Herald of a Restless World
How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People
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- £14.99
Publisher Description
The first English-language biography of Henri Bergson, the philosopher who defined individual creativity and transformed twentieth century thought.
At the dawn of the twentieth century, Henri Bergson became the most famous philosopher on earth. Where prior thinkers sketched out a predictable universe, he asserted the transformative power of consciousness and creativity. An international celebrity, he made headlines around the world debating luminaries like Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein about free will and time. The vision of creative evolution and freedom he presented was so disruptive that the New York Times branded him "the most dangerous man in the world."
In the first English-language biography of Bergson, Emily Herring traces how his celebration of the time-bending uniqueness of individual experience struck a chord with those shaken by modern technological and social change. Bergson captivated a society in flux like no other. Long after he faded from public view, his insights into memory, time, joy and creativity continue to shape our perceptions to this day. Herald of a Restless World is an electrifying portrait of a singular intellect.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This scintillating debut depicts Henri Bergson (1859–1941), the Belle Époque philosopher of "flux," as a countervailing force against turn-of-the-century certainties about technological progress. Herring, who has a PhD in the history and philosophy of science, moves fluidly through Bergson's life and career—taking on with some chagrin the highly "un-Bergsonian" task of biography-writing, a process she notes is deeply "at odds with description of the flow of time as gradually ripening a person's existence from within." With his famous concept of durée (the idea that time is not simply another dimension of space, but an ineluctable flow), Bergson sought to convey—in contradiction to the machine-obsessed positivism of his day—the notion that life is an irreducible state of motion, accessible only through direct intuition, and not scientifically measurable. He achieved an unprecedented popularity, attracting massive—and primarily female—audiences to his public lectures, which frequently courted scandal, much to the ascetic Bergson's embarrassment. Herring uses Bergson's rapturous reception as a window onto his era, diagnosing a disenchantment with secular modernity and a profound desire to return to a sense of the world's mutability. (Meanwhile, other philosophers were making stultifying proclamations like "that it would soon be possible to discover mechanically regular" laws governing the mind.) Written in graceful prose and drawing a clear analogy with contemporary techno-optimism and its discontents, this captivates.
