An Introduction to Metaphysics

by Henri Bergson, T.E. Hulme (Translator), Thomas A. Goudge (Introduction)

An Introduction to Metaphysics (Introduction à la Métaphysique) is a 1903 essay by Henri Bergson (published in Revue de métaphysique et de morale) that explores the concept of reality. For Bergson, reality occurs not in a series of discrete states but as a process similar to that described by process philosophy or the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Reality is fluid and cannot be completely understood through reductionistic analysis, which he said "implies that we go around an object", gaining knowledge from various perspectives which are relative. Instead, reality can be grasped absolutely only through intuition, which Bergson expressed as "entering into" the object.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Metaphysics, France, Science, Essays, 20th Century

64 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1903

About the author

Popular and accessible works of French philosopher and writer Henri Louis Bergson include Creative Evolution (1907) and The Creative Mind (1934) and largely concern the importance of intuition as a means of attaining knowledge and the élan vital present in all living things; he won the Nobel Prize of 1927 for literature.

Although international fame and influence of this late 19th century-early 20th century man reached heights like cult during his lifetime, after the Second World War, his influence decreased notably. Whereas such thinkers as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Paul Sartre, and Lévinas explicitly acknowledged his influence on their thought, Bergsonism of Gilles Deleuze in 1966 marked the reawakening of interest. Deleuze recognized his concept of multiplicity as his most enduring contribution to thinking. This concept attempts to unify heterogeneity and continuity, contradictory features, in a consistent way. This revolutionary multiplicity despite its difficulty opens the way to a re-conception of community, or so many today think.

Reviews

[Ipsa · Rating 4 out of 5]

About a week ago, at around 2 AM, in one of my usual abstract reveries, I declared to a friend: Intuition is embedded in the fabric of Time. The present is not only swollen with the past but also the future because it is a circle. All of the states extend into one another, always immersed into one another. Now make no mistake, most of what I usually say is horseshit but something about the nature of intuition has always fascinated and ultimately bothered me - it has been something that has aided my recklessly impulsive nature on numerous occasions. So what is it?

Reality is constantly in flux; it is not the discontinuous stoppages that our utilitarian brain deems it to be. Bergson states there are two ways of approaching intellectual objects: a) “to move around the object;” b) “to enter it.” The first knowledge is scientific (relative). The second is intuitive (absolute). The first moves from concepts to things, and the second moves from things to concepts. The positive sciences use symbols to conceptualise reality, but in doing so, they only reconstruct a faint imitation of it. It is all well and good too, since our habitual ways of thinking need practical points of support and our brain prefers to understand only that through which some profit can be derived. This is also why immobility is seen as anterior to mobility; the temporal buttressed by the spatial. Symbols, however by nature, are stationary. Analysis, thus, perpetually dissatisfied with its desire to embrace the object, is stuck multiplying without end the number of its points of view in order to complete its always incomplete representation.

Metaphysics, insofar as it is an inquiry into the very nature of reality as such, needs to transcend the rigid and ready-made symbols, and concepts. All the difficulties of metaphysics (antinomies, antagonistic schools of thought) are largely the result of our applying, to the disinterested knowledge of the Real, processes which we generally apply for practical ends. Intuition is how this can be escaped. To apply intuition, the mind has to be violent towards itself, has to reverse the direction to which it thinks habitually, perpetually revise and recast all its categories, and attain fluid, sinuous concepts.

What other philosophers might deem the mystery of metaphysics is nothing more than the mysterious impression that process makes on the intellect, which can rarely comprehend the idea of becoming in itself. “. . . metaphysics is a science, a knowing without symbols. This knowing, this intuition must dispense with symbols if it is to be a sympathy, if it is to be ‘within the object,’ coincident with its unique and inexpressible singularity.” Science and metaphysics are closer than is usually imagined. Both are tied together in assigning primacy to intellectual intuition. Einstein said: "All great achievements of science must start from intuitive knowledge.” An idea can be enriched from the outside but it will only be complete when it is sympathised with. When I identify with something, enter into something, all the characteristics of that thing flow to me without words or symbols. That is where the positive sciences also begin. Every great discovery, scientific or otherwise, has sprung from the depths of pure duration, pure mobility. Positive sciences are ultimately applied and that is why they need symbolisation. What metaphysics, however, loses in comparison with science in utility, it regains in range and extension. This, then, should be the true purpose of philosophy.

