"Henri Bergson's Philosophy Explored by Will Durant | In-Depth Analysis"
Вставка
- Опубліковано 8 лис 2014
- Embark on a philosophical journey into the innovative ideas of Henri Bergson, the influential French philosopher known for his contributions to the philosophy of time, intuition, and creative evolution. Join the esteemed historian, Will Durant, as he navigates the intricate concepts of Bergson's philosophy in this enlightening video.
⏳ Explore Durant's insightful commentary as he covers the following key aspects of Henri Bergson's philosophy:
Bergson's background and the intellectual climate of late 19th and early 20th-century France
Bergson's concept of "duration" and his critique of traditional mechanistic views of time
The importance of intuition and lived experience in Bergson's philosophy
Bergson's ideas on creativity, change, and the élan vital (vital force)
The influence of Bergson's philosophy on literature, psychology, and modern thought
The ongoing relevance of Bergson's ideas in contemporary philosophy and the sciences
"Materialism is like a grammar that recognizes only nouns."
Meanwhile your life is sustained by materialism.
@@danieljliverslxxxix1164 Your life can be sustained by very little material goods and services, yet we sacrifice everything for things that we don’t need, bought with money that we still don’t have in order to impress people that we don’t really know. Slaves to the instincts and urges of the cavemen on steroids.
And we are just now becoming open minded enough to look at all the raw data we have accumulated and extrapolate and explore what it is suggesting. And some of it goes against the hard-core materialism of the 1800s and up into the mid 1900s. Very interesting times to have a curious mind!
@@danieljliverslxxxix1164 "Meanwhile your communication is sustained by nouns" -- Why not revert to a primeval dialect of pidgin?
The body that is asked to be a god will be attacked, because its nothingness has not been recognized. ²And so it seems to be a thing with power in itself. ³As something, it can be perceived and thought to feel and act, and hold you in its grasp as prisoner to itself. ⁴And it can fail to be what you demanded that it be. ⁵And you will hate it for its littleness, unmindful that the failure does not lie in that it is not more than it should be, but only in your failure to perceive that it is nothing. ⁶Yet its nothingness is your salvation, from which you would flee.
10. As “something” is the body asked to be God’s enemy, replacing what He is with littleness and limit and despair. ²It is His loss you celebrate when you behold the body as a thing you love, or look upon it as a thing you hate.
A Course In Miracles
Will Durant is always clear, coherent, and brilliant in his account of Bergson and Time.
5:12 What beautiful prose
8:05 “In ourselves, memory is the vehicle of duration, the hand-maiden of time; and through it so much of our past is actively retained that rich alternatives present themselves for every situation. As life grows richer in its scope, its heritage, and its memories, the field of choice widens, and at last the variety of possible responses generates consciousness, which is the rehearsal of response. “ Will Durant on the works of Henri Bergson- Page 490 The Story of Philosophy
When about to be executed and asked “if there was a life after this one how would you like it to be?” Le etranger (of Camu) answers: “I’d like it to be one where I could remember this life”. You are your memories.
@@JavierBonillaC wow that's beautiful, thank you for sharing :) memory is so important
@@TheSchwartzable yes, if they gave you another chance at life and you couldn’t remember this life, then it wouldn’t matter to you if you had another life. It’d be like another person having an extra life.
The same critic that Heidegger presents to Hegel can be applied here. Even when we have temporarily as a subjective and qualitative aspect of life, we are still supposing a linearity in time. For Hegel, the past doesn't really "exists", but only as "my past", memories, somewhat like Bergson would have - that's still not enough, because to treat time as "moments" (even if only psychologycal moments) is still to treat time by the means of space.
He takes you deep within yourself, innocence.
A fragment of the mind of God. A._ one pearl of truth and wisdom not many will understand. Be blessed by it. Amazingly beautiful.
Wonderful...!!!!
Thank you!!!!
This is chapter 10 in book The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant || 1926) I was just reading it today.
Great lecture. This is pretty much the first exposure to Bergson I've had. Compelling and beautiful, but full of difficulties, tensions, and ambiguities.Will definitely be looking into Bergson some more.
+Graham Jong-Il I would start with bergsons introduction to metaphysics. Its a fairly short essay, only arond 20 pages, but its like you say, dense and full of subtle characterizations. Ive found some of his other work, like matter and memory, extremely illuminating, but difficult, especially at first, because Bergson is so different to most other philosophers.
62 pages
Great commentary
16:54. Very thought provoking.
