The New Bergson

At the threshold of the twentieth century, Bergson reset the agenda for philosophy and its relationship with science, art and even life itself. Concerned with both examining and extolling the phenomena of time, change, and difference, he was at one point held as both 'the greatest thinker in the world' and 'the most dangerous man in the world'. Yet the impact of his ideas was so all-pervasive amongst art artists, philosophers and politicians alike, that by the end of the First World War it had become impossibly diffuse. In a manner imitating his own cult of change, the Bergsonian school departed from the scene almost as quickly as it had arrived. As part of a current resurgence of interest in Bergson, both in Europe and in North America, this collection of essays addresses the significance of his philosophical legacy for contemporary thought. It is not intended as an historical investigation, but as a truly new reading of Bergson; his work is examined in terms set by modern debates in metaphysics, relativity theory, evolutionary theory, philosophy of mind, environmentalism and aesthetics. Written in an accessible manner by an international team of academics, it will prove rewarding to teachers and students in a multiplicity of disciplines.

CONTENTS:
Introduction
Part I History and Method
# 1. Philo, Spinoza, Bergson: The rise of an ecological age - Richard A. Cohan
# 2. Method in Philosophy - Garrett Barden
Part II Ontology
# 3. Bergson's Conception of Difference - Gilles Deleuze
# 4. Beneath Relativity: Bergson and Bohm on absolute time - Timothy S. Murphy
Part III Mind
# 5. A Letter from Bergson to Dewey
# 6. Matter and memory on mind and body: final statements and new perspectives - Frédéric Worms
# 7. Bergson: The keyboards of forgetting - Marie Cariou
# 8. Bergson's concept of a person - Eric Matthews
# 9. Magic F. C. T. Moore
Part IV Life
# 10. Bergson and creative evolution/Involution: Exposing the transcendental illusion of organismic life - Keith Ansell Pearson
# 11. Bergson and the war against nature P. A. Y. Gunter
# Part V Art
# 12. The rhythms of duration: Bergson and the Art of Matisse Mark Antliff
# 13. Bergson and cinema: Friends or foes? Paul Douglas