break the mould of social obligation. A form of non-discriminatory love is possible, going beyond the inner/outer distinction. Far from being a passive or contemplative practice, mysticism for Bergson is an active change of the human condition, a passage to the more-than-human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the influence of Henri Bergson's (1859–1941) philosophy of time on three early twentieth-century British philosophers: Karin Costelloe-Stephen (1889–1953), Hilda Oakeley (1867–1950), and May Sinclair (1863–1946). I demonstrate that three central claims of Bergson's account of temporal experience (novelty, memory, and indivisibility) were creatively incorporated into their accounts of time. All these philosophers place time at the centre of their philosophical systems, so this study of their views on time and temporality can deepen our understanding of their systems more broadly. Further, this study helps us appreciate the reception of Bergson's thought in British philosophy after it was ferociously attacked by Bertrand Russell in 1912, and can provide more detailed contours on the joint fortunes of temporal experience and Bergson's thought in the history of twentieth-century philosophy. I conclude by emphasizing reasons why contemporary philosophers should pay particular attention to the three figures' treatment of Bergson. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reexamines Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaCohen Kook's (1865–1935) approach to Zionism, by proposing a reading of Kook's Zionism through the lens of the Lebensphilosophie (The Philosophy of Life) of the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941). I show that we can clarify Kook's view of freedom, the self and creativity and its essential connection to Zionism, therefore, proposing a new understanding of the meaning that Jewish nationalism assumes in Kook's thought, thanks to the application of the model of freedom and creativity developed by Bergson to Kook's writings. Especially for Kook, I show that Jewish nationalism is seen as a means for the Jewish People to return to their true self and through this connection attain true freedom. Only when a nation realizes its freedom by a return to its own original self, it can be creative. This is how I explain the connection that Kook draws between a return to the Land of Israel and the ability of Israel as a people to finally be able to be creative. Finally, I argue that this understanding of nationalism adds a new layer to the essential place that the territory assumes in Kook's thought. A State of Israel outside its original land can attain the goal of autonomous self-governance but lacks the ability to inspire the reconnection of the nation to its own original self. The Jewish People as a collective cannot connect to their authentic self away from the Land of Israel, consequently, the Land of Israel is the only place in which they can be truly free. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite his impeccable academic pedigree, a protégé of Josiah Royce and a friend and student of William James, John Elof Boodin is nearly forgotten today among American philosophers; hence, an essential aspect of his thought lost to history is his contribution to process theology. The leading features of process thought demonstrate Boodin's connections to this unique theology and show it to have been established early on, as early as 1900 and 1904. This places Boodin's writing on process philosophy/theology well before Alfred North Whitehead, the putative pioneer in modern process metaphysics, by more than twenty years, and co-extensive with Henri Bergson, who influenced Whitehead. Nevertheless, when Boodin is discussed today, it is usually as an early pragmatist rather than as a process philosopher. The central claim of this essay argues that Boodin is best understood as a pragmatically influenced process theist, one of the first in a modern context. This historiographical revision will permit a better portrayal of process thought by revealing a more nuanced and pluralistic theological landscape beyond the standard Bergsonian/Whiteheadian/Hartshornian triumvirate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on the childhood stories of the Mexican writer Elena Garro (1916-1998), relating them to Henri Bergson's philosophy. The childhood, mainly recreated by Garro in a book entitled Ua semana de colores (1964), has a particular entity and importance in the author's narrative. I propose a close reading of two paradigmatic tales: "Nuestras vidas son los ríos" y "El día que fuimos perros". The analysis will take into account the theory of the narrative ending. The attention to the last few lines of the stories will reveal a final emphasis on affectivity. This eloquent border marks the transition to adulthood and will be clarified while relating it to a philosophical concept: Henri Bergson's psychic imprint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores how structures of looking and parabasis in Fleabag replicate the second-person pronoun's ability to interpellate a storyworld-external reader in textual narrative, and the extent to which it may be considered a televisual example of second-person narrative. Using David Herman's typology of narrative-you, I argue that Phoebe Waller-Bridge's use of the camera in Fleabag creates the impression of an addressee that is both inside and outside the diegesis. This gaze reproduces the ontological hesitation which characterises Herman's notion of the doubly deictic you. Fleabag's use of parabasis to cross the narrative threshold consequently produces a temporal schism between what Bergson describes as the perception of a moment as it happens and the reflection of it as though it has already happened. Crucially, this doubleness is particular to both the doubleness in the structure of shame according to Sartre and the double deixis of the second-person mode more broadly. Waller-Bridge's use of parabasis serves as an original contemporary case study for advancing critical discussions of second-person narrative theory in relation to temporality and affect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides proof that the concept of time articulated in Russian philosophy of the nineteenth century was very close to the understanding of time in the philosophy of Henri Bergson. This explains the close attention of Russian culture to the philosophical system of the French thinker at the beginning of the twentieth century. It also allows us to hypothesize about the possible influence of the ideas of Russian philosophers of the late nineteenth century on Bergson (more specifically, the influence of the ideas of Leo Tolstoy is justified). Bergson's most original idea is the recognition of the metaphysical primacy of the subjective, inner time of the human in relation to physical time. In physical time, only the moment of the present has real existence; in internal time, designated by Bergson as duration, all moments of the past are preserved as real, and this is expressed by memory. Internal time turns out to be the spiritual Absolute from which the entire material world originates. A very similar metaphysical concept is presented in Pyotr Chaadaev's Philosophical Letters. According to Chaadaev, each person is directly involved in the spiritual Absolute (God), which has the characteristic of integral time. In this time, all moments are in unity, and there is no division into the past, present, and future; this division arises only in the time intrinsic to the material reality that originates from the spiritual Absolute. In the religious teaching of Leo Tolstoy, personality is defined as the appearance of God within the limits of material existence, so a person is simultaneously involved in the earthly physical time and absolute time, which manifests itself through memory. The article concludes that Bergson's ideas determined the most important features of Russian avant-garde culture of the twentieth century; in particular, thanks to them, the opposite trends of Russian thought were brought to unity: metaphysics of pan-unity and personalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taking the early tissue culture experiments of Alexis Carrel in the 1910s–1930s as its example, the article explores the relationship between advances in biotechnological control over living matter and a holistic ontology of life, which stresses the temporal specificity of living things. With reference to Henri Bergson, Carrel argued that physiological time depends on an organism's relationship to its milieu. By developing a laboratory apparatus and culture media, new objects of investigation could be made to live outside the organism and be brought to behave in novel temporal ways. In difference to recent biotechnological advances, like for example genome editing, which seek to 'engineer' living organisms by rebuilding them from their DNA up, then, early twentieth century interventionist laboratory practices were often linked to an understanding that biological plasticity results from organismic complexity and interactions between organism and milieu. These notions contributed to shaping laboratory apparatuses and techniques; they also helped to establish an understanding of environmental control that would allow for the production of novel 'living things'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work in stylistics of Charles Bally (1865–1947) attempts to analyse that subset of a language system in which meaning is not purely conceptual or intellectual, but has an affective, emotional dimension. It is not concerned with literary language, but with everyday language used in the service of 'life', a word which is central for Bally. This paper adds to the definitive study of Bally's stylistics (Taylor 1981) by bringing in material which came to light after its publication, including Médina's (1985) study of Bally's reliance on the work of Henri Bergson, who reconfigured the affective-conceptual dyad and whose writings are the source, Médina shows, of Bally's use of 'life'. This paper also adduces more recently published documents on Bally's intellectual and professional relationship with Ferdinand de Saussure, which figures prominently in Taylor's (1981) account, and which can now be reassessed in a new light. • Re-examines Talbot Taylor's 1981 study of Charles Bally's stylistics in the light of subsequent discoveries concerning Bally's work. • Situates Bally's stylistics in its relationship to Saussure's linguistics, and looks at how both articulate with psychological theories of the time. • Considers the implications of Bally's remarks on Henri Bergson for an understanding of the key concept of 'life' in Bally's Le langage et la vie (1913) and other work. • Looks at how Taylor's study of Bally links to Taylor's later work on understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Interest in the work of Bergson has seen a revival in political theory over the past two decades. Initially, this interest focused primarily on Bergson's earlier writings. However, recently there has been increased attention to Bergson's controversial last book – The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. This has had the benefit of bringing attention to a