Bergson as Writer

Literature in Philosophy

Bruno Clément (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

248 Seiten

2026
Edinburgh University Press (Verlag)
978-1-3995-4045-2 (ISBN)

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Examines the importance of expression to the production of meaning in the philosophy of Bergson.

Henri Bergson was awarded The Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927. However, literary writers do not consider him — and in fact never cite him — as one of their own. Bruno Clément reads Henri Bergson as a writer whose thought is inseparable from a tireless reflection on the question of his written expression.

Clément adds new insights into Bergson’s philosophical achievements through an analysis of the literary techniques he develops to express his theoretical insights. This close analysis of rhetorical technique analyses the effect on Bergson’s philosophical texts. Reading all of Bergson’s philosophical texts with the tools of literature, to systematically consider the theoretical consequences, he reveals that Bergson was not only a philosopher but a highly skilled and innovative writer.

Bruno Clément is Emeritus Professor of Literature, Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis and is former President of the International College of Philosophy (2004-2007). He is a well-known literary critic and theorist who studies the links between literature and philosophy. He has contributed to Journal of Beckett Studies and The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf. He is the author of many books in French including L’Œuvre sans qualités, rhétorique de Samuel Beckett, préface de Michel Deguy ("Logique de la figure"), 442 p., Paris, Seuil, 1994 (traduction en espagnol en cours); Le Lecteur et son modèle, coll. "Écriture", 272 p., P.U.F., 1999; La Tragédie classique, Seuil, "Mémo" 100 p., 1999 [ce livre a été traduit en roumain (2000) et en coréen (2002)]; L’Invention du commentaire, Augustin, Jacques Derrida, 175 p., P.U.F., 2000; Le Récit de la méthode, Seuil (collection Poétique »), 2005; La Voix verticale – essai sur la prosopopée, Belin (« L’extrême contemporain »); Henri Bergson, Prix nobel de littérature, Lagrasse, Verdier, 2021. Anthony Uhlmann is Distinguished Professor in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University, Australia. He is the author of Beckett and Poststructuralism (Cambridge University Press, 1999), Samuel Beckett and the Philosophical Image (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Thinking in Literature: Joyce, Woolf, Nabokov (Bloomsbury, 2011), J. M. Coetzee, Truth, Meaning, Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2020). He was the Managing Editor of the Journal of Beckett Studies (Edinburgh University Press). He has translated a number of essays from French into English, including, The Exhausted by Gilles Deleuze.

Translator’s Introduction
List of Abbreviations

1. ’In other words…’

An Author’s Preface
How to Write
The Distinction of a Poet
Penetrating the Veil of Words
Thought and Language
Commentary on Bergson

Philosophy and Literature
The Form of Discourse
In Praise of Approximation
Of the Proper, Of the Image; Of the Figurative, Of the Concept
Forget Words

Three Figures
Zigzag
Giving Voice
To Fabulate
Thinking Through the Imagination

The Words of Philosophy, the Words of Life
Language and Reason
On Metaphor
Language and Continuity
Infinite Correction
Intuition, Image, Concept

Bergson’s Languages
Language and Music
Care of the Symbol
Bilingual Bergson
Reading Bergson

2. ’… in the same direction as art’

Art and Thought
The Measurable and the Unpredictable
Art and Science
Art is an Anti-Concept
A Question of Vision

Art and Philosophy
The Singular, the Universal
The Life and The Work
The Philosopher and his Model

To Philosophize as an Artist
Art, Empathy; Metaphysics, Sympathy
Photography and Translation
On Literary Composition

‘We artists…’
The Essence of Art
Bergson Translator
Bergson Musician

3. ’An Effective Fiction’

On the Imagination in Philosophy
The Imagination from a Semantic Point of View...
The Temptation of Fancy
The Imagination, from an Anthropological Point of View
Fancy and Will

Generalized Invention
Circumstance is a Lure
Fiction is a Counter-Power
Evolution is a Fable

Bergson’s Ghost Philosophy
London, just after Bologna
The ‘Ghosts which Surround Us’ and the ‘Phantasms of the Living’
‘The Little Girl and the Learned Doctor’, Fable
The Creatures of Dream
‘... a dream I indulge in at times...’
‘... perhaps even death’

Literature and Philosophy mixed
The Mediating Figure [image] in the Carpet
Henri, Henry and William
Philosophy and Philosophy
Philosophy and Literature
Literature and Literature

Critique of the Imagination, Critique of Bergson

4. '… to transfer thought, still living, into the soul of another'

Coincidences
Teaching
In Praise of the Hand
Jeanne
Teaching literature
To Hell with Meaning, to Hell with Doctrine

‘The Spirt of Form’
To Teach Philosophy is to Philosophize
To Philosophize is to Teach the History of Philosophy
Time and Narrative

Bergson, Among Many Others
For a Written Philosophy, Despite Everything (Plato)
The Textual Aporias of Pure Reason (Kant)

‘Words, words, words…’
Thought is Circumstantial...
... figural…
... and textual

Works Cited

Erscheint lt. Verlag	30.6.2026
Übersetzer	Anthony Uhlmann
Verlagsort	Edinburgh
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Metaphysik / Ontologie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Philosophie der Neuzeit
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	1-3995-4045-9 / 1399540459
ISBN-13	978-1-3995-4045-2 / 9781399540452
Zustand	Neuware