A major task of Creative Evolution is to reconcile these two elements. Yet as Bergson brilliantly shows, the intellect’s fragmentary and action- oriented nature, which he likens to the cinematograph, means it alone cannot grasp nature’s creativity and invention over time. Whilst this impulse remains as forms of life diverge and multiply, human life is characterized by a distinctive form of consciousness or intellect. For Bergson, all life emerges from a creative, shared impulse, which he famously terms élan vital and which passes like a current through different organisms and generations over time. This outstanding new translation, the first for over a hundred years, brings one of Bergson’s most important and ambitious works to a new generation of readers.Ī sympathetic though critical reader of Darwin, Bergson argues in Creative Evolution against a mechanistic, reductionist view of evolution.

It is particularly good to see the republication of Mind-Energy, a treasure trove of Bergsonian insights long out of print.' - Professor Pete A.Y.First published in French in 1907, Henri Bergson’s L’évolution créatrice is a scintillating and radical work by one of the great French philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Centennial Series of his works undertaken by Palgrave Macmillan thus comes at an opportune time, making it possible for those interested in Bergson's ideas t have access to newly annotated versions of several of his chief writings, freshly introduced and discussed. 'Long absent from the center of discussion in Western philosophy, Bergson has recently made a reappearance. Keith Ansell Pearson and John Mullarkey have been at the forefront of the new conception of life, therefore no better editors for these volumes could be selected.' - Professor Leonard Lawlor, Department of Philosophy, University of Memphis, USA This is a timely decision since Bergson was the great thinker of life and it seems, nearly one hundred years later, that we find ourselves once again required to conceive life. 'Palgrave Macmillan is to be congratulated for reissuing these classic Bergson texts.

Creative evolution by henri bergson