Henri Bergson

by Vladimir Jankélévitch, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Alexandre Lefebvre (Editor)

Jankélévitch covers all aspects of Bergson's thought, emphasizing the concepts of time and duration, memory, evolution, simplicity, love, and joy. A friend of Bergson's, Jankélévitch first published this book in 1931 and revised it in 1959 to treat Bergson's later works. This unabridged translation of the 1959 edition includes an editor's introduction, which contextualizes and outlines Jankélévitch's reading of Bergson, additional essays on Bergson by Jankélévitch, and Bergson's letters to Jankélévitch.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

322 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1931

About the author

Vladimir Jankélévitch était un philosophe et musicologue français. Il était le fils de Samuel Jankélévitch, un médecin juif ukrainien qui s'était installé en France après avoir fui les progroms antisémites.

Vladimir Jankélévitch was a French philosopher and musicologist. He was the son of Samuel Jankélévitch, a Ukrainian Jewish doctor who moved to France after fleeing the anti-Semitic pogroms.

Reviews

[Kamakana · Rating 4 out of 5]

if you like this review i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

220111: as this is (not) one of my favourite bergson books i have necessarily decided to put this argument here, after having read somewhere around 55 books involving him to some extent. this is inspired by so many texts i do not name them. just need to write this down. basically the idea is b works with metaphysics directly opposite that of 'physics', the view from the future, the view that 'energy' has inevitably declined in entropy, whereas b sees energy as 'vital' process that is not physics, is not decreasing, but rather increasing, complexifying, and to arguments this makes 'energy' metaphorical and cannot, for example, drive an engine, this is the 'energy' with which we think and live and physics alone cannot explain these processes... to arguments that scientific materialism explains how each organ works, there is the fact organs are not mechanical parts that suffice themselves but must be integrated and this is by life, this is 'simple fact' that develops through time, through evolution, not retrospective construction or creationism...

220103: this is not my favourite bergson book. i much prefer to start out Bergson: Thinking Beyond the Human Condition, Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual: Bergson and the Time of Life, Bergsonism, for books on him, and then Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, Matter and Memory, Creative Evolution or Henri Bergson: Key Writings, for work by him... this one starts off difficult and does not get easier...

this took me three (3!) times to read over the years and i have only decided on this review now despite not fully convinced by some of vj's arguments, though i still very much appreciate b as thinker, only seeing him in context of his era do i sense his aversion to trends of philosophy then, since and current...

not much new here for me, just more elaborate argumentation, certain insistence that the key to understanding 'life' is 'time', and this is matter of quality, of change in kind, rather than quantity, or change in degrees... but then this is my 55th book on, by, or invoking b...

for this is not introductory, assumes you the reader has extensive knowledge of philosophy of history, of greek ancients, french contemporaries, is an academic translation from early and midcentury 1900s, and begins with unstated radical inversion of ways of thought common to 'western' metaphysics. this is fine, once you get familiar with it. in his thought we are confronted with the common error of time as retrospective idol, from which manifold further errors spawn, from which the entire biological time is misconceived as 'creationist' 'fabrication' rather than simple 'organic' totalities (if there is anything b values it is the 'simple fact'), rather 'mechanism' of parts that can be separated than necessary wholes. retrospective means we look backwards from the completed and do not recognise the creation, the vital impulse, and in this i realise b works with an entirely different schema of 'energy', of 'impulse', is substance monist and tendency dualist (pg 144)...

with this retrospective view there is the illusion of future perfect, so we create the idol of 'space-time' which b considers on the lines of famed achilles and the tortoise, though from what seems to be generally accepted theory of relativity (and practical application such as gps) it is here that vj if not b are mistaken to talk of 'reality' having precedence over these 'phantasms', though best to read The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate that Changed Our Understanding of Time... i do not understand the math...

this book continues with vj undertaking to describe how b insists on freedom, on freedom in 'time', and the difference between being 'actor' in living and 'spectator', in referring first to Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness but building on these insights as b does, in fact this work by vj integrates the timeline of b's oeuvre (with qualifications that he was never concerned with systematic rigour)...

b contrasts 'instinct' with 'intellection' and asserts it is only intuition that can unite what instinct searches for futiley and intellection could find but does not know to search for...

b considers the brain as kind of telegraphic exchange, whose ultimate function is to 'delay', to make possible 'time' for thought to accomplish its acts, such there is reversal of act and intention in all species: birds do not fly because they have wings, they want to fly thus have wings- this is creative evolution in action- and the 'mind' is not the 'brain' transposed, b believes in dualism where the mind/memory is infinite freedom (time) and 'matter' (space) is the way in which humans interact with the world, the limit that makes it possible...

'time' is not moving image of eternity: eternity is the illusion, time is the real, the simple fact...

for humans are 'time', not accidentally, partially, modally: entirely and as 'time' humans are necessarily freedom. this is the optimism that b proclaims, that he will find in saints and heroes, that end this book before appendices on judaism (do not know bible so cannot comment much) and various letters...

220103:
more
Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness
Matter and Memory
Creative Evolution
Henri Bergson: Key Writings
Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual: Bergson and the Time of Life
Bergsonism
Bergson: Thinking Beyond the Human Condition
Thinking in Time: An Introduction to Henri Bergson
The Bergsonian Philosophy of Intelligence
Bergson and the Stream of Consciousness Novel
Morality in Evolution: The Moral Philosophy of Henri Bergson
The Crisis in Modernism: Bergson and the Vitalist Controversy
The Philosophy of Science Fiction: Henri Bergson and the Fabulations of Philip K. Dick

[katie luisa borgesius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dayum, this is what commentary should be – actual thinking, so unlike that cesspool of paraphrase and hard-headed exegesis that academia has become.

[Harris]

Too much for my little pea brain. I probably should have just read Deleuze’s book, but this is the one that ended up in my lap ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Maybe I’ll be a more patient reader in a few years and I can tackle this again.

[Saverio Mariani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sicuramente una monografia fondamentale per chi voglia studiare Bergson.
L'analisi a tutto tondo, di tutte le opere del filosofo francese, è magistrale, da parte di Jankélévitch che non si dimentica di utilizzare, a volte, anche un linguaggio poetico e lirico.

L'ultimo capitolo e l'appendice sui rapporti fra la filosofia bergsoniana e il giudaismo sono fenomenali.
Nell'appendice coesistono migliaia di spunti, letture trasversali che ci restituiscono un'immagine niente affatto banale di Henri Bergson e della sua "filosofia della durata".