Henri Bergson

Lore & Background

Henri Bergson was born in Paris in 1859. His father, Michał Bergson, was a composer and pianist of Polish-Jewish background; his mother, Katherine Levison, was of English-Jewish and Irish-Jewish background. The family lived in London for a few years after his birth, and he became a naturalized French citizen before age nine. He married Louise Neuberger, a cousin of Marcel Proust, in 1891; Proust served as best man at the wedding. They had a daughter, Jeanne, born deaf in 1896. His sister Mina Bergson married occult author Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers.

Bergson’s appearance was that of a quiet, unassuming French professor, a demeanor consistent with his long academic career. He taught at the Collège de France, first as Chair of Greek and Roman Philosophy, then as Chair of Modern Philosophy, where his open courses drew large public audiences. His defining intellectual characteristic was his argument that immediate experience and intuition are more vital than abstract rationalism or science for grasping reality. This view, presented across four principal works—*Time and Free Will*, *Matter and Memory*, *Creative Evolution*, and *The Two Sources of Morality and Religion*—made him enormously popular but also controversial in France, where his ideas were seen as opposing the Republic’s secular and scientific stance. His influence extended across analytic and continental philosophy, notably reviving after 1966 with Gilles Deleuze’s work. Bergson was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature for his rich, vitalizing ideas and brilliant presentation, and in 1930 received France’s highest honor, the Grand-Croix de la Legion d’honneur.

Reader's Guide

Bergson attended Lycée Fontanes (later Lycée Condorcet) from 1868 to 1878. He won a prize for solving a mathematical problem in 1877, published the next year. He entered the École Normale Supérieure at age 19, earned a licence ès lettres and an agrégation de philosophie in 1881. He taught at lycées in Angers and Clermont-Ferrand, then at Collège Rollin and Lycée Henri-Quatre in Paris. He became maître de conférences at the École Normale Supérieure in 1898, then professor at the Collège de France in 1900 as Chair of Greek and Roman Philosophy until 1904, then Chair of Modern Philosophy until 1920. His four principal works: Time and Free Will (1889), Matter and Memory (1896), Creative Evolution (1907), and The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932).

Did You Know?

• Bergson's first published work was a solution to a mathematical problem in Nouvelles Annales de Mathématiques in 1878.
• He dedicated Time and Free Will to Jules Lachelier, then public education minister.
• Bergson's essay Laughter (1900) argues that laughter is a corrective for social life, stemming from 'something mechanical encrusted on the living'.
• He was elected to the Académie des sciences morales et politiques in 1901.

Notable Quotes (Wikiquote)

"Henri-Louis Bergson (18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a major French philosopher, influential in the first half of the 20th century. He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature." — Henri Bergson "I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment." — Henri Bergson "The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause." — Henri Bergson "Creative Evolution (1907), Chapter I, as translated by Arthur Mitchell (1911), p. 14.; italicized in the original." — Henri Bergson