Thread by @mullasadra

Henri Bergson (1859-1941) and his processual approach to self, matter, creativity, intuition and free will had an influence not just on continental philosophy but also on #existentialism and #personalism in the #Islamicate milieu - a thread on #postcolonial #Bergson 1/

I first came across #Bergson notions of creativity, duration and time in the work of Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) in his Reconstruction (my copy as an undergrad) and Bedil in the Light of Bergson allamaiqbal.com/publications/j… 2/

Years later I came across the work of Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Abdennour Bidar (b. 1971) that indicated the abiding #postcolonial interest in #Bergson #Iqbal and #Lahbabi 3/

The #personalism of the Moroccan thinker Muhammad Aziz Lahbabi (1923-1993) was influenced by #Bergson en.qantara.de/content/mohame… 4/

Lahbabi projects a form of humanism predicated upon the free will of the emergent self drawing on #Bergson notion of #duration within the context of being within the divine realm - a humanism with God 5/

The continental interest in #Bergson grew especially out of #Bergsonism published in 1966 by Gilles #Deleuze (1925/1995) further influenced by the notion of duration and creative movement in his study of cinema 6/

Diagne (b. 1955) shows the influence beyond Europe in the thought of #Iqbal influenced by the notions of duration, time and creative movement for a renewal of Muslim selfhood in the modern age and 7/

In Léopold Senghor (1906-2001) in his use of the notion of élan vital and intuition to understand aesthetics and selfhood in an #African context - in both cases #Bergson essential for understanding these #postcolonial accounts of #selfhood 8/

#Bergson was initially influenced by Herbert Spencer (1829-1903) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) but later submitted two dissertations in 1888 on Aristotle on place and Time and free will to #Paris 9/

In 1896 he published his first major work Matière et mémoire which William James described as a revolution akin to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason; it tries to grapple with the dualism of mind and matter and the way in which consciousness endures over time 10/

Although it failed to obtain him a post at the #Sorbonne his dissertation won him the chair at the Collège de France in ancient philosophy in 1900 - in the same year he published a pioneering study of laughter Le Rire 11/

After transferring to the chair of modern philosophy in 1904 he published Evolution créatrice in 1907 which was translated into English in 1911 and caught the attention of Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) among others and an honorary doctorate in #Oxford 12/

In 1914 he gave the #Gifford lectures at #Edinburgh on the problems of personality that no doubt later influenced #personalism 13/

More honours came with another honorary doctorate from #Cambridge 1920 and the #Nobel prize in literature for 1927 nobelprize.org/prizes/literat… 14/

In 1932 and 1933 he published his last works Les deux sources de la morale et la religion and a collection of essays La pensée et le mouvant 15/

It would be interesting to see if there are traces of his later ideas on mysticism but certainly his earlier notions of free will, creative becoming of the self and duration had a lasting impact in #post colonial #Islamicate contexts 16/

It would be interesting to see what his notion of the free creative self mediating time and matter might mean in our current rather #virtual #covid19 times 17/

The dissertation on #Aristotle was published in Études Bergsoniennes vol 2, 1949 alongside an interesting study by Emile Bréhier on images in #Bergson and #Plotinus

here is a useful bibliography on #Bergson but it does not include the #postcolonial puf.com/sites/default/…

these lectures were published in Études Bergsoniennes 7, 1966 in a special issue of #Bergson in England 13a/