Preface

Summary

(i) Thinking Backwards In spite of his limpid style, Bergson can seem inaccessible to readers from what is commonly called ‘the analytic tradition’ in philosophy. Russell's vigorous attacks on Bergson illustrate this, combining as they do acute and interesting criticism with incomprehension or misunderstanding. Since then, Bergson has been largely neglected by philosophers in that tradition.

One response to this kind of situation was referred to by Husserl, when he spoke, in his Cartesian Meditations, of the absence of a common ‘mental space’ between different philosophical traditions in which their differences could be at least stated and discussed, if not resolved. But this pessimistic response should be rejected. Bergson does indeed pose radical challenges to certain fundamental assumptions commonly made within the analytic tradition, both narrowly and broadly conceived, but these assumptions can be adequately stated, and the challenges are intelligible, important and interesting.

Indeed, it is questionable how far Bergson himself can be seen as belonging to a philosophical tradition at all; certainly, he was as non-conformist vis-à-vis the philosophical establishment of his youth as was Russell. He wrote: ‘To do philosophy is to think backwards.’

(ii) Reconstruction The literature on Bergson is so extensive that the publication of another book about him requires some justification. The justification has several parts. First, the body of work about him in English is quite limited.