Translated by Anthony Uhlmann
Examines the importance of expression to the production of meaning in the philosophy of Bergson
- The first book to focus on a question that preoccupied Bergson throughout his career: the nature of philosophical expression and how it might be reimagined
- Offers a detailed analysis of the techniques and figures Bergson deploys to get beyond language, through language, in order to better express thought
- Explores unexpected intersections between the disciplines of literature and philosophy
Henri Bergson was awarded The Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927. However, literary writers do not consider him — and in fact never cite him — as one of their own. Bruno Clément reads Henri Bergson as a writer whose thought is inseparable from a tireless reflection on the question of his written expression. Clément adds new insights into Bergson’s philosophical achievements through an analysis of the literary techniques he develops to express his theoretical insights. This close analysis of rhetorical technique analyses the effect on Bergson’s philosophical texts. Reading all of Bergson’s philosophical texts with the tools of literature, to systematically consider the theoretical consequences, he reveals that Bergson was not only a philosopher but a highly skilled and innovative writer.
Contents
Translator’s Introduction
List of Abbreviations
1 ‘In other words ...’
An Author’s Preface
How to Write
Philosophy and Literature
Three Figures
The Words of Philosophy, the Words of Life
Bergson’s Languages
2 ‘... in the same direction as art’
Art and Thought
Art and Philosophy
To Philosophise as an Artist
‘We artists ...’
3 An effective fiction
On the Imagination in Philosophy
Generalised Invention
Bergson’s Ghost Philosophy
Literature and Philosophy Mixed
Critique of the Imagination, Critique of Bergson
4 ‘... to transfer thought, still living, into the soul of another’
Coincidences
‘The spirit of form’
Bergson, Among Many Others
‘Words, words, words...’
Works Cited
Index