Bergson: Thinking Beyond the Human Condition

by Keith Ansell-Pearson

A thought-provoking contribution to the renaissance of interest in Bergson, this study brings him to a new generation of readers. Ansell-Pearson contends that there is a Bergsonian revolution, an upheaval in philosophy comparable in significance to those that we are more familiar with, from Kant to Nietzsche and Heidegger, that make up our intellectual modernity. The focus of the text is on Bergson's conception of philosophy as the discipline that seeks to 'think beyond the human condition'. Not that we are caught up in an existential predicament when the appeal is made to think beyond the human condition; rather that restricting philosophy to the human condition fails to appreciate the extent to which we are not simply creatures of habit and automatism, but also organisms involved in a creative evolution of becoming. Ansell-Pearson introduces the work of Bergson and core aspects of his innovative modes of thinking; examines his interest in Epicureanism; explores his interest in the self and in time and memory; presents Bergson on ethics and on religion, and illuminates Bergson on the art of life.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, 21st Century, 19th Century

209 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 22, 2018

About the author

Keith Ansell-Pearson joined Warwick's Philosophy Department in 1993 and has held a Personal Chair since 1998. He did his graduate studies at the University of Sussex. He has presented lectures around the world, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United States. In 2013/14 he was Senior Visiting Research Fellow in the Humanities at Rice University.

Reviews

[Kamakana · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

220111: as this is one of my favourite bergson books i have necessarily decided to put this argument here, after having read somewhere around 57 books involving him to some extent. this is inspired by so many texts i do not name them. 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 the simple fact that develops through time, through evolution, not retrospective construction or creationism...

180519: why of all my philosophy reviews have i received the most ‘likes’ (59) on this text...? i do not know, but maybe it means as the author maintains, there is a renaissance of interest in bergson... i hope!

080318: another five star on Bergson, who has by now very good claim to being a 2nd favourite philosopher (after Merleau-Ponty), including this text i have read 39 invoking or on or by Bergson, which seems to be almost all the books from the u library that i can access (just discovered much more in high-density-library! so 54 now but more very old) and several bought new like this one. so i love his thoughts. on the other, though, is how much are just his thoughts and how much are the interpreters and authors of secondary literature... such as gilles deleuze or here, keith ansell-pearson...

i read this in a couple of sittings in one day. i found the ideas fluid, familiar, fascinating (and that is just the 'f's...) but how much is all the previous reading i am not sure. the ideas are not new to me and i am more pleased at confirmation at understanding, pleased my reading has been useful, has been correct... but this is once again an elaboration of everything that threads through his work, the concepts of qualitative time, quantitative space, the mind as practically useful, the brain as not simply residence of the mind, the impetus of living, the virtual and the actual, the difference of matter and living, the newness of creative evolution and emotion, underlying all his thought the images of heterogeneous multiplicity and the durree...

and so, to think beyond the human condition is to use the mind not for immediate or eventual practical action but to philosophize, to think somehow with possibilities the mind can create... this is the 'beyond...' and even when he searches for usefulness of religion, where i do not follow, he does not hesitate to apply our human minds to think not the usual mistaken 'perennial questions' (why is there something rather than nothing...) but to focus on dispersion, development, diffusion (now the 'd's) of evolving being and life... the future unbound and uncertain to which we are impelled not as telos but as fulfillment...

so, a great text, a loved philosopher, another way to understand the real beyond dogmatic materialism, geometric science, a way not dismissing methods of superior empiricism, of natural science- the offered technique of intuition to the core rather than intellect to the surface... this is all great stuff for me. because this book is on him, i do not engage all the arguments of how his thought might be seen mistaken, going through his major works, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, Matter and Memory, Creative Evolution, even two sources of morality and religion, i feel very pleased to understand him... i read it quickly, already primed by previous reading, and enthused to reread his work as much as read critiques of others, and must again offer a strong five...

note: i must again insist that reading nonfiction is easier to read than fiction, if the topic interests, for in nonfiction the author is most concerned to offer ideas etc. in clear, readable, concise manner- in fiction the author is using all artistic techniques to offer some emotional effects, including characters, plot, language play, format, whether the reader starts already interested or not... there are so many books to read and so little time...

220103:
more
Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness
Matter and Memory
Creative Evolution
Henri Bergson: Key Writings
Bergson’s Philosophy of Self-Overcoming: Thinking without Negativity or Time as Striving
Updating Bergson: A Philosophy of the Enduring Present
Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual: Bergson and the Time of Life
Bergsonism
Henri Bergson
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

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot rate this book highly enough. For someone who hasn't time to wade through loads of heavy literature I found this a very helpful introduction to Bergson. Each chapter deals with one of Bergson's books - one can detect a common thread throughout. I won't try to articulate what that might be(!) but the title is a good summary. The author does not just describe the contents of each book as a summary or in an academic fashion but rather draws the reader into a reflection as to the meaning of the texts and their application to life making Bergson relevant for today. He does this by including referrences to other students and specialists in Bergson's work. He also refers to less well known works of Bergson. As someone who is interested in North Whitehead and William James this study on Bergson fills some of the gaps. I now have an idea of which Bergson books are of particular interest to myself (Creative Evolution, Two sources of morality and religion, and Creative mind) and am pleased that they are available at a reasonable price! The chapter on the two sources of morality and religion for me was groundbreaking. I am no academic so can highly recommend this book to those who feel daunted by the idea of studying philosophy. (No "ian"s such as "Kantian" "Derridian" "Whiteheadian" "Deluezian" etc etc which often assume too much of the reader)

