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1This special dossier of Bergsoniana 2023 is based on the colloquium “The Revival of Bergson in the 21st century,” held at the National Art Gallery in Helsinki in November 2021. The purpose of the gathering was to bring together literary scholars, philosophers, intellectual historians, and scholars of art and literature in a broad conversation on the revival of the “Bergsonian moment” in philosophy and cultural debate. Bergson was the common thread and starting point for the discussions, as the most illustrious representative of a wider philosophical landscape that in other settings branched out into movements such as Lebensphilosophie and pragmatism. The participants were asked to reflect on the temporal and spatial aspects in the international circulation of Bergsonian ideas. What socio-ideational dynamics explain the interest in this philosophy historically and how are we to understand the contemporary retrieval of Bergsonian themes, in the context of e.g., reconsidering the human-nature or human-technology divides?

2The renewed contemporary interest in Henri Bergson’s philosophy of time, memory and creative evolution has several reasons, but one of them is certainly related to the shortcomings of philosophical approaches which take a disincarnated epistemic subject as the point of departure in philosophical research. Another reason is related to seemingly contrary currents, which tend to reduce mental life to a purely biological function. If the former tendency has its roots in Cartesian and Kantian tradition, the latter is closely related to the new conceptions of life and biology in the 19th and 20th century. Bergson differs from both of the mentioned currents. Retaining some insights from transcendental philosophy, he has a profound awareness of how given conditions render experience possible, but these conditions are not conceived as subjective or residing inside the Cogito. In regarding life itself as a condition of experience, the naturalism of Bergson is at the same time different from its biologist counterparts which reduce nature to a sphere of material objects. In this way, he offers a counter position to the widespread modern confusion of naturalism and materialism. One could of course argue that the older tradition, not least Aristotle, in a similar way has a concept of nature (physis) which is certainly not identical with matter (hylê). In the Aristotelian philosophy of nature there is, however, also a teleological strain which differs from Bergson’s stress on creative evolution. Precisely the question of teleology is another topic that has contributed to the contemporary interest in Bergson. Creativity in Bergson does not only imply a non-teleological conception of nature, but it is also contrary to those versions of vitalism of a theological bent that often figure as theories of “intelligent design.”

3In philosophy Bergsonism had its heyday in the first half of the 20th century, not only in France. After the international congress of philosophy in Heidelberg 1908 Bergson became an important figure also in Germany (even if he was not able himself to attend). Prominent German philosophers, such as Max Scheler and Ernst Cassirer, were especially interested in the new philosophy of life, in Scheler’s case in a quite affirmative manner. Martin Heidegger’s familiarity with Bergson is evident, even if his remarks on his French colleague are often quite arrogant. Numerous are also those authors who were inspired by Bergson, from Marcel Proust to Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot.

4In French philosophy Bergsonism was succeeded mainly by approaches inspired either by phenomenology or Marxism, especially after the second world war. A key figure in this context is without doubt Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose phenomenology differs from the Husserlian one precisely in reincarnating the Husserlian subject and thus offering some overlapping with the earlier tradition, not only Bergson but also Maine de Biran and Félix Ravaisson. It is thus understandable that the interest in Bergson is today especially present among those researchers who are familiar with or inspired by Merleau-Ponty.

5Later, when phenomenology and existential philosophy had been dethroned by structuralism, and by the variety of currents that followed after the structuralist movement, Gilles Deleuze eventually contributed to a rediscovery of Bergson, both in France and in the anglophone world (Deleuze's Le bergsonisme was translated into English in 1988). Deleuze’ interest in Bergson is in a way similar to his writings on Spinoza who also defended a non-teleological conception of nature. However, the Deleuzian current was in France an exception both in its interpretation of Bergson, different from traditional Bergsonism, and generally in the philosophical landscape.

6In the contemporary anglophone world the reception of French philosophy has often been focused on certain poststructuralist currents, assembled together under the label of postmodernism. This undifferentiated reception of French philosophy was particularly evident in the polemical debates pitting natural science and philosophy against each another. Bergson and Bergsonism appeared also in this context, which is somewhat astonishing given the fact that one of the main characteristics of Bergson’s philosophy is his profound respect for natural science, especially for biology, and his ambition to transcend the traditional division between positivism and spiritualism.

7Today, these debates continue in both established and new directions. Contemporary Bergsonian studies encompass the return of critical analyses of the intellect’s tendency towards mastery and control, especially with respect to ecological questions; a renewed attention to the links between philosophy and art, which in Bergson’s own time centred on the close affinity between his philosophy of duration and symbolist theories of the “unveiling” role of art for mediating between the reality of movement and the abstract appearances of language; and novel perspectives on Bergson in relation to subjects such as ontology, evolutionary biology and even human rights.

8Like other philosophers of life, Bergson stands inside the process of reception to which he actively contributed, but to which he also was subjected, a history which to a large extent transcended the topics of his philosophy. Much has been written on the role of intellectuals during the first world war and Bergson is no exception. His wartime contributions, as philosophically insignificant as they may be, are problematic and those who in different political contexts used Bergson for their own purposes did not render a substantial discussion about the core of Bergsonian philosophy easier. Nevertheless, these political recuperations had a strong influence on how Bergson was perceived after both world wars. This is also reflected in his (diminishing) role within artistic modernism after the First World War. Some of the contributions in this volume seek to shed further light on these issues. The general aim of the present collection is to offer different perspectives on the Bergsonian philosophy of life, with a special focus on aesthetical, scientific, and ontological aspects, without overlooking the relevant historical and political contexts for the development of these ideas.

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Jan-Ivar Lindén et Stefan Nygård, « Foreword »Bergsoniana [En ligne], 4 | 2024, mis en ligne le 01 janvier 2024, consulté le 13 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/bergsoniana/1793 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/bergsoniana.1793

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Jan-Ivar Lindén

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Stefan Nygård

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