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Bergsonism in Five Points

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The philosophy of Henri Bergson, summarized. (I may have done this before but I can't find that post now, so we'll try again.)

  1. Time is real and important: it cannot without loss be treated in Einsteinian fashion as a particular dimension of space;
  2. Because time is real, novelty and free will are also realities: the future contains surprises that could not even in principle have been determined by calculation from the facts existing today;
  3. One must make a sharp distinction between intelligence and intuition. Intelligence is very useful — it is a survival mechanism for humans — but it cannot grasp the essence of reality, the movement of time. Intelligence geometricizes, which is why intelligent people often find themselves denying the first two propositions;
  4. As a philosophy of biology, Bergsonism asserts too that there is something about life that escapes mechanistic formula: that life and its evolution can never be explained as so much organic chemistry. Bergson popularized the expression “elan vital,” or life force.
  5. The human world is dominated by a static morality and static religion which are concerned with social cohesion. But mystics and creative people show us that the static world, though perhaps contentedly cohesive for long intervals, is not enough — it needs to be opened and disturbed at intervals as, fortunately, it is in historical fact
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