[Gary Moreau · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an armchair philosopher I am not qualified to offer a professional critique of the book or its analysis. I can say it is well written and while Bergson (1859-1941) can be formidable for the casual student of philosophy, the analysis is very well organized and marches to a cadence that is very digestible, assuming you don’t try to read it in one sitting.

My own primary takeaway is the degree to which the book reinforces the importance of philosophy to modern science. “It is reality itself, in the profoundest meaning of the word, that we reach by the combined and progressive development of science and philosophy.”

Bergson is, in my own words, a proponent of “dynamic empirical philosophy”. He very much embraces science, and evolution in particular, and insists upon the importance of empirical philosophy, as opposed to contemplative philosophy. He also rejects most static models of thought, favoring models of discovery and creative emergence. (He has his own lingo.)

Bergson views science as “the mastery of matter” and philosophy as “the mastery of life,” but doesn’t value them hierarchically. In fact, he seems to resist most hierarchical assessments, preferring, instead, to see quantitative differences as fundamentally qualitative in reality.

At some level, Bergson, at times, seems to take on the perspective of a naturalist. He ultimately expands his horizons beyond those of naturalism, however. “Bergson’s originality consists in placing life at the centre of the study of nature.”

I share Bergson’s embrace of science and empiricism. The concern I have for modern science, however, is the question of what constitutes empiricism without a philosophical perspective? And how do you interpret empirical results without some philosophical structure within which to understand them?

By definition, we perceive through a perspective. “One of the most important aspects of Bergson’s approach to evolution in the book, and elsewhere, is his insistence that we should resist the temptation to shrink nature to the measure of our ideas. …we need to display a readiness to be taken by surprise in the study of nature and learn to appreciate that there might be a difference between human logic and the logic of nature.”

It is natural, the author notes, for us to see the world as mechanical, discrete, and patterned. Such assumptions make comprehension and explanation an order of magnitude simpler and more accessible. But if reality, and thus context, is infinitely divisible, as Bergson seems to suggest, how can we ever know that the pattern we perceive is the one that matters? Or, assuming that they all matter, the one that matters most? And what is “most” other than a discrete, linear, and ultimately relative, concept?

You can drive yourself silly in the end. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not important. And for me, at least, a whole lot of fun.

I particularly enjoyed the last chapter on education. I think the following two quotes sum it up: “…Bergson does follow Nietzsche in exposing the hollowness of mere criticism as the endeavor of intellectual activity.” And, “If education is to centre on the creative needs of the child, then the focus should be on the child as a seeker and inventor, ‘always on the watch for novelty, impatient of rule, in short, closer to nature than is the grown man.’ Bergson locates a tension between the educator, who is essentially a sociable human being, and the child to be educated who is free of social conventions and expectations.”

In the end, this book is a very solid synopsis of Bergson’s work and philosophy. And if you are new to Bergson I think you will get much more out of reading this book than you will reading Bergson’s original work. (Bergson scholars will get more out of it as well, but they already know that, I assume.) The book is admittedly a bit of a slog for the casual reader, as philosophy often is, but is well worth the effort.

[Kyrill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best chance you've got of being convinced Bergson is worth anyone's time

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has a refreshing simplicity that rivals Deleuze's work on Nietzsche. Bergson really is pretty simple once you make the mental switch, especially compared to some who followed him like Deleuze and Baudrillard. I wish I would have read this before I read Bergson's book on Lucretius. I didn't know which angle to take on that one, maybe because of the way that work got published in English and because Bergson was still young and discreditable. I'll be reading more Keith Ansell-Pearson soon. How to read Nietzsche is up next.

[Ramzzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the midst of the Bergsonian Renaissance happening in philosophy, humanities, and the sciences, Keith Ansell-Pearson’s book comes in and is rightly ranked now to be the best introductory literature on the philosophy of Henri Bergson. Here, Ansell-Pearson’s even dethrones Bergsonism by Gilles Deleuze, that monograph which single-handedly set the revitalization of Bergson after his unfortunate intellectual demise. Ansell-Pearson succeeds in all quarters of elucidating the major works of Bergson (excepting the less philosophical work of Bergson on laughter), and even made curious connections to the philosophy of Nietzsche, for, after all—the philosophy of Bergson is similar to it. This is not to be surmised without negative, but it must be recalled and adjudged right Hannah Arendt’s unsung propositions on the history of philosophy—that Nietzsche and Bergson, together with Marx, are the philosophers who shed light on our consciousness, a risk worth taken because philosophy has long been contemplative than conscious at the behest of modernity.