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152-621: Henri-Louis Bergson ( French: [bɛʁksɔn] ; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopher who was influential in the traditions of analytic philosophy and continental philosophy , especially during the first half of the 20th century until the Second World War , but also after 1966 when Gilles Deleuze published Le Bergsonisme . Bergson is known for his arguments that processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality. Bergson

304-437: A foreign language usually include study of important works of the literature in that language, as well as the language itself. In everyday language, law refers to a rule that is enforced by a governing institution, as opposed to a moral or ethical rule that is not subject to formal enforcement. The study of law can be seen as either a social science or a humanities discipline, depending on one's perspective. Some see it as

456-499: A neo-Hegelian movement, as taught by philosophers such as F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) and T. H. Green (1836–1882). Analytic philosophy in the narrower sense of 20th and 21st century anglophone philosophy is usually thought to begin with Cambridge philosophers Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore's rejection of Hegelianism for being obscure; or the "revolt against idealism"—see for example Moore's " A Defence of Common Sense ". Russell summed up Moore's influence: "G. E. Moore...took

608-448: A criticism of Russell's theory of descriptions explained in the latter's famous "On Denoting" article. In his book Individuals (1959), Strawson examines our conceptions of basic particulars . Austin, in the posthumously published How to Do Things with Words (1962), emphasized the theory of speech acts and the ability of words to do things (e. g. "I promise") and not just say things. This influenced several fields to undertake what

760-494: A degree in the humanities. By 2010, this figure had risen to 2.6%. This represents a doubling of the number of Americans with degrees in the humanities over a 60-year period. The increase in the number of Americans with humanities degrees is in part due to the overall rise in college enrollment in the United States. In 1940, 4.6% of Americans had a four-year degree, but by 2016, this figure had risen to 33.4%. This means that

912-600: A disciple of Félix Ravaisson and the author of On the Founding of Induction ( Du fondement de l'induction , 1871). Lachelier endeavoured "to substitute everywhere force for inertia, life for death, and liberty for fatalism". According to Louis de Broglie , Time and Free Will "antedates by forty years the ideas of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg on the physical interpretation of wave mechanics." Bergson settled again in Paris in 1888, and after teaching for some months at

1064-650: A founder of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn , and the couple later relocated to Paris. Bergson attended the Lycée Fontanes (known as the Lycée Condorcet 1870–1874 and 1883–present) in Paris from 1868 to 1878. He had previously received a Jewish religious education, but lost his faith between the ages of 14 and 16. According to Hude (1990), this moral crisis is tied to his discovery of

1216-639: A great future; it breaks through old frameworks and brings things to a solution from which new crystallizations can be reached. The most noteworthy tributes James paid to Bergson come in the Hibbert Lectures (A Pluralistic Universe), which James gave at Manchester College, Oxford , shortly after meeting Bergson in London. He remarks on the encouragement he gained from Bergson's thought, and refers to his confidence in being "able to lean on Bergson's authority". Bergson's influence had led James "to renounce

1368-400: A matter of faith, Bergson attempted to redefine the modern conceptions of time, space, and causality in his concept of Duration , making room for a tangible marriage of free will with causality. Seeing Duration as a mobile and fluid concept, Bergson argued that one cannot understand Duration through "immobile" analysis, but only through experiential, first-person intuition . Bergson considers

1520-643: A member of the Académie française . He was also made President of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques and became Officier de la Légion d'honneur and Officier de l'Instruction publique. Bergson found disciples of many types. In France movements such as neo-Catholicism and Modernism on the one hand and syndicalism on the other endeavoured to absorb and appropriate for their own ends some of his central ideas. The continental organ of socialist and syndicalist theory, Le Mouvement socialiste , portrayed

1672-516: A method Russell thought could expose the underlying structure of philosophical problems. Logical form would be made clear by syntax . For example, the English word "is" has three distinct meanings, which predicate logic can express as follows: From about 1910 to 1930, analytic philosophers like Frege, Russell, Moore, and Russell's student Ludwig Wittgenstein emphasized creating an ideal language for philosophical analysis, which would be free from

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1824-840: A much greater range of sentences to be parsed into logical form than was possible using the ancient Aristotelian logic . An example of this is the problem of multiple generality . Neo-Kantianism dominated the late 19th century in German philosophy. Edmund Husserl's 1891 book Philosophie der Arithmetik argued that the concept of the cardinal number derived from psychical acts of grouping objects and counting them. In contrast to this " psychologism ", Frege in The Foundations of Arithmetic (1884) and The Basic Laws of Arithmetic (German: Grundgesetze der Arithmetik , 1893–1903), argued similarly to Plato or Bolzano that mathematics and logic have their own public objects, independent of