book frequently maligned as uneven and disappointing. At the same time, mostly absent from this renewed interest has been the subject of race. One of the great ironies of The Two Sources is that, even as it calls for an open morality, it relies on a series of regressive, racist and Eurocentric assumptions. It is this article's contention that, if we are going to see a renewed turn to The Two Sources, we must grapple with these assumptions, both to investigate how they limit the effectiveness of Bergson's argument, and to ensure that they are not smuggled into our own work. The article goes on to argue that Bergson's philosophy ultimately gives us the tools to challenge these reactionary elements; that his focus on morality as a dynamic and open-ended process provides us with the opportunity for recognizing the contingent limitations of Bergson's worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Obnovljeni zivot is the property of University of Zagreb, Society of Jesus and Faculty of Philosophy & Religious Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article analyzes the conceptions of anticipation and invention in the philosophies of Henri Bergson and Gilbert Simondon. In doing so, I analyze the questions how futures are anticipated and what role technologies play in the anticipation and invention of the future. Technologies are increasingly used to predict, prescribe and control behavior. These technologies are based upon the ontological belief that reality is computable and predictable. With Bergson and Simondon, I aim to show that this ontology does not take the temporal structure and the anticipatory faculty of living beings into account. Anticipation is an essential activity of a living being in its milieu. In order to survive, living beings structure their milieu to make their future actions reliable. Images are central to this process. They are constantly evoked by and with practices. They are transformed and used to anticipate and imagine the future. Yet, these images are affectively charged and can be an expression of what Bergson calls "myth-making function" (fonction fabulatrice). While Bergson describes this function as a positive force, one can ask whether this force turns against itself in face of our contemporary climate crisis, digital technologies and the crisis of open democracies. An alternative is to understand and to construct technical objects as essentially open in analogy to the living being. This implies a conception of the human not as a fixed conception, but as an "open adventure" (Simondon 2016, 121) that constantly re-invents itself in relation with nature and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is now common to hear discourse about "the decline of civilization" and to learn about people's fears that civilization might even be on the verge of collapse. In one sense, such discourse is nothing new in that at least since the time of Oswald Spengler and World War One there have been concerns and/or predictions about the decline (and perhaps fall) of "the West." But in another sense, there are more proximate causes for the recent popularity of decline and fall discourse. It will serve us well, I think, to reconsider a thinker who thought long and hard about the rise and fall of civilizations in the past, Arnold Toynbee. It will be the purpose of the present article to argue for the claim that Toynbee can be fruitfully seen as a process thinker who was specifically concerned with the dramatic changes that have occurred historically to various civilizations around the globe. In this regard, he is in many ways a philosopher or historian of civilization, much like Alfred North Whitehead, Henri Bergson, and Teilhard de Chardin, all of whom are cited favorably by Toynbee. He is also similar to the process philosopher Charles Hartshorne in this regard. I will claim that Toynbee can provide valuable insight to us at this moment in history. That is, the sense that civilized life is threatened is not a new phenomenon, hence it will be useful to consider Toynbee's scholarship so as to help us gain some much-needed historical perspective on civilizational change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine from a philosophical point of view the therapeutic method of Pierre Janet, with special focus on the concepts of 'exercice', 'tension psychologique' and 'fonction du réel'. Inspired by Henri Bergson, Janet explains psychasthenia as a loosening of 'attention à la vie présente' and opposes his own theory of psychological intensity to Freud's analytical couch. In his late phase of research, Janet elaborates the concept of 'fonction de l'avoir' and explains how the vital intensity of subjects arises outside of the therapeutic rapport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the concept of labour through a diremptive reading of Polish philosopher Stanisław Brzozowski's essay "Prolegomena filozofii 'pracy'" ("Prolegomena to a Philosophy of 'Labour'") written in 1909. This essay appears as a chapter in his main work Idee: wstęp do filozofii dojrzałości dziejowej (Ideas. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Historical Maturity), first published in 1910. In "Prolegomena," Brzozowski defines labour as an inner gesture that delineates the duration of life. In the interpretation of this definition the influence of Henri Bergson on Brzozowski's thought is stressed. Inspired by Bergson, Brzozowski understands labour as the only ground-creating—and therefore metaphysical—activity of humanity, when faced with the absence of transcendent grounds for existence in modernity. Emphasis is placed on Brzozowski's insistence in "Prolegomena" that labour is irrational in its delineation of the absolutely new. He describes it as the α of the inner gesture of labour that cannot be known until it is performed. This unknown α is interpreted as his way of describing the groundlessness of the ground-creating activity of labour, and that this groundlessness means that labour eludes the control of the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Maurizio Lazzarato has provocatively argued that “while Marx indicated the methodology with which to discover living labor beyond work, he is of no help in analyzing the forces that lie beneath ... the conditions of contemporary capitalism.” Lazzarato then goes on to make the rather startling claim that it is in fact Henri Bergson who “should be understood as the conceptual personae who has constructed an ontology” adequate to post-Fordism and immaterial labor.” But this is a Bergson who has been stripped of any remnants of spiritualism by reading him through Gilles Deleuze and Walter Benjamin. Lazzarato suggests that Benjamin and Bergson must be reciprocally supplemented by each other: the former’s ambiguous notion of Jetztzeit should be understood through the lens of the Bergsonian concept of virtual memory at the same time as Bergson’s temporal metaphysics should be given a historical and political sense derived, at least in part, from Benjamin. Lazzarato’s Bergsonian reading of Benjamin is deliberately meant to contribute to the construction of a critical theory beyond the negative dialectics of Adorno and Horkheimer, who at least outwardly dismissed Bergson’s philosophy as a form of pre-critical vitalism. This article attempts to highlight the conditions under which Lazzarato is able to make such a theoretical move by revisiting the historical debate around Bergson and then constructing a kind of counter-lineage to the normal reception of vitalism in critical theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Escritura e Imagen is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article aims to investigate the relationship between autism and memory, taking as reference the theses of French philosopher Henri Bergson, in interlocution with the cognitivist paradigm and the field of neurosciences. Based on Bergson's perspective, we argue that autism features an early dissociation between memory and bodily action, making it difficult to use past experiences to solve a current situation. The autistic memory, without the pragmatic compass, wanders without a precise function, sometimes resulting in the subject's inability to locate himself in contexts and in his own history, and sometimes in mnemonic prodigies that are not very useful for autonomy and social life. Autism may therefore be understood as a pragmatic memory disorder or disturbance of attention to life, affecting the individuals' ability to respond creatively to everyday obstacles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike what is often presumed, scientific internationalism persisted through the First World War and its aftermath. Although many scientists aligned themselves with their belligerent nations after 1914, and although Germany and Austria were excluded from international meetings after 1919, the rhetoric celebrating the universally fraternizing nature of science continued as if no such ruptures existed. In this article I argue that this persistence was rooted in the war itself, and particularly in the massive mobilization of academics in wartime propaganda and diplomacy. In these activities they used internationalist arguments and their own supranational status as scientists to defend their countries' war causes and defame those of the enemy. I illustrate this by following the diplomatic work of the French philosopher Henri Bergson. From the start of the war Bergson presented himself as a neutral scientific arbiter, developing a philosophy of the war (based on his work on life and evolution) as a battle of German barbarity versus universal (not just French) civilization. His government took note and sent Bergson on several diplomatic tasks, most notably a secret mission to the United States, early 1917, where he was to speak to President Wilson to persuade him to enter the war on the French side. Bergson's universalism and his stature as a philosopher should appeal to Wilson's dislike of partisanship and craving for the moral high ground. After the war, Bergson-style universalism continued and was institutionalized in the League of Nations and its International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation--with Bergson as its president. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though scholarship has explored Karin Costelloe-Stephen's contributions to the history of psychoanalysis, as well as her relations to the Bloomsbury Group, her philosophical work has been almost completely ignored. This paper will examine her debate with Bertrand Russell over his criticism of Bergson. Costelloe-Stephen had employed the terminology of early analytic philosophy in presenting a number of arguments in defence of Bergson's views. Costelloe-Stephen would object, among other things, to Russell's use of an experiment which, as she points out, was first conducted by Carl Stumpf. Russell appeals to Stumpf's experiment in his attempt to prove that sense data are terms in logical relations, a thesis presupposed by the project of logical analysis outlined in Our Knowledge of the External World. A reformulated version of Costelloe-Stephen's argument put forth by this paper shows that Russell's argument fails to provide adequate proof for his thesis. Further modifications of the