In about 90 pages, Bergson clarifies the concepts of real time (duration) and abstract time, real and abstract unity and multiplicities, and intuition (absolute) as well as intellect (relative). However, the one question that constantly plagued me was: if metaphysics is to proceed by intuition and intuition is the realisation of the duration of the self by the self, then shouldn’t we confine ourselves to the contemplation of our own selves? He does address this but in a very vague, evasive manner. I will also have to re-read portions on rationalism and empiricism, they were so good but also confusing. Also, how can our perception ever be free of concepts? Is intuitive understanding pre-conceptual, or is it an integral experience attained through, but still different from, material knowledge? And if it is pre-conceptual, how can it ever have any epistemic purport? I hope Bergson tackles these questions in his larger oeuvre.

Also, if you’re into Bergsonism, or process philosophy in general, you should check out Yogācāra, Sautrāntika, and Vaibhāshika schools of Buddhism.

Since I am bored of writing this now, I will not add anything else, even though there is a lot that he says in this little space. In sum, this was an incredibly stimulating, refreshing, and a mind-boggling read.

[Kamakana · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you like this review, i now have website: www.michaelkamakana.com

100118: maybe because i have read so many on/by henri bergson (51) that this works so well. short, short book, this is concise and direct explication of the metaphysics that he expounds to greater length in his texts previous to publication (1903) and giving an idea where he goes next, his protention, in Creative Evolution, he talks about how in his work 'metaphysics' means to 'go beyond' symbols, to argue for 'intuition' rather than familiar 'intellectual analysis', and this book is best short short intro to where he comes from but more importantly- where he is going to...

more
Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness
Matter and Memory
Creative Evolution
Henri Bergson: Key Writings
Laughter
The World of Dreams
Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual: Bergson and the Time of Life
Bergsonism
Bergson: Thinking Beyond the Human Condition
Deleuze, Bergson, Merleau-Ponty: The Logic and Pragmatics of Creation, Affective Life, and Perception
Henri Bergson
Thinking in Time: An Introduction to Henri Bergson
The Bergsonian Philosophy of Intelligence
Bergson and the Stream of Consciousness Novel
Morality in Evolution: The Moral Philosophy of Henri Bergson
The Crisis in Modernism: Bergson and the Vitalist Controversy
The Philosophy of Science Fiction: Henri Bergson and the Fabulations of Philip K. Dick

[Myat Thura Aung · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't believe how anyone could have accused Bergson of anti-intellectualism. They, including Bertrand Russell, grotesquely misinterpreted Bergson's notion of intuition as a kind of hocus pocus hunch. Safe to say that none of those had ever read AItM where Bergson concisely explains what he means by intuition (he never did this elsewhere) and how, as intellectual sympathy, it could grasp the absolute, which was previously barred by kantian critical philosophy. Not only does he write clearly and convincingly, he's also a great literary stylist, juggling these brilliant creative metaphors (No wonder he won the Nobel prize in Literature). For those who would like to read Bergson, this is where one starts.

[Alina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work was very short, clear, and whimsical from a contemporary perspective. Bergson presents three main ideas in this essay. First, there is a fundamental difference between two modes of apprehension, intuition (which seems to refer any first-person, phenomenological or perceptual mode of access) and analysis (which seems to refer to any discursive, inferential, or linguistic mode of access). Bergson maintains that the intuitive/perceptual mode of access is epistemically privileged, being unmediated. When we take an analytic/observational approach to a phenomenon, we inevitably interpret it from our spatio-temporal and conceptual perspective; but when we live out the very phenomenon first-hand, we short-circuit such mediation. Bergson argues that many problems and paradoxes in philosophy (e.g. personal identity; Zeno's paradox) arise from conflating these two modes.

