|
Biography
Henri-Louis Bergson (October 18, 1859 - January 4, 1941) was a French
philosopher, influential at least in France, but out of the main currents
of his time.
Bergson's life was the quiet and uneventful one of a French professor,
the chief landmarks in it being the publication of his three principal
works, first, in 1889, the Essai sur les donnees immediates de la conscience
(Time and Free Will), then Matiere et Memoire (Matter and Memory) in 1896,
and L'Evolution creatrice (Creative Evolution) in 1907.
Cinema
Both Gilles Deleuze and Henri Bergson were, to extremely varying degrees,
philosophers interested in cinema who used cinema to suit their particular
intellectual needs. In the case of Bergson, he cultivated his ideas during
a zeitgeist that included the invention of cinema (late 19th century).
To a large extent, Bergson's philosophical ideas were shaped by the same
cultural, economic, and technological climate that gave rise to narrative
cinema. Deleuze on the other hand, erected a two-volume Bergsonian philosophy
of cinema toward the end of the century that stands as one of the most
stimulating studies of time and cinema. Although a self-professed Bergsonian,
Deleuze's sprawling philosophical style is in stark contrast to
Bergson's precise and systematic philosophical system. Deleuze's postmodern
style is part of its appeal -playful, mercurial, and open to creative
interpretation. Terms that are meant to carry critical weight are introduced
offhandedly and then left hanging for pages. One neologism gives birth
to three others. In a sense, Deleuze's style, forever Becoming, is more
Bergsonian than Bergson. --Donato Totaro,"
Books
Bergson, all the rage in the early 1900's, has now been
rediscovered, thanks in part to the work of Deleuze et al. Time and Free
Will is a great exemplar of Bergson's work and his idea of the duree and
the spatialization of time. Bergson presents to the reader an energetic
flux which is the precondition of our more vulgar concept of time. With
this flux, the past is pulled along by the future and presented to consciousness
in the present as a heterogeneous conglomeration, inseperable and uncategorizable.
It is this work which inspired the stream of consciousness novelists,
especially Proust. But the most remarkable element of Time and Free Will
is its demand on the reader to live the duree, to return to the duree
and forget oneself in it. The goal is freedom and authenticity and this
can only be achieved when letting oneself go, flying like a bird, and
despatializing time. This book does not only open the door to phenomenology,
but it also contributes in a significant way to french existentialist
thought.
|