Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
Henri-Louis Bergsonwas a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that the processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth18 October 1859
CountryFrance
against consciousness earliest fain follows french-scientist infancy join leaning leave portals present
In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fain leave it outside.
action birth cannot centre destined move object
My body, an object destined to move other objects, is, then, a centre of action ; it cannot give birth to a representation.
Sex appeal is the keynote of our civilization.
cure fault french-scientist laughable vanity
The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that is laughable is vanity.
action aspects exactly influence itself lay limits matter measures moment objects occupies organs parts prepare thus virtual
The body, by the place which at each moment it occupies in the universe, indicates the parts and the aspects of matter on which we can lay hold: our perception, which exactly measures our virtual action on things, thus limits itself to the objects which actually influence our organs and prepare our movements.
act means perceive perception
To perceive means to immobilize. We seize, in the act of perception, something which outruns perception itself.
call external french-scientist images transmit
I see plainly how external images influence the image that I call my body: they transmit movement to it.
art reality order
Art has no other object than to set aside the symbols of practical utility, the generalities that are conventionally and socially accepted, everything in fact which masks reality from us, in order to set us face to face with reality itself.
intelligence tools faculty
In short, intelligence, considered in what seems to be its original feature, is the faculty of manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make tools, and of indefinitely urging the manufacture.
men essence pay
It is of man's essence to create materially and morally, to fabricate things and to fabricate himself. Homo faber is the definition I propose ... Homo faber, Homo sapiens, I pay my respects to both, for they tend to merge.
nature men emotion
The emotion felt by a man in the presence of nature certainly counts for something in the origin of religions.
love divine belonging
... divine love is not something belonging to God: it is God Himself.
imagination vision perception
You will obtain a vision of matter that is perhaps fatiguing for your imagination, but pure and stripped of what the requirements of life make you add to it in external perception.
house perception body
When we make the cerebral state the beginning of an action, and in no sense the condition of a perception, we place the perceived images of things outside the image of our body, and thus replace perception within the things themselves.