I came to this because I've been reading Iain McGilchrist's books on the relationship between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Time seems to be the most elusive subject of description in the human experience, and trying to pin it down with explicit definitions based on rational thought and measurements of the physical world seems inadequate. But we also need to respect the practical value of our rational thought and science. Seems to be a balancing act that tips most people in one direction or the other instead of remaining in a centered inquiring perspective.
Will durant sounds like Mr peterman, Elaine's boss in seinfeld
lol! Close!
The question about then”Elian Vitale” is fantastic. Why does it exist? Where does it come from?
Is there a transcription of this available?
Yes...it is contained in the book titled "The Story of Philosophy", a collection of these essays on Western philosphers done by Durant.
Nice
I hear in the criticism of Bergson here that he is just as misunderstood as before.
That does not come as a surprise, however.
Bergson, despite his originality, was of course himself a child of his time, and I think he with his hope and optimism - and his almost futuristic elan vitale, would had suffered much disappointment, if he has seen how the glorified brainy intellect continues to dominate philosophy, psychology and physics.
Bergson's criticism of darwininsm is on point, but other than that his way of thinking it's still pretty fallible. He's on board with the people who didn't at any moment subscribe to german idealism and, then, is unable to be metaperformatic in his philosophy. He can say that life does not subscribe to the ways of matter, but he explains life in the same way that he explains matter; other than that, I think it's pretty megalomaniac to make a philosophy of the entirety of the course of terrestrial life when, at the same time, you are trying to combat the universalism of old philosophy.
WD, who wrote a popular history if Western philosophy in the 1950s,is quite elegant
in his lectures---a lost art today. But he tends to proceed too fast tofollow.
One must reread the lecture,and then read about intuition. I think the French
anthropologist T deChardin was influenced by him .Vive la France..
I meant to say about Durant--not elegant, but eloquent and pedantic. He was not writing for Facebook or Twitter generation, but serious scholarship. --HW (02/16).
WDs romance with Catholic religion.
Stimulating short presentation. Made me want to get into his work.
Pedro Silva Jacques maritains book on Bergson is one of the best around, check it out if you’re looking for more material
Life is all there is. What appears as death is in Reality an evolutionary phase transition or upgrade of Life Eternal.
27. What Is Death?
1. Death is the central dream from which all illusions stem. ²Is it not madness to think of life as being born, aging, losing vitality, and dying in the end? ³We have asked this question before, but now we need to consider it more carefully. ⁴It is the one fixed, unchangeable belief of the world that all things in it are born only to die. ⁵This is regarded as “the way of nature,” not to be raised to question, but to be accepted as the “natural” law of life. ⁶The cyclical, the changing and unsure; the undependable and the unsteady, waxing and waning in a certain way upon a certain path,-all this is taken as the Will of God. ⁷And no one asks if a benign Creator could will this.
2. In this perception of the universe as God created it, it would be impossible to think of Him as loving. ²For who has decreed that all things pass away, ending in dust and disappointment and despair, can but be feared. ³He holds your little life in his hand but by a thread, ready to break it off without regret or care, perhaps today. ⁴Or if he waits, yet is the ending certain. ⁵Who loves such a god knows not of love, because he has denied that life is real. ⁶Death has become life’s symbol. ⁷His world is now a battleground, where contradiction reigns and opposites make endless war. ⁸Where there is death is peace impossible.
3. Death is the symbol of the fear of God. ²His Love is blotted out in the idea, which holds it from awareness like a shield held up to obscure the sun. ³The grimness of the symbol is enough to show it cannot coexist with God. ⁴It holds an image of the Son of God in which he is “laid to rest” in devastation’s arms, where worms wait to greet him and to last a little while by his destruction. ⁵Yet the worms as well are doomed to be destroyed as certainly. ⁶And so do all things live because of death. ⁷Devouring is nature’s “law of life.” ⁸God is insane, and fear alone is real.
4. The curious belief that there is part of dying things that may go on apart from what will die, does not proclaim a loving God nor re-establish any grounds for trust. ²If death is real for anything, there is no life. ³Death denies life. ⁴But if there is reality in life, death is denied. ⁵No compromise in this is possible. ⁶There is either a god of fear or One of Love. ⁷The world attempts a thousand compromises, and will attempt a thousand more. ⁸Not one can be acceptable to God’s teachers, because not one could be acceptable to God. ⁹He did not make death because He did not make fear. ¹⁰Both are equally meaningless to Him.