I have a strong aversion to this point. Bergson's position shares the same flaws of logical positivism, empirical foundationalism, or subjective phenomenalism. All such positions assume that there is an epistemically privileged, pre-conceptual object of perceptual experience. This is untenable, given that perception is already concept-laden (e.g. we perceive trees, not splotches of green and then infer there to be trees). And even if one maintains we perceive bare sense data, any sense data totally free of conceptualization could not serve an epistemic role. This was all said by Sellars in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind ; I urge readers sympathetic with Bergson's position to read this work.

Bergson's second point is that memory is constitutive of and makes possible our perceptual mode of access. He defines memory quite differently than our common understanding of episodic or explicit memories; instead it is an accumulation of all our past experiences, which determines the comprehensible contents of a perceptual moment. This point is less striking than the first, at least in its formulation in this work. I know Bergson is well known for his theories on memory, so perhaps he explicates these ideas in greater innovation and detail elsewhere.

I made sense of his ideas presented in light of Merleau-Ponty's work on embodiment and perception (someone should correct me if these two thinkers' ideas on perception are incompatible). I would much prefer Merleau-Ponty's writing, for its greater detail and naturalistic plausibility. But it is very impressive that Bergson pre-dates Merleau-Ponty, and his predecessors Heidegger, and Husserl. It seems that Bergson anticipated these thinkers' radical idea that perceptual experience is dynamically interdependent with some set of conditions (i.e. the contents of memory, in Bergson's terms).

Third, Bergson argues that the idea of fixed, absolute entities of any sort (conceptual or physical) is an illusion. It is a reification of our analytic ways of thinking. In reality, there are only temporal successions of events. Bergson doesn't defend this point in much detail in this work, but rather applies it to disentangling paradoxes about motion. I haven't read later process philosophy, which is supposedly inspired by Bergson, but I find this ontological position is appealing, and would be interested in going there. It seems that some strands of Buddhist metaphysics holds this overall view, and given how rich and old the traditions within Buddhism are, I bet readers interested in this idea of Bergson's would be rewarded by turning to those traditions.

Overall, it was a quick and fun read. I would recommend to readers interested in concepts like Heidegger's contrast between existential and theoretical modes of being; Kant's refutations of empiricist and rationalist approaches to subjectivity; and Merleau-Ponty's theory of the role of embodiment in perception. I found interesting connections along these lines.

[Martyna Antonina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intuicjonizm zespolony z metafizyką - manifestujący doświadczenie pojedynczych trwałości, współczujący z ruchem i w ruchu, określony antyanalitycznie we własnym nieokreślenia potrzebującym wszystkim. Takie rzeczy można tu spotkać po drodze, na zakręcie słowa i sensu. Skutecznie utrudnia to podstarzały przekład, natomiast jest on do intelektualnego przejścia. I przefiltrowania przez własną intuicję, nie wykrawając z tej książki żadnych zbędnych mikrocałości.

[Aung Sett Kyaw Min · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 50 pages or so Bergson introduces and clarifies the notions of real time (duration) and abstract time, real and abstract unity and multiplicities, most importantly, that of intuition (absolute) versus intellect (relative).
Real time, along with real movement, is internal, continous and whose nature is privy to the force of intuition.
It is anterior to symbolic/conceptual thinking employed in the natural and practical sciences and grounds the latter.
Therefore, "Intellectual sympathy" with the object (intuition) can produce symbolic translations and concepts but you cannot never fully derive the former from a series of infinite conceptual approximations.
Our concepts must be fluid, sinous but clinically precise enough to illuminate a specific problematics which is given by the force intuition.
Concepts should be proliferated as much as possible if only to castrate the possibility of any concept from becoming a despotic signifier.
This essay makes for a light but rich reading.
While Bergson time and time again affirms the poverty of intellect in penetrating into the real as such, I noticed that he starts vacillating a bit towards the very end.
For example, is intuition what determines in the last instance the empirical cognition of our sciences, or is there a sort of reciprocal relationship between the two?
This interprative question arises from the fact that intuitution as "integral experience" can understood in at least the following two senses
(1) an emergent metaphysics that is grounded in but also transcending the integration of the sum total of empirical cognition and symbol-laden points of views (translations)
(2) a metaphysics that is the theoretically possible product of the addition of all translations

