Bergson, Henri (Bergson Henri)

(1859-1941)
Born in Paris on October 18, 1859 to a Jewish family. Education received the Lycц?e Condorcet in Paris, then in 1878-1881 at the Higher Education Institute. He taught at various high schools in the Arya and Clermont-Ferrand. The fame and reputation of Bergson acquired gradually, leading a modest life of a teacher in the Lycee Henri IV and engaging writing philosophical treatises. In 1897 he became a professor of Philosophy Graduate School of Education, in 1900 - at the College de France. Resigned in 1914. His lectures on 'creative evolution' in the College de France before the First World War a great success with students. Following the recommendations of William James, lectures frequently visited by visitors to Paris Americans. The philosophy of Bergson, in some respects, close the philosophy of James, was of a metaphysical nature and developed in the European tradition of speculative philosophy, while it contains new ideas about the nature of life, evolution, reality and knowledge. As a thinker Bergson has reached world fame. In addition, he was one of the leading figures of the postwar movement for international cooperation, and in 1927 won the Nobel Prize in literature. Late works of Bergson, marked by the establishment of philosophical masterpiece The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Les Deux Sourses de la morale et de la religion, 1932).
During World War II Vichy government offered Bergson did not go through a compulsory registration procedure for the Jews, but he preferred to spend the last days of life with his people. Bergson died as a true philosopher in Paris on January 4, 1941.

Bergson was born in the same year, when a work of Darwin's Origin of Species. In Europe, then were live discussions about the meaning of evolution. Bergson soon realized how important the concept of evolution to philosophy. In those years the prevailing mechanistic world view that all things should have been explained in terms of matter and motion. Popularly Kant's view of incomprehensibility of ultimate reality, . positivism of Comte and widespread skepticism about religion and the supernatural, . - All mingled in the world, . which made hopeless any desire to comprehend the meaning of life, . goes beyond the material world,
. However, Bergson does not accept any narrow view of the world, no theory of frontiers of knowledge, or denial of human freedom. In his view, modern thinkers uncritically embraced the new phenomenon of evolution, squeezed it into the framework of the old materialist worldview, and Bergson questioned the validity of traditional assumptions of mechanism.

Mechanist explain the evolution as follows: living organisms develop the capacity to climate variability, some of the acquired traits allow them to adapt to survive and pass on hereditary useful properties. Environment, respectively, 'select', how organisms can continue to exist and eventually form a separate species, and which organisms should be killed. According to this theory, . entire history of life on Earth, . with all kinds, . genera and classes, . must be understood solely in terms of physical conditions of its occurrence and in fact, . herself living matter, . According to Mr. Spencer and other thinkers, . is nothing, . as a combination of physical and chemical elements,
. I never signed any purpose, and in the organisms themselves - no selectivity, evolution has no direction, freedom is impossible, but man is simply a higher animal

. Although Bergson did not intend to resurrect the concept of 'finite' (the target) causes, . He saw the broad picture of natural history, . has become clearer thanks to the discovery of biological evolution, . evidence of a fundamental and important factor, . unnoticed by, . who was swallowed by a purely physical explanation of phenomena,
. It is a fact of evolution - the birth of a new permanent. At the scene of nature we will not see a dull monotony of playing the same piece. There is no fixed pattern repeated mechanically. Nature is the creative process and rush to new forms and functions, and not only in individual beings (eg, in man), but also within the entire species. In living beings laid purposeful, creativity. Although the existence of living beings due to environmental factors, they have the ability to adapt, but their behavior is expressed in their separate. In life itself, spread throughout the earth's surface, there is a lan vital, enthusiasm for life, purpose, creativity and new meanings. These ideas were developed in the main work of Bergson's Creative Evolution (L'Evolution cratrice, 1907).

However, before the views of Bergson's final shape, he had to question many assumptions that are shared by contemporary philosophers. Still remained in force the old idea of cause and effect, although for a hundred years before it was challenged in the writings of Hume. According to this view, all that is contained in the investigation, there are earlier because. Regarded as axiomatic the idea that nothing comes from nothing, and therefore can not receive nothing really new. However, on the very concept of evolution is in reality the very opposite. Thus Bergson questioned the applicability to the phenomena of life of the traditional principle of causality.