argument can also address a reconstruction (based on contemporary reports) of Russell's reply to Costelloe-Stephen. In his reply, Russell would use, already in 1914, the term 'analytic philosophy' in contrasting his and Moore's approach to a continental one, exemplified by Bergson and Costelloe-Stephen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are few philosophers who have been so influential in their own lifetimes and had so much influence, only to be subsequently ignored, as Henri Bergson (1859-1941). When in April 1922, Bergson debated Einstein on the nature of time, it was Bergson who was far better known and respected. Now Einstein’s achievements are known to everyone, but very few people outside philosophy departments have even heard of Bergson. Following Friedrich Schelling and those he influenced, Bergson targeted the Cartesian dualism that permeates the culture of modernity. In doing so, he challenged deep assumptions rooted in and cemented in place by Descartes’ philosophy. It this article I will argue that Bergson made considerable progress in this attack on Cartesian dualism, and diverse philosophers subsequently built on his ideas. However, failure to appreciate the source of these ideas has weakened their impact, being scattered among different disciplines by diverse philosophers and scientists who drew upon Bergson’s work while forgetting details of his philosophy. This article is an effort to rectify this situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We seek to present a reading of Henri Bergson’s 1900 work, Le Rire (Laughter). The primary theme of this book is the comic phenomenon, as expressed through the bodily element of laughter. What interests Bergson is the evolutionary role of laughter in social regulation. As the vitalist philosopher sees things, society is perpetually threatened by the danger of rigidity. Society is always in danger of regressing into a machinic, static, rigid state. We laugh at living human beings who behave automatically and machinically. Hence, laughter is a form of punishment, designed to compel individuals to behave more organically. Subsequent authors on humor have extensively critiqued Bergson’s rather narrow equation of humor with punishment, drawing attention to the wide variety of comic types. What especially interests us is how Le Rire can be read as part of a broader vitalist concern with the maintenance of an organicity always under threat from its own tendencies. Finally, we also interpret Bergson’s works written during World War One in light of the author’s own commitment to social spontaneity. A close reading reveals an inner tension between the philosopher’s conformist patriotic commitment to the French war effort and the general vitalism and universalism of the Bergsonian philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Like the protagonist, both the short story and the short film are subject to the demand to arrive 'on time'. Violently freed from the imperatives of conventional storytelling, this film considers the moment when the laws of time and language fall away in favour of an eternal 'they is'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study analyzes the philosophical and religious dimensions of the novel Život bez konca (A Life without End, 1956) by the Slovak writer František Švantner (1912-1950). It argues that they are derived from Taoism (as an original source also of its later European adaptations). The study compares Švantner's imagination with Taoism and further analyzes its intertextuality with A. Schopenhauer, H. Bergson and F. Nietzsche. These philosophical projections are recognized in philosophical metaphors that are the key supporting elements of the cognitive architecture of the novel and support the Taoist perspective. One of the novel's Taoist principles are invocations of examples of earthly life, which Švantner executes by realistically representing life on the river Hron in early 20th century. In this way his writing paradoxically conforms with the ideological prescriptions of (socialist) realism, even though his inspiration was not marxism, but irrationalist philosophy. This philosophical conflict complicated aesthetic and stylistic assessments of the novel. Their contradictions can be explained by a philosophical (especially the novel's Taoist dimension) rather than a literary interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early 20th century philosopher Henri Bergson posited an initial push that propelled the diversity of life forward into a varied, novel future: The élan vital, a necessary force or impulse that animated life's progress and development. His idea had largely been abandoned by mid-century. Even so, much of the conceptual and explanatory work this impulse targeted is yet in want of an explanation. In particular, Bergson's derelict ideas on evolution addressed three areas that have once again become relevant in the effort to unite evolutionary genetics, biological development, and ecological context (often shortened to evo/devo/eco): (1) the purposeful nature of individual organisms and their parts; (2) the integrative, holistic, non-linear emergent dynamics seen in evolutionary processes; and (3) how genuine novelty emerges into the universe (Ellegren and Galtier in Nat Rev Genet 17(7):422, 2016; Simondon et al. in On the mode of existence of technical objects. Univocal series, Univocal Publishing LLC, Minneapolis, 2017; Bang, in: Winther-Lindqvist, Bang, Valsiner (eds) Nothingness: philosophical insights into psychology, Transaction Publishers, Somerset, 2016; Moreno and Mossio in Biological autonomy: a philosophical and theoretical enquiry. History, philosophy and theory of the life sciences, Springer, Dordrecht, 2015). In this paper I argue that Bergson's ideas may yet be relevant to these questions, and his work warrants a reexamination in light of current problems in evolutionary biology. This is not a call to 'return' to Bergson, nevertheless his notions about complexity suggest ways of looking at current biological problems in ways that offer a heuristic insight worth entertaining. Bergson's Nobel Prize-winning book, Creative Evolution, provided a strikingly prescient early 20th century framework for understanding how Darwinian evolution acts as an engine for generating new forms (Bergson in Creative evolution (M. Vaughan, trans., vol. 231), University Press of America, Lanham, Bergson 1911). