Editing Henri Bergson (section)

==Philosophy==
Bergson rejected what he saw as the overly mechanistic predominant view of causality (as expressed in reductionism). He argued that free will must be allowed to unfold in an autonomous and unpredictable fashion. While Kant saw free will as something beyond time and space and therefore ultimately a matter of faith, Bergson attempted to redefine the modern conceptions of time, space, and causality in his concept of [[Duration (philosophy)|duration]], making room for a tangible marriage of free will with causality. Seeing duration as a mobile and fluid concept, Bergson argued that one cannot understand duration through "immobile" analysis, but only through experiential, first-person [[Intuition (Bergson)|intuition]].<ref>{{Citation|last1=Lawlor|first1=Leonard|title=Henri Bergson|date=2016|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2016/entries/bergson/|encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|editor-last=Zalta|editor-first=Edward N.|edition=Summer 2016|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University|access-date=2019-12-10|last2=Moulard Leonard|first2=Valentine}}</ref>

===Creativity===
Bergson considers the appearance of novelty as a result of pure undetermined creation, instead of as the predetermined result of mechanistic forces. His philosophy emphasizes pure mobility, unforeseeable novelty, creativity and freedom; thus one can characterize his system as a [[process philosophy]]. It touches upon such topics as time and identity, [[free will]], perception, change, memory, consciousness, language, the [[foundation of mathematics]] and the limits of reason.<ref>Bergson explores these topics in ''Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness'', in ''Matter and Memory'', in ''Creative Evolution'', and in ''The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics''.
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Criticizing [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]]'s theory of knowledge exposed in the ''[[Critique of Pure Reason]]'' and his conception of truth – which he compares to [[Plato]]'s conception of truth as its symmetrical inversion (order of nature/order of thought) – Bergson attempted to redefine the relations between science and metaphysics, intelligence and [[intuition (Bergson)|intuition]], and insisted on the necessity of increasing thought's possibility through the use of intuition, which, according to him, alone approached a knowledge of the absolute and of real life, understood as pure [[Duration (philosophy)|duration]]. Because of his (relative) criticism of intelligence, he makes frequent use of images and metaphors in his writings in order to avoid the use of [[concept]]s, which (he considers) fail to touch the whole of reality, being only a sort of abstract net thrown on things. For instance, he says in ''The Creative Evolution'' (chap. III) that thought in itself would never have thought it possible for the human being to swim, as it cannot deduce swimming from walking. For swimming to be possible, man must throw himself in water, and only then can thought to consider swimming as possible. Intelligence, for Bergson, is a practical faculty rather than a pure speculative faculty, a product of evolution used by man to survive. If metaphysics is to avoid "false problems", it should not extend the abstract concepts of intelligence to pure speculation, but rather use intuition.<ref>Elie During, [http://ciepfc.rhapsodyk.net/article.php3?id_article=63 « Fantômes de problèmes »] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080428142556/http://ciepfc.rhapsodyk.net/article.php3?id_article=63|date=28 April 2008}}, published by the [[Centre International d'Études de la Philosophie Française Contemporaine]] (short version first published in ''[[Le magazine littéraire]]'', n°386, April 2000 (issue dedicated to Bergson)</ref>

''The Creative Evolution'' in particular attempted to think through the continuous creation of life, and explicitly pitted itself against [[Herbert Spencer]]'s evolutionary philosophy. Spencer had attempted to transpose [[Charles Darwin]]'s theory of [[evolution]] in philosophy and to construct a [[cosmology]] based on this theory (Spencer also coined the expression "[[survival of the fittest]]"). Bergson disputed what he saw as Spencer's mechanistic philosophy.<ref>''The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics'', pages 11 to 14</ref>

Bergson's ''[[Lebensphilosophie]]'' ([[philosophy of life]]) can be seen as a response to the [[mechanism (philosophy)|mechanistic philosophies]] of his time,<ref name="Creative_Mind">Henri Bergson, ''The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics'', pages 11 to 13.</ref> but also to the failure of [[finalism]].<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/> Indeed, he considers that finalism is unable to explain "duration" and the "continuous creation of life", as it only explains life as the progressive development of an initially determined program – a notion which remains, for example, in the expression of a "[[genetics|genetic]] program";<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/> such a description of finalism was adopted, for instance, by [[Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz|Leibniz]].<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/>

Bergson regards planning for the future as impossible since time itself unravels unforeseen possibilities. Indeed, one can always explain a historical event retrospectively by its conditions of possibility. But, in the introduction to the ''Pensée et le mouvant'', he explains that such an event retrospectively created its causes, taking the example of the creation of a work of art, for example a symphony: it was impossible to predict a future symphony as if the composer knew what symphony would be best and wrote it. In his words, the effect created its cause. Henceforth, he attempted to find a third way between mechanism and finalism through the notion of an original impulse, the ''élan vital'', in life, which disperses itself through evolution into contradictory tendencies (he substituted for the finalist notion of a [[teleological]] aim the notion of an original impulse).

