A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson

Underneath and beyond the method, you have caught the intention and the spirit…Your study could not be more conscientious or true to the original.» – Henri Bergson

The famous French philosopher Henri Bergson had but the highest praise for Edouard le Roy’s presentation of Bergson’s philosophy for the general public in a couple of articles that would form the core of this book, A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson: Henri Bergson.

Le Roy hoped that this volume would serve as an introduction, which would make it easier to read and understand Bergson’s works, and serve as a primer to his «new philosophy.» Bergson’s new philosophy essentially argued that the intuition is deeper than the intellect. His work was considered the main challenge to the mechanistic view of nature. A great opponent of Cartesian dualism, he resisted the reduction of psychological phenomena to physical states. Bergson, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927, is sometimes said to have anticipated features of relativity theory and the modern scientific theories of the mind.

EDOUARD LE ROY (1870-1954) was the French philosopher Henri Bergson’s most famous pupil. From 1914 until 1921 he functioned as Bergson’s «permanent substitute» in the Chair of Modern Philosophy at the College de France while the philosopher served on French diplomatic missions.