'Henri Bergson' tag archive

Socialism and Myth: The Case of Sorel and Bergson Ma/co/m Vout and Lawrence Wi/de Georges Sorel (1847-1922) continues to exert a fascination for some radicals, as recent books and articles indicate [1]. This attraction is perhaps understandable, but in our view mistaken. It stems from his support for revolutionary syndicalism and his notion of the […]

The rhythm of alterity Levinas and aestheticsgary peters The evocative remarks of Emmanuel Levinas on art and rhythm have received little attention. In opening the question of the aesthetic, indeed the questionable nature of the aesthetic for Levinas, the intention here is to redress the balance at a time when the ethical dimension of his […]

This article is intended to raise a number of connected issues. It concludes by suggesting that certain theories of self-organization, in particular the theory of autopoiesis developed by Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela and, latterly, Fritjof Capra, might help us to reassess how we view the relationship between discipline, subjectivity and freedom. However, the first half […]

If the Encyclopédie project of Diderot et al. is remembered today, it is not because it is much consulted, but for the tremendous Enlightenment optimism that made its conception (if not its completion) possible. In historical terms, it is the idea of the Encyclopédie that is most important, not what is contained within the volumes […]

Writing towards the end of his life, the outlook for phenomenology seemed bleak even to Husserl: ʻPhilosophy as science, as serious, rigorous, indeed apodictically rigorous science – the dream is over.ʼ [1] This apparently gloomy assessment was echoed, some three decades later, by Heidegger, who observed, also towards the end of his life, that the […]

Christian Kerslake is perfectly right to characterize Deleuzeʼs project as ʻa philosophy of the absoluteʼ, and in particular as one conceived in more or less direct competition with that of Hegel (ʻThe Vertigo of Philosophyʼ, RP 113). He is wrong, however, to emphasize the fundamentally discontinuous evolution of this philosophy, from an early period supposedly […]

The last two decades have seen a revival of interest in the work of Henri Bergson (1859–1941), in large part because of its role in the writings of Gilles Deleuze. However, it has been a noteworthy characteristic of the new Bergsonism (or Deleuze-Bergsonism) that it has proceeded more or less as if earlier criticisms of […]

William James An ethics of thought? Isabelle stengers William James’s pragmatism, and in particular the thesis according to which the sole truth of ideas is the difference that they make, and therefore also the interest that they create, has often been felt to be an offence by those who consider themselves to be engaged ‘for’ […]

Benjamin’s theses ‘On the Concept of History’, the final precipitate of the unfinished Arcades Project, was intended to strike at the fundamental pil ars of a thought complicit in its times. [1] On the seventieth anniversary of the Ribbentrop–Molotov pact, which prompted its drafting, it is tempting to question the attraction of this set of […]

What is – or what is not – contemporary French philosophy, today? Éric alliez The question that serves as the title of my lecture,* the question that motivates this lecture, is sustained by a negation that is absolutely necessary to the construction of the problematic I aim here to open. For I have found no […]