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bergson, with his intuition and metaphysics, tried to overcome Kant's program and the thing-in-itself. It seems to me that he got a few things right, but overall Kant with his phenomenology and thing-in-itself still stands.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

So he’s a Buddhist that did the Vipassana meditation course right?
Short and sweet and very easy to read. As all essays should strive to be! Highly recommend!

[Farhan Khodaee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short essay from Bergson is a must for any serious student of science and philosophy. Bergson describes his general approach to metaphysics, rendering the reading of his other works extremely more intelligible. He distinguishes fundamentally between philosophy and science, essentially demystifies the work of philosophers:
"But metaphysics, which aims at no application, can and usually must abstain from converting intuition into symbols."

and that of scientists:
"Positive science works then above all with symbols."

He invites the reader to rely on intuition - intellectual sympathy - to grasp the mobile reality.

[Otto Lehto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have philosophers and scientists neglected to study the movement of reality that cannot be captured in concepts? Have they forgotten about the original process of change and unfolding that is life and experience itself? I have major disagreements with Bergson's methodology here since I think that he is engaged in an ultimately self-defeating project where he attempts to talk in words about something that he himself acknowledges cannot, in principle, be put into words. But his philosophical style is original, mesmerizing, and energizing. No wonder that it has inspired countless philosophers, scientists, and artists.

This short book is a pithy introduction to its basic arguments. It is less intimidating than some of his longer works (which I have yet to tackle). It offers a concise entryway into the basic themes of his metaphysics, namely "duration" and "intuition". Some of Bergson's arguments seem so simple and straightforward as to be unphilosophical. This might explain his popularity (less so these days) outside the academia as well as some of the hostility (less so these days) towards his work inside of it. However, his other arguments are very good indeed. They prowl the highest heights of philosophy. For example, I was dazzled by his lucid analysis of the dialectical movement between the various antipodes of empiricism and rationalism, or between perceived heterogeneity and perceived homogeneity, or between third person perspective and the first person perspective, or between the diversity of multitude and the plenitude of unity, as revealed in reflective introspection.

Reading Bergson feels like watching a brilliantly edited and illuminated piece of film. This makes sense given that cinema was a medium, and a process, very dear to Bergson's heart. Bergson is the director of brilliant concepts and clear images that leave an impression on the reader much like a cinematographer impresses a sense of continuous flow on the viewer by flashing a series of 24 images per second in front of your eyes. In both cases, the sense of "pure duration" is something of an illusion but nonetheless powerful and meaningful. Philosophically, I do not think that he manages to provide a workable phenomenology or methodology for future philosophy but this is only because his work is too impressionistic (or expressionistic) and the field of pure metaphysics since Kant is too barren a ground for vital energies. However, his capacity to paint beautiful shapes on the canvas of philosophy, art, and psychology has left a rich and long lasting legacy. I highly recommend buying a ticket to the movie. When Bergson is playing you will enjoy the ride.

[Zay Min Htut Aung]

Such a difficult of the so-called 'Metaphysics/Takka Bayda' and therefore I don't need to rate any stars about this. I think for all of my ideas of the whole world, I've no enough ideas in knowing 'Metaphysics' T_T
I need some easy way in studying that. :v
Suggest me any if you know.

[belisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

uzay nefis, zaman güzeldi ama madde beni sıkıntıdan öldürmeye çalıştı...

