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The Challenge of Bergsonism
The Challenge of Bergsonism explores how Bergsonism questions our ways of thinking, particularly the concept of reality, and ultimately demands a return to ethics. The book also includes the first English translation of Jean Hyppolite's highly influential essay, "Various Aspects of Memory in Bergson".
- GenresPhilosophy
156 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
About the author
Leonard Lawlor
43 books8 followersLeonard "Len" Lawlor is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. He specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Continental philosophy. He is author of Imagination and Chance: The Difference between the Thought of Ricoeur and Derrida and co-editor (with Fred Evans) of Chiasms: Merleau-Ponty's Notion of the Flesh. He is a founding editor of the journal Chiasmi International: Trilingual Studies Concerning the Thought of Merleau-Ponty.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 30, 2025
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260312/120326: another deceptively thin philosophy book read first over decade (!) past. that refers to an entire corpus of other works. this is a four. the other works, mostly matter and memory, creative evolution, introduction to metaphysics, and laughter- all somewhat read or read of. do not know if entirely understood, but certainly reading this work suggests a turn to read again. and maybe it would help to know French, but his ideas are not entirely limited by language, though his description of fluent and beginner speakers seems exact.
there is an interesting undercurrent that may help to understand Bergson- and this he encapsulates in three sentences: 1, the past survives 2, the new is not just rearrangement of the past 3, the new is new. and so we need to appreciate the sense of new by intuition, and the way to do this is to be aware of thinking, sensing, reveling in freedom of the gap between perception or action, and choice or reaction. this gap becomes geater as evolution persists, moving from immediacy to touch of say ameoba to sight of humans. duration is life, not isolated, unconnected moments like a series of points, though our perception of the objective world is indeed like mathematical points. and then Bergson uses opposing words to get his across eg. indivisible and divisible... or something like that. more Bergson to read...
260312/120326: another deceptively thin philosophy book read first over decade (!) past. that refers to an entire corpus of other works. this is a four. the other works, mostly matter and memory, creative evolution, introduction to metaphysics, and laughter- all somewhat read or read of. do not know if entirely understood, but certainly reading this work suggests a turn to read again. and maybe it would help to know French, but his ideas are not entirely limited by language, though his description of fluent and beginner speakers seems exact.
there is an interesting undercurrent that may help to understand Bergson- and this he encapsulates in three sentences: 1, the past survives 2, the new is not just rearrangement of the past 3, the new is new. and so we need to appreciate the sense of new by intuition, and the way to do this is to be aware of thinking, sensing, reveling in freedom of the gap between perception or action, and choice or reaction. this gap becomes geater as evolution persists, moving from immediacy to touch of say ameoba to sight of humans. duration is life, not isolated, unconnected moments like a series of points, though our perception of the objective world is indeed like mathematical points. and then Bergson uses opposing words to get his across eg. indivisible and divisible... or something like that. more Bergson to read...
June 12, 2015
Interesting in parts, mainly dry. How we view ourselves vs. Kant's idea, make this Bergson's ideas intriguing.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews