Question About a year and a half ago I read Henri Bergson's work Matter and Memory for one of my philosophy classes. I have begun to reread the his work and can not help but wonder: what is M. Bergson's place in the history of philosophy? I find many of his arguments to be convincing, but where do he, and his arguments, stand after the philosophical works that the analytic tradition produced? I have tried to learn more about M. Bergson as a person and thinker, but I have been unsuccessful in finding anything relevant after the advent of the analytic tradition. I do know that he won the Nobel Prize for literature for his work, Creative Evolution, but then it would seem as though his work became unimportant. So, I guess my general question is: does M. Bergson have any importance to philosophy today, and where does he stand in relation to present-day philosophy and the analytic tradition? Would a philosopher of the analytic tradition today think that M. Bergson's work is not useful to philosophy?

Accepted:

August 23, 2012