Even more profound and revolutionary was the idea of Bergson on the nature of existence. Beginning with the Greeks to most of the philosophers was the definition of all things in terms of being - constantly abiding, eternal, unchanging. But the study of evolution showed that the fundamental reality should be considered as the flow itself (from the Greek philosophers - 'emergence'). Constant process of change is reduced to a system of fixed tangible elements, science subdued nature of the preconceived and artificial scheme 'mechanical repetition'. A significant contribution to the philosophy of Bergson was a new concept of existence as a change in time, duration, and free, creative movement of life.

For Bergson, the subject of physical science and the subject of life sciences differ from each other. As the man himself is a living creature, that in itself it can best see the difference between the two modes of existence. In his first work experience of the immediate data of consciousness (Essai sur les donnц?es immdiates de la conscience, 1889) Bergson explains the difference between consciousness and a stretch. Physical science (eg, . if we take the presentation of Descartes) is the knowledge of reality as spatial extension, . in which we can determine the relationship of parts of the world to each other - in a geometric sense, and in accordance with fixed causal laws,
. Matter - which is quite real - is best described by physics. However, life is different from matter, and man is aware of this directly, in itself. 'Consciousness is indivisible process', it 'part of a mutually permeate one another'. Throughout the whole there. The man himself - a being with memory, and so he is not in the power of acting in the moment of force or a momentary impulse. The past does not prejudge here now, because people spontaneously change in the present and therefore free. Human experience Bergson believed to be applicable to all living. Materialist scheme is applicable to everything that has extent in space, but there is also another important aspect of existence - the duration. The task of philosophy is the apprehension of time as it takes place in the process of life. These ideas were developed in Matter and Memory (Matire et mmoire: Essai sur la relation du corps l'esprit, 1896).

Another original contribution to the philosophy of Bergson was his concept of knowledge. Intelligent person's ability to represent a successful adaptation to the world in the extent to which the world is orderly, law-governed system of cause and effect. Intelligence - is a tool that helps us cope with reality, and it was formed because it was useful for Success. Numerous advances in science by which nature has placed at the service of humanity, indicate that this practical function of reason. But in the course of the evolutionary process has evolved, and other abilities to facilitate the successful adaptation. Critical role in the animal kingdom does instinct. It is also useful knowledge, but it differs significantly from the procedures as a process of intellectual reasoning. Instinct allows you to understand important things for life without any learning or intellectual operations. Instinctive mind is a necessary complement to scientific knowledge. It allows a person to live, knowing other people and life in general. The ability of instinctive comprehension inherent in all people, because it is merely a manifestation of a new level that was reached earlier in the evolutionary history of living beings. Bergson calls this ability and knowledge, which can be obtained with its help, 'intuition'.

Bergson's ideas greatly influenced the spiritual life of 20 in. Sociology sufficiently demonstrated that the activities of man, his beliefs and principles are formed in society, the requirements of which contribute to its survival and unity of people in a social whole. This source of morality and religion is fully recognized Bergson, but he emphasized that there is another source of. There are morality and religion, inspiration, confessing that a man becomes a free and creative being. Without denying the importance of sociological knowledge, the philosopher insisted on the importance of individual factors of intuition and sympathy in the moral and religious life.

Bergson's often accused of irrationalism and the fact that he is struggling with the scientific worldview. Indeed, many people have used his ideas to justify their negative attitudes toward science. However, these charges can not be brought very Bergson, characterized by a flexible mind and restraint in the estimates. Bergson had a sharp, clear intellect and well understood the importance of science. At the same time he wanted to enable people to take a fresh look at life and its meaning, and he drew attention to those aspects of experience, which ignored scientific thought. His work contributed to the attainment status of the biology of an independent and autonomous science. They also expressed typical of modern man belief in reality and not illusory freedom. Books Bergson led many people to think about the sense of time and creative possibilities of prisoners in the life. To his philosophy were treated with great care since it became known theory of relativity, which gave a new interpretation of time. Extremely strong philosophy of Bergson's influence on poetry and literature. The notion of time as experience subtly expressed by Marcel Proust in a cycle of novels, In Search of Lost Time. With regard to the philosophy, the ideas of Henri Bergson were developed in the writings of William James, Dzh.Santayana and AN Whitehead.