The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics

· Courier Corporation
Ebook
240
Pages
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About this ebook

The final published book by Nobel Prize-winning author and philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941), La pensée et le mouvant (translated here as The Creative Mind), is a masterly autobiography of his philosophical method. Through essays and lectures written between 1903 and 1923, Bergson retraces how and why he became a philosopher, and crafts a fascinating critique of philosophy itself. Until it leaves its false paths, he demonstrates, philosophy will remain only a wordy dialectic that surmounts false problems.
With masterful skill and intensity, Bergson shows that metaphysics and science must be rooted in experience for philosophy to become a genuine search for truth. And in the quest for unanswered questions, the spiritual dimension of human life and the importance of intuition must be emphasized. A source of inspiration for physicists as well as philosophers, Bergson's introduction to metaphysics reveals a philosophy that is always on the move, blending man's spiritual drive with his mastery of the material world.

About the author

Born in Paris in 1859 of Jewish parents, Henri Bergson received his education there and subsequently taught at Angers and Clermont-Ferraud before returning to Paris. He was appointed professor of philosophy at the College de France in 1900 and elected a member of the French Academy in 1914. Bergson developed his philosophy by stressing the biological and evolutionary elements involved in thinking, reasoning, and creating. He saw the vitalistic dimension of the human species as being of the greatest importance. Bergson's writings were acclaimed not only in France and throughout the learned world. In 1927 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. In defiance of the Nazis after their conquest of France, Bergson insisted on wearing a yellow star to show his solidarity with other French Jews. Shortly before his death in 1941, Bergson gave up all his positions and renounced his many honors in protest against the discrimination against Jews by the Nazis and the Vichy French regime.

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