1976-463: A mutual contempt for one another, the former looking down on the latter as unscientific, the latter regarding the former as philistine . […] The difference comes down to the fact that social science really wants to be predictive, meaning that man is predictable, while the humanities say that he is not. For many decades, there has been a growing public perception that a humanities education inadequately prepares graduates for employment. The common belief

2128-433: A particular path. In the liberal arts tradition, musicology is also used to broaden skills of non-musicians by teaching skills, including concentration and listening. Theatre (or theater) (Greek "theatron", θέατρον ) is the branch of the performing arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience using combinations of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound and spectacle — indeed any one or more elements of

2280-514: A periodical of the poilus , Le Bulletin des Armées de la République Française . A presidential address, "The Meaning of the War", was delivered in December 1914 to the Académie des sciences morales et politiques. Bergson contributed also to the publication arranged by The Daily Telegraph in honour of King Albert I of Belgium , King Albert's Book (Christmas, 1914). In 1915, he was succeeded in

2432-456: A philosopher specializing in the history of philosophy , in particular Greek and Roman philosophy. He also most certainly had read, apart from Darwin, Haeckel , from whom he retained his idea of a unity of life and of the ecological solidarity between all living beings, as well as Hugo de Vries , from whom he quoted his mutation theory of evolution (which he opposed, preferring Darwin's gradualism). He also quoted Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard ,

2584-580: A real, non-mental intentional object, which the thinking is directed at or "about". Meinong is known for his unique ontology of real nonexistent objects as a solution to the problem of empty names . The Graz School followed Meinong. The Polish Lwów–Warsaw school , founded by Kazimierz Twardowski in 1895, grew as an offshoot of the Graz School. It was closely associated with the Warsaw School of Mathematics . Gottlob Frege (1848–1925)

2736-454: A red robe, rather than the modulations of that colour brought about by light, shade and reflection). A characteristic of this style is that the local colour is often defined by an outline (a contemporary equivalent is the cartoon). This is evident in, for example, the art of India, Tibet and Japan. Religious Islamic art forbids iconography, and expresses religious ideas through geometry instead. The physical and rational certainties depicted by

2888-408: A revival in metaphysics . Analytic philosophy is often contrasted with continental philosophy , which was coined as a catch-all term for other methods that were prominent in continental Europe , most notably existentialism , phenomenology , and Hegelianism . There is widespread influence and debate between the analytic and continental traditions; some philosophers see the differences between

3040-437: A social science because of its objective and measurable nature, while others view it as a humanities discipline because of its focus on values and interpretation. Law is not always enforceable, especially in the international relations context. Law has been defined in various ways, such as "a system of rules", "an interpretive concept" for achieving justice, "an authority" to mediate between people's interests, or "the command of

3192-602: A source of reliable benchmarks to guide analysis of the state of the humanities in the United States. The 1980 United States Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities described the humanities in its report "The Humanities in American Life": Through the humanities we reflect on the fundamental question: What does it mean to be human? The humanities offer clues but never a complete answer. They reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual sense of

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3344-575: A sovereign" backed by the threat of punishment. However one likes to think of law, it is a completely central social institution. Legal policy is shaped by the practical application of ideas from many social science and humanities disciplines, including philosophy, history, political science, economics, anthropology, and sociology. Law is politics , because politicians create them. Law is philosophy , because moral and ethical persuasions shape their ideas. Law tells many of history 's stories, because statutes, case law and codifications build up over time. Law

3496-481: A surface by applying pressure from a tool, or moving a tool across a surface. Common tools are graphite pencils , pen and ink , inked brushes , wax color pencils , crayons , charcoals , pastels , and markers . Digital tools that simulate the effects of these are also used. The main techniques used in drawing are: line drawing, hatching , crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling , and blending. A computer aided designer who excels in technical drawing

3648-623: A text subsequently published in La Pensée et le mouvant . He was elected a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1928. After his retirement from the Collège de France, Bergson began to fade into obscurity: he suffered from a degenerative illness (rheumatism, which left him half paralyzed). He completed his new work, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion , which extended his philosophical theories to

3800-441: A theory of meaning as use . It also contains the private language argument and the notion of family resemblance . The other trend was known as " Oxford philosophy", in contrast to earlier analytