Henri Bergson: Philosopher of Intuition and Time
Henri-Louis Bergson (18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopher influential in both analytic and continental philosophy, especially during the first half of the 20th century. He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature for his ideas on immediate experience and intuition, and received France’s highest honour, the Grand-Croix de la Légion d’honneur, in 1930.
Early Life and Education
Bergson was born in Paris on Rue Lamartine, near the Palais Garnier. His father, Michał Bergson, was a composer and pianist of Polish-Jewish descent; his mother, Katherine Levison, came from English-Jewish and Irish-Jewish backgrounds. The family lived in London for several years after his birth, giving Bergson early familiarity with English. Before age nine, his parents settled in France, and he became a naturalized French citizen.
He attended the Lycée Fontanes (later known as Lycée Condorcet) in Paris from 1868 to 1878, where he won prizes for scientific work and, at age 18 in 1877, for solving a mathematical problem published the following year in Nouvelles Annales de Mathématiques. After deliberating between science and humanities, he chose philosophy. At age 19 he entered the École Normale Supérieure, where he read Herbert Spencer. He earned a licence ès lettres and then an agrégation de philosophie in 1881 from the University of Paris.
Career and Achievements
In 1881, Bergson received a teaching appointment at the lycée in Angers. Two years later he moved to the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand, where he remained for several years. While teaching in the Auvergne region, he published an edition of Lucretius extracts with critical study in 1884, which saw repeated editions. He also taught courses on the Pre-Socratics, particularly Heraclitus.
Bergson settled back in Paris in 1888 and taught briefly at a municipal college before his appointment in 1900 as Chair of Greek and Roman Philosophy at the Collège de France, a position he held until 1904. He then replaced Gabriel Tarde as Chair of Modern Philosophy, serving until 1920. His open courses attracted large public attendance.
His philosophical work centered on the arguments that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality. This position generated controversy in France, where officials saw his views as opposing the Republic’s secular and scientific stance.
Notable Events and Milestones
Bergson earned his doctoral degree in 1889 from the University of Paris, presenting his dissertation Time and Free Will (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience), published the same year by Félix Alcan. He also submitted a short Latin thesis on Aristotle titled Quid Aristoteles de loco senserit. He dedicated Time and Free Will to Jules Lachelier, then public education minister.
His four principal works were published across five decades: Time and Free Will (1889), Matter and Memory (1896), Creative Evolution (1907), and The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932). According to physicist Louis de Broglie, Time and Free Will anticipated by forty years the ideas of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg on wave mechanics.
Bergson married Louise Neuberger, a cousin of Marcel Proust, in 1891; Proust served as best man. They had a daughter, Jeanne, born deaf in 1896. His sister Mina (also known as Moina Mathers) married English occult author Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, a founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
Awards and Honors
Bergson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927 “in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented.” In 1930, France awarded him the Grand-Croix de la Légion d’honneur, the nation’s highest honour.
Additional Resources
Bergson’s philosophical influence extended well beyond his lifetime, particularly after 1966 when Gilles Deleuze published Le Bergsonisme. Readers seeking deeper exploration of his life, works, and philosophical contributions will find extensive material in Wikipedia’s biographical entry and other scholarly archives devoted to his thought and legacy.
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