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of time as a methodological tool and pathological focus of clinical psychiatry and psychology in the first half of the 20th century. Contextualizing 'psychopathologies of time' developed by practitioners in Europe and North America with reference to the temporal theories implicit in Freudian psychoanalysis and Henri Bergson's philosophy of durée, it illuminates how depression, schizophrenia, and other mental disorders such as obsessive-compulsive behaviours and aphasia were understood to be symptomatic of an altered or disturbed 'time-sense'. Drawing upon a model of temporal synthesis whereby in healthy individuals, a subjective temporal sense (Ichzeit, durée, or personal lifetime) was perceived and understood in relation to objective time frameworks (Weltzeit, clock-time, or quantitative time models like historical chronology), clinicians argued that mentally ill patients were unable to synthesize Ichzeit and Weltzeit, using variations in this disturbance to define specific pathological conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Henri Bergson is generally recognized as one of the most influential philosophers in the history of historical avant-gardism. Nevertheless, it has been widely neglected that Bergson's philosophy also played a crucial role for the radically new concept of art that Marcel Duchamp developed based on his critical attitude towards the avant-gardes. First and foremost, this is apparent in view of Duchamp's paintings The Passage from Virgin to Bride and Bride of 1912, as they both feature an idea of transition laying the foundation for his Large Glass and associated works. But there is also another cross-connection that one wouldn't expect at the first glance. As this paper argues, Duchamp paradoxically also draws on Bergson's ideas with his ready-mades, pointing to that productive interplay of intuition and intellect, which Bergson defined as a vital source for any kind of imagination and agency. Thus, Duchamp's idea of choosing his ready-mades in terms of a "rendezvous with fate," which he also reflected in his writing experiments The and Rendezvous, can be closely linked to his declared interest in Bergson's "primacy of change," leading him to explore the idea of "plastic duration.". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aldous Huxley's final novel, Island (1962), famously combines Eastern and Western thought. However, many readings of the novel compartmentalize the engagement with science in the novel as Western and its engagement with philosophy as Eastern, with the consequence that aspects of the novel rooted in Western philosophy are often overlooked. This article argues that, among Western writing, attention to Henri Bergson is particularly revealing with respect to Island. Both Bergson's philosophy of the function of the mind and his reflections on social evolution have major parallels within Huxley's novel. The reflection of Bergsonian ideas in Island marks the culmination of a long journey for Huxley: he had been familiar with Bergson for fifty years prior to its publication. This article traces Huxley's progress from initial coolness toward the then-modish Bergson to eventual acclamation, culminating in Island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I evaluate the work of two contemporary cosmologists, Julian Barbour and Lee Smolin, through the lens of Henri Bergson's metaphysics of time. Barbour and Smolin center their cosmological systems on their respective philosophical conceptions of time: for Barbour, time is a human illusion that must be eradicated from cosmology; for Smolin, time must be considered a reality of the universe, a force of change that underlies our everyday observations and which not even the laws of physics can escape. Both systems, however, run into dead ends. Barbour cannot escape dealing with observed movement and change and ultimately restricts them to the human brain, where these phenomena are left unexplained; Smolin posits the need for a meta-law that would account for why temporal phenomena unfold as they do, but fails to provide such a law. As I will show, Bergson's original take on the problem of time has a lot to offer to both sides of the debate. On Barbour's side, it provides compelling arguments against the latter's eradication of time, which, if accepted, would invalidate the philosophical assumptions behind his cosmology; on Smolin's side, Bergson sidetracks the "meta-law" problem and offers a deeper understanding of time than the one presented by Smolin, putting forth a consistent philosophical theory of time which, as I will show, is missing from the latter's work. Ultimately, my aim is to illustrate, through Bergson's work, how, without the aid of philosophy, cosmology is likely to keep running into such dead ends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conception