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Philosophy. Nonfiction. HTML: A monumental work by an important modern philosopher, Matter and Memory (1896) represents one of the great inquiries into perception and memory, movement and time, matter and mind. Nobel Prize�??winner Henri Bergson surveys these independent but related spheres, exploring the connection of mind and body to individual freedom of choice. Bergson's efforts to reconcile the facts of biology to a theory of consciousness offered a challenge to the mechanistic view of nature, and his philosophy can be regarded as a forerunner to later developments in relativity theory and conceptions of mental process. His original and innovative views exercised a profound influence on other philosophers �?? including James, Whitehead, and Santayana �?? as well as novelists such as Dos Passos and Proust. Essential to an understanding of Bergson's philosophy and its legacy, this volume appears on the Malaspina Great Books Core Reading List. Essential to an understanding of Bergson's philosophy and its legacy, Matter and Memory is among Dover's Philosophical Classics. A collection of the major works in Western and Eastern philosophy, this new series ranges from ancient Greece to modern times. Its low-priced, high-quality, unabridged editions are ideal for teachers and students as well as for other read… (more)
User reviews
Bergson makes extensive use of the psychopathological literature of his day in his arguments about the nature of memory in relation to the brain (the second chapter of the book). And while there have certainly been enormous advances in neurophysiology since the late 19th century, I don't think that any of them obsolete his conclusions or invalidate the sort of data that he brings to bear.
His physics is more primitive than his psychology, and his repeated use of the word "relative" in the brief physics discussions of the fourth chapter (e.g. 193-196) should not be mistaken for (anachronistic) allusion to Einsteinian relativity. Still, these were points of orientation to connect with the science of the time, and they rest on the surface of the argument, not in its core.
Bergson's grounding of his theory in the bedrock of "images" reminds me of my readings in the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl and his successors, but I found Bergson's work to be clearer and more persuasive. If I were to propose a later thinker who dealt with similar questions in a different yet comparably effective manner, it would have to be Gregory Bateson (in certain essays found in Sacred Unity).
According to a note in Wikipedia, this book was placed on the Catholic Index Librorum Prohibitorum for Bergson's alleged pantheism. I personally can't find an iota of theological opinion in the book; it must have been lumped in with other work of the author.
"Memory is thus the reverberation, in the sphere of consciousness, of the indetermination of our will." (65)
"Memory is, then, in no degree an emanation of matter; on the contrary, matter, as grasped in concrete perception which always occupies a certain duration, is in great part the work of memory." (182)