[Caroline Loftus · Rating 5 out of 5]

comfy and concise. very readable intro to bergson.

[r0b · Rating 4 out of 5]

And now...I can see why I enjoyed it so much a couple of decades ago...limpid genius...and the extra bonus of an excellent introduction by Professor Goudge (in my edition anyways)

Twenty years ago roughly....can’t say I remember much of it except I enjoyed it! Therefore, re-reading...

[Ella McLaughlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been reading so much metaphysics lately that it’s mind-numbing, but this was actually very interesting and had actual new ideas than what I’ve read before. Sometimes it feels like he dips into the spooky waters of dualism, but sometimes his ideas are kinda sick? I might be down with Bergson. I’ll ruminate.

[T · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe it's expected that one should first read Bergson's "Matter and Memory" before reading this latter essay, though I think having arrived at this book through reading H. Stuart Hughes' "Consciousness and Society," it's safe to say that I have a decent understanding of Bergson's project as a whole, even without the details of its development.

I found this book on the whole incredibly disappointing, partially because its discussion of "Intuition" interested me from a Kantian point of view (in light of Kant's discussions of the beautiful, the sublime, and the "genius"), but also from an interest in German aesthetics in general. Of course, this book is working from a different point of view, in a different tradition (though with overlap), but it nevertheless bites off more than it can chew in its ambition.

For starters, it seems like the entirety of this essay could be rewritten to fit into 5-10 pages. It is tirelessly repetitive and vague in its definition of "intuition" and the "intuitive" approach to objects, reality, comprehension, etc. His idea of "intellectual sympathy" as well as his advice to "enter" an object are both helpful metaphors in many ways, as they both aid the reader in finding new means to view an object of inquiry. In terms of his metaphors, I would give him more than five stars, but the emptiness of his definitions makes this short work vacuous in the extreme.

One wonders why this work does not simply elaborate upon the pre-Socratic philosophies it so obviously is working with, one wonders why it does not look for other sources (say, Chinese) where the concepts of change and metaphors of "water" abound, and one wonders, especially, where how omitting the German critical tradition after Kant (mostly Hegel) can be excusable, and why he would do so. It is strange that a philosopher so worried about the constant change of motion which our mind presumably is accustomed to ignoring could possibly ignore Hegel's philosophical system. Of course there are a variety of critiques to be added to Hegel's assumptions and system as a whole (especially his resolution and conclusions of many questions), but it is hard to take Bergson seriously with such a massive omission, especially when one sees the hollow result of the work. Lastly, his critique of Kant's system toward the end of the essay is not only (again) vague, but also far too short to be convincing in any way. It also reduces Kant's entire system to one of his books, neglecting his third Critique as well as his massive oeuvre.

Nevertheless, many of the ideas suggested in the work, at least as a starting point, are exceptionally interesting and thought-provoking, so I can't dismiss Bergson entirely without delving further into his work, but this short essay is very disappointing from the point of view of a critique of positivism.

[Rasheed Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

The inner life is all this at once: variety of qualities, continuity of progress, and unity of direction. It cannot be represented by images.

Both prolix and scant at the wrong places.

One moment Henri's giving his fourth example of how words can't accurately capture reality. And then, wham bam, he hits you with

Briefly, the whole Critique of Pure Reason ends in establishing that Platonism, illegitimate if Ideas are things, becomes legitimate if Ideas are relations... (p. 58)

Alright, hold it! Come again?

Of course, Henri falls into the same trap the postmodernists do: trying to deconstruct constructs with constructs.

Some may be puzzled by the paradox of a philosophy which discredits the intellect on the grounds of a theory (biological evolution) which is itself the product of the intellect. And so on. (p. 20)

Um yeah... It's hard convince someone of the importance of empiricism in establishing truth, when your entire work is composed of concepts upon concepts. Maybe there's a reason process philosophy never took off. Here's Plato on Heraclitus.