of pure poetry acquires a fundamental role in the discourse of French poets towards the end of the 19th century, as an expression of the Rousseauian return to language within the framework of a tension between utility and abstraction characteristic of modernity. This study focuses on the position of Stéphane Mallarmé as a key piece of these discussions that are the center of the modern theory of poetry and clarify some of the disputes of the avant-garde of the 20th century. For this, in the context of French Symbolism and Wagnerism, the Mallarmean concept of "pure notion" is analyzed in the light of the search for an authenticity of language able to recover a naked experience, linking its attempt not only to idealism, but to an experience like the one that will claim the vitalist philosophies almost at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background The author argues for a reconsideration of Robert Smithson's relationship to the spatial discourse and proto-media studies of Wyndham Lewis and his Canadian protégé Marshall McLuhan. Analysis Through a comparative reading of a lesser-known Lewis text and Smithson's photoessays and related earthworks, the article sets out to re-evaluate the American artist's mock- Platonic "earth maps" as mobilizing cinematic and spatial metaphors deployed by Lewis' satirical travel writings; in particular, Lewis' exploration of Atlantean images of postnational space as an alternative to a time-obsessed modernity in Filibusters in Barbary (1932). Conclusion and implications The cinematic geographies of Smithson, Lewis, and McLuhan emerge as allied responses to, and radical reworkings of, Bergson's discourse on time and media that materialize a shared critical optics and quest for utopia propelled by the lingering spectre of global conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By examining two late works by Samuel Beckett, the play Not Iand the poem 'What is the Word,' one can understand his longstanding obsession with the concept of Nothing through the philosophy of Henri Bergson. For Bergson, with whom Beckett was familiar, Nothingness does not constitute a void, but rather a form of ontological co-dependency that, for Beckett, manifests itself not as an absence, but as the striving toward absence. The preoccupation that many Beckett characters have with reaching out or toward a double (whether it be another character or some fictionalized self) will be shown to be characteristic of a Bergsonian approach to Nothingness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Henri Bergson's conception of human rights in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932). I claim that he provides an original view of human rights. Rather than understand human rights primarily as an institution to protect all human beings from serious social, legal, and political abuse, Bergson conceives of them as a medium of personal transformation. In particular, I argue that for him the true potential of human rights is to initiate all human beings into a way of life open to love and joy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, Oliver Double examines the process of turning traumatic personal experience into viable stand-up comedy material by offering a detailed account of the creative process behind his 2015 show Break a Leg. Drawing on Bergson, Brecht, and Noël Carroll, he explores the origins of comic ideas in personal observation, and argues for a two-stage process of joke creation. This is fleshed out in a detailed examination of a particular routine, in which he uses Koestler's concept of bisociation to show how an initial observation was shaped into a series of punchlines. He also discusses authenticating strategies which comedians employ to demonstrate that they are recalling their actual experiences, and ways in which the dialogic qualities of stand-up affect empathy and intimacy. Oliver Double is a former professional comedian who is now a Reader in Drama at the University of Kent. He is the author of Stand-Up! On Being a Comedian (1997), Britain Had Talent: a History of Variety Theatre (2012), and Getting the Joke: the Inner Workings of Stand-Up Comedy (2nd edition, 2014). A film of Break a Leg is available on YouTube, and the related podcast Breaking a Leg is accessible via iTunes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This is a translation from the Russian of Nikolai Lossky's 'Heдocтaтки гнoceoлoгiи Бepгcoнa и влiянie иxъ нa eгo мeтaфизикy,' (The Defects of Bergson's Epistemology and Their Consequences on His Metaphysics), which was published in the journal Boпpocы филocoфiи и пcиxoлoгiи (Questions of Philosophy and Psychology) in 1913. In this article, Lossky criticizes Bergson's epistemological dualism, which completely separates intuition from reason, and which rejects reason in favor of intuition. For Bergson, reality is continuous, indivisible, fluid, etc., and reason distorts it through its acts of division, abstraction, extraction, and so on. Lossky argues that this conclusion does not follow. Reason does not distort the living flow of reality; it rather provides a window unto aspects of the otherwise undivided seamless flowing organic whole. In fact, reason is itself a species of intuition in its own right, namely an intellectual intuition, the object of which is the atemporal facet of the world (the Platonic ideal realm), which is necessary for the existence of its temporal facet. Lossky thus challenges Bergson's one-sided and self-defeating reduction of being to a flux of changes devoid of changing things. ( Frédéric Tremblay). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]