===Duration===
{{See also|Duration (philosophy)}}
The foundation of Henri Bergson's philosophy, his theory of [[Duration (philosophy)|Duration]], he discovered when trying to improve what he saw as the inadequacies of [[Herbert Spencer]]'s philosophy.<ref name="Creative_Mind"/> Bergson introduced Duration as a theory of time and [[consciousness]] in his doctoral thesis ''Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness'' as a response to another of his influences: [[Immanuel Kant]].<ref name="Stanford_Kant">[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson/ ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''], "Henri Bergson": "'Time and Free Will' has to be seen as an attack on Kant, for whom freedom belongs to a realm outside of space and time."</ref>

Kant believed that free will could only exist outside of time and space, indeed the only non-determined aspect of private existence in the universe, separate from water cycles, mathematics and mortality. However, it could therefore not be ascertained whether or not it exists, and that it is nothing but a pragmatic faith.<ref name="Stanford_Kant"/> Bergson responded that Kant, along with many other philosophers, had confused time with its spatial representation.<ref>Henri Bergson, ''Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness'', Author's Preface.</ref> In reality, Bergson argued, Duration is unextended yet heterogeneous, and so its parts cannot be juxtaposed as a succession of distinct parts, with one causing the other. Based on this he concluded that determinism is an impossibility and free will pure mobility, which is what Bergson identified as being the Duration.<ref>[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bergson/ ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''], "Henri Bergson": "For Bergson – and perhaps this is his greatest insight – freedom is mobility."</ref> For Bergson, reality is composed of change.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Lovasz|first=Adam|title=Updating Bergson|publisher=Lexington Books|year=2021|isbn=978-1-7936-4081-9|location=Lanham|pages=65}}</ref>

===Intuitionism===
{{See also|Intuition (Bergson)}}
Duration, as defined by Bergson, then is a unity and a multiplicity, but, being mobile, it cannot be grasped through immobile concepts. Bergson hence argues that one can grasp it only through his method of [[Intuition (Bergson)|intuition]]. Two images from Henri Bergson's ''An Introduction to Metaphysics'' may help one to grasp Bergson's term intuition, the limits of concepts, and the ability of intuition to grasp the absolute. The first image is that of a city. Analysis, or the creation of concepts through the divisions of points of view, can only ever offer a model of the city through a construction of photographs taken from every possible point of view, yet it can never produce the dimensional value of walking in the city itself. One can only grasp this through intuition; likewise the experience of reading a line of [[Homer]]. One may translate the line and pile commentary upon commentary, but this commentary too shall never grasp the simple dimensional value of experiencing the poem in its originality itself. The method of intuition, then, is that of getting back to the things themselves.<ref>Henri Bergson, ''The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics'', pages 160 to 161. For a Whiteheadian use of Bergsonian intuition, see [[Michel Weber]]'s ''[https://www.academia.edu/279953/Whiteheads_Pancreativism._The_Basics Whitehead’s Pancreativism. The Basics]''. Foreword by [[Nicholas Rescher]], Frankfurt / Paris, Ontos Verlag, 2006.
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===''Élan vital''===
{{See also|Élan vital}}

''Élan vital'' ranks as Bergson's third essential concept, after Duration and intuition. An idea with the goal of explaining evolution, the ''élan vital'' first appeared in 1907's ''Creative Evolution''. Bergson portrays ''élan vital'' as a kind of vital impetus which explains evolution in a less mechanical and more lively manner, as well as accounting for the creative impulse of mankind. This concept led several authors to characterize Bergson as a supporter of [[vitalism]]—although he criticized it explicitly in ''The Creative Evolution'', as he thought, against [[Hans Adolf Eduard Driesch|Driesch]] and [[Johannes Reinke]] (whom he cited) that there is neither "purely internal finality nor clearly cut individuality in nature":<ref>''L'Évolution créatrice'', pp. 42–44; pp. 226–227</ref>

<blockquote>Hereby lies the stumbling block of vitalist theories ... It is thus in vain that one pretends to reduce finality to the individuality of the living being. If there is finality in the world of life, it encompasses the whole of life in one indivisible embrace.<ref>''L'Évolution créatrice'', pp. 42–43</ref></blockquote>

===Laughter===
In ''[[Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic]]'', Bergson develops a theory not of laughter itself but of how laughter can be provoked (see his objection to Delage, published in the 23rd edition of the essay).<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/> He describes the process of laughter (refusing to give a conceptual definition which would not approach its reality<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/>), used in particular by comics and [[clown]]s, as caricature of the mechanistic nature of humans (habits, automatic acts, etc.), one of the two tendencies of life (degradation towards inert matter and mechanism, and continual creation of new forms).<ref name=Fagot-Largeau/> However, Bergson warns that laughter's criterion of what should be laughed at is not a moral criterion and that it can in fact cause serious damage to a person's [[self-esteem]].<ref>[http://www.timoroso.com/philosophy/writings/sketches/2006-04-09-henri-bergsons-theory-of-laughter Henri Bergson's theory of laughter] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090514072652/http://www.timoroso.com/philosophy/writings/sketches/2006-04-09-henri-bergsons-theory-of-laughter |date=14 May 2009 }}. A brief summary.</ref> This essay made his opposition to the [[Cartesianism|Cartesian]] theory of the animal-machine obvious.