Content of the Bergsonian Intuition

Abstract

Such was apparently the case with Bergson’s own intellectual development. According to his own admission, an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy came to his mind when he was reading Herbert Spencer’s First Principles, whose author he at first sincerely admired. This original feeling of inadequacy soon took a more precise form: the awareness of the reality of time contrasting with the apparent superfluity of time in the mechanistic and deterministic scheme. The awareness of this contrast became a source of the Bergsonian philosophy, its “dynamical scheme” (“le schéma dynamique”) out of which all main trends of his thought unfolded, including his philosophy of physics. The assertion of the reality of succession is an element common both to Bergson’s psychology and to his philosophy of nature.