Description
Book SynopsisFor 15 years, Henri Bergson, the most important French philosopher of the early 20th-century, taught at the Collège de France. Speaking without notes, most of his classes are now lost to history, but records of a handful of courses fortuitously survived thanks to stenographic transcripts. Conveying Bergson's very voice, these extraordinary documents are finally presented here in English.The 19041905 lectures are dedicated to the topic of freedom, or as Bergson put it, the evolution of the problem of freedom. Building on the philosophy of freedom from his first book,
Time and Free Will, he proposes that freedom is not only a fundamental human experience but characteristic of all life as such. By retracing how ancient and modern philosophers have dealt with the delicate question of freedom, Bergson demonstrates the necessity, and also the radically new character, of his own theory of freedom.Bergson's lectures are a feast for many audiences. For philosophers, they give a fuller pi