[Yana · Rating 5 out of 5]

З подивом дізналася про переклад українською цієї праці Берґсона «Вступ до метафізики» паном Євгеном Яноровським. Після цього все думаю, скільки ще перекладацьких таїн містять канадійські архіви.

Щодо самого тексту і ключових поглядів Берґсона, то їх, про мій манер, той же Пруст висвітлив їх у криштальному абсолюті.

[Faith Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tiny brain hates metaphysics.

[Donia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bergson’s attempt to reconstruct my brain chemistry is endearing

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the direction this tiny book takes, but it is too small for any decent presentation of a theory. Bergson, following the phenomenological tradition, goes against all the great teachers of philosophy. He esp pointed out that philosophy should not go from concepts to experience but the other way around, even though it is much more difficult and painful that way.

[Maria Guinnip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Literally what I’ve been saying 🙄

[Malum · Rating 2 out of 5]

Much like Jung, I get more out of someone explaining Bergson than actually reading his work.

[Ceren · Rating 4 out of 5]

İçerik güzeldi ancak çeviride kullanılan bazı kelimeler okumayı zorlaştırıyor,biraz daha sade kelimeler kullanılarak çevrilse daha anlaşılır olur diye düşünüyorum.

[Paweł · Rating 1 out of 5]

Jakiś skostniały stary przekład, który mnie tylko zmęczył. Nudna polemika z Kantem i walka z cieniem w postaci antynomii metafizyki, będącej yin bądź yang dla nauki. (To metafora, ale i tak wtf?). To raczej szorstkie wejście w dorobek Bergsona.
I ten przekład, jak jakimś lwowskim zaśpiewem, dla fanów filmów z cyklu W Starym Kinie. Może warto ogarnąć współczesnego tłumacza na te max 70 stron, czy jakiś LLM niech to przełoży, skoro kasy nie ma.

[Kyle van Oosterum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Henri Bergson noted quite amazingly that our perception of reality is like a translation of an old text, which despite having some accuracy is nevertheless an imitation of an absolute and immobile reality. He challenged the way that we see reality by pointing us to trivial objects and their position in space.

Consider a four-legged table. From one point of view it appears to have four legs but from another its legs seem to disappear, but we know that reaching such a conclusion would be preposterous. Thus these points of view, are but translations of reality to make it easier for us to grasp, but never entirely understand

Bergson calls these translations, concepts. Concepts are but symbols for reality and not reality itself. Think of our table again. It wouldn’t be strange to assume that the ‘brownness' of our four-legged table could also be the ‘brownness’ of a wall, or the ‘brownness’ of a bridge. So the problem with concepts is as follows: “ [Concept] It can only symbolise a particular property by making it common to an infinity of things. It therefore more or less deforms the property by the extension which it gives to it.” They present us with a shadow of reality alone.

What Bergson brings to the table are the unique ideas of duration and intuition. Duration is this continual process, like the thread of a ball of yarn rolling and collecting and assimilating everything into itself. “Our past follows us, it swells incessantly with the present that it picks up on its way.” This was a rather stunning blow to empiricism with its views of a “succession of states” or “strings of perception”. Duration is simultaneously an “advancing unity” and a “multiplicity of expanding states”. Bergson draws this picture more accurately by asking us to consider something with which are quite familiar, memory. Instead of reaching into a vault to pick up some memory, we vicariously experience the effects of this memory years after that event might have happened. It rolls into this ball of yarn, which we may now call memory, creating a unity and at the same time multiplying all the experiences which shall be tinged by the past memories. Damn.

Intuition, is what he calls an “intellectual sympathy” by which one may expressly enter an object to try to express what is inexpressible about it. Most of our analysis is based on things immobile, but our intuition operates on something mobile, namely this duration we spoke of earlier. We tend to think that we understand a reality that has already been manufactured, but reality is constantly changing. Everything is in the making and only changing things exist. It is indeed quite difficult to swim against this ideological current, which is why “to philosophise is to invert the habitual direction of the work of thought.”

Quite frankly, I still don’t completely understand Bergson, but I guess his idea can be reduced to some sort of philosophical calculus, we are trying to investigate subtle “qualitative differentiations and integrations” in reality. It’s kind of a slap in the face to science, really. Science becomes Sisyphean in nature, ultimately relative to one point in time since everything is in flux.

[Fiona · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where did mathematics come from before they were known? How were the movement of earth and stars discovered? How the principles of modern science?

In this introduction, Henri Bergson reveals the faculty of logic and of intuition and how they work together. What it means to become the knowledge of a thing, but how thought is only able to sketch and abstract this experienced knowledge into static concepts, which are like the coordinates of a position of a planet on its way around the sun, something that, if put together with more coordinates of this same movement, become a chain, a concept of one point put atop the concept of the other point, on and on, until the idea of movement becomes visible to the mind, but the movement itself is never grasped in any of these notations.

Not only was this demonstration and illustration of human thinking very enlightening, putting into discourse different critiques upon sciences and metaphysics, it also explained how, since humankind once stood without any ready-made concepts developed by their ancestors, had to use their intuition and dive into nature's metaphysical principles itself to bring to the surface, into the light, those applicable methods which today define all of our scientific arts and technologies. I can't say what his ultimate goal of this composition was, but I find it served into making very clear how anyone aspiring to become great in this or that science, ought to make an effort of becoming one with the intuitive ideas of the art along with studying its methods.

On the downside, it is one continuous stream of thought and hardly structured, and therefore quite challenging to read carefully and with a full grasp of all the details. Nevertheless, I'd recommend the book to anyone interested into the origin of sciences, the nature of metaphysics and top-down view of modern philosophies.

[Bertrand · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bergson's understanding of philosophy is quite unique, or at least make for a landmark in the development of modern(ist) thought in the Western world - arguing, in this book in particular, for an irrational understanding of the human mind, but from the standpoint of a rationalist, scientific tradition, a lot of his life endeavor seems concerned with reducing - and transcending - the chasm between rationalism and empiricism. Indeed what grabs my attention in his thought, and is exemplified in this text (the first one of his I read) is a concern, near mystical, with synthesis and it's shortcomings, and with most famously with intuition as it's transcending solution.
It is also a surprisingly easy read - Unlike a lot of philosophy, and of metaphysics in particular, Bergson's make use of a terminology that is clear and straightforward, taking his time to exemplify and develop his concepts. Anyone who put their mind to the book should manage to make sense out of it, and should be able to read the whole text in half a day.

[Wayne Craske · Rating 5 out of 5]

This lengthy essay, something of a hinge in Bergson's thought connecting his earlier work with his later, is one of the most fascinating pieces of philosophy I've ever read.
Lucid to the point of simplicity, it nevertheless communicates a plethora of complex ideas such that I'm going to be picking through them for a fairly long time. One of the basic ideas that he presents, a distinction between analysis and intuition, is presented from the first page, and, he argues later, could lead to a reconciliation of the various schools of philosophy. Analysis, he argues, is the tool we use to manage in life: purely a survival skill, dealing in concepts, snap-shots: dead data a mile away from the intuition that gave them birth. This initiation apprehends the 'thing' from the inside, not from any point of view, and is attainable only through certain efforts. This intuition is the basis of metaphysics: a science, but different in kind from material sciences which deal in concepts.
I recommend this book to all interested in philosophy and its potential place in human life.

[Sananab · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have no idea how my toaster works, but I can't deny that it always gives me the same solid results: hot bread. I could spend dozens of pages explaining how I have no way of rationalizing the existence of the toasting mechanism and thus the toaster is fundamentally flawed, but that doesn't make the bread any less hot.

Bergson's a bit too bong-hittish for my tastes. He builds a house of cards on rhetoric and navel-gazing, and then hand-waves away a few thousand years of interesting and useful knowledge. That's the kind of thing lazy people do to neg people who try to accomplish things. Philosophy at its most self-indulgent.