Henri Bergson

Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was a French philosopher known for rethinking time, memory, consciousness, and creative change. Matter and Memory connects perception and recollection to the relation between body and mind, resisting a simple division between material and mental life. Creative Evolution develops an account of living change that cannot be reduced to a fixed mechanical plan. Time and Free Will examines duration as lived continuity rather than a sequence of measurable units. Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic studies comedy through social behavior and the intrusion of rigidity into living movement. Dreams offers a shorter route into his thinking about memory and consciousness. Laughter is the most approachable entry for literary readers; Matter and Memory gives the central philosophical challenge, while Creative Evolution displays the breadth and metaphorical energy recognized by the Nobel Prize.