5. The “reality” of death is firmly rooted in the belief that God’s Son is a body. ²And if God created bodies, death would indeed be real. ³But God would not be loving. ⁴There is no point at which the contrast between the perception of the real world and that of the world of illusions becomes more sharply evident. ⁵Death is indeed the death of God, if He is Love. ⁶And now His Own creation must stand in fear of Him. ⁷He is not Father, but destroyer. ⁸He is not Creator, but avenger. ⁹Terrible His Thoughts and fearful His image. ¹⁰To look on His creations is to die.
6. “And the last to be overcome will be death.” ²Of course! ³Without the idea of death there is no world. ⁴All dreams will end with this one. ⁵This is salvation’s final goal; the end of all illusions. ⁶And in death are all illusions born. ⁷What can be born of death and still have life? ⁸But what is born of God and still can die? ⁹The inconsistencies, the compromises and the rituals the world fosters in its vain attempts to cling to death and yet to think love real are mindless magic, ineffectual and meaningless. ¹⁰God is, and in Him all created things must be eternal. ¹¹Do you not see that otherwise He has an opposite, and fear would be as real as love?
7. Teacher of God, your one assignment could be stated thus: Accept no compromise in which death plays a part. ²Do not believe in cruelty, nor let attack conceal the truth from you. ³What seems to die has but been misperceived and carried to illusion. ⁴Now it becomes your task to let the illusion be carried to the truth. ⁵Be steadfast but in this; be not deceived by the “reality” of any changing form. ⁶Truth neither moves nor wavers nor sinks down to death and dissolution. ⁷And what is the end of death? ⁸Nothing but this; the realization that the Son of God is guiltless now and forever. ⁹Nothing but this. ¹⁰But do not let yourself forget it is not less than this.
A Course In Miracles
Ten thousand years do a moment make for the favoured ones suckled in the milk of the absolute beyond but when the knowledge is caught. in the power nature that is relative here half a second tenthousand years long would seem
by Narayana guru
This is a wonderful lecture: tremendously clear and comprehensive. But it does veer off into anti-semitism at one point (around 35:20) and the criticism portion, while somewhat valid, is a bit dusty.
20:00
26:00
ף
This is helping me understand being and nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre a lot better.
And your thoughts? Are you an existentialist or do you find it a futile attempt at guilding the lilly?
@@DurantandFriends Definitely Existentialist. The mere fact that we can conceive of objects that have a essence, much less use them basically every moment of our lives, demonstrates that we can produce essence.
@@asoulist4829I'll agree with that.
can't understand this video, tough terms are used
Burgson... "the intellect is a dream... just act without thinking... pure intuition is the key..." a fanciful poet... but I wouldn't be quick to subscribe to his philosophy
Well, actually no. Henri Bergson's main line of conduct is "Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought". The reasonable man is a balance between nostalgia and impulsiveness.
"Nebulae composing tragedies", etc. Speaking of cloudy thinking... perhaps the author believes that Shakespeare, or Earth, is not a part of a galaxy!
+José Angel García Landa I think the point is that it's quite quite a distance between the big bang and Shakespeare's quiet contemplations.
@@shaunsamuals9366 Perhaps the author meant that within the nebulae, human creativity existed in seed form, or another metaphorical phrase in an attempt to explain what would not be explainable in concrete terms. He was criticized for this ability which earned him a Nobel Prize in Literature.
@@clairebennett7831 Claire Bennett but Peirce did it better using exact terms. If you can't explain it then you don't have a clear conception of it. Beautiful rhetoric really helped bergsons popularity but its just bedazzlement to counterbalance the nullity of his philosophy. Not to be too disparaging, even weak metaphysical garbage can contain the germs of fruitful understanding. Bergson is still very worthwhile but you need to sacrifice alot of his thought to use his concept of animated force practically.
Darwin, Freud, Pasteur... All propped up by the establishment.
your voice is inappropriate for this type of lectures, especially when adopting the tongue of Bergson.
The most appropriate way to speak Bergson is by singing and chanting, poetry maybe.
just try for a moment to add to his words some kind of a musical rhythm, put some tones withing the words. you will get out with a musical philosophy (that would be able to push us out of our materialistic prison) that would please Bergson himself.
your statement is subjectivity presented as objectivity. Grover Gardner to me is an excellent voice to present Durant's writing on Bergson. Maybe your problem is with Durant, not the voice of the narrator?
That would be interesting if anyone tried, sort of a higher level, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."
decided to thumb down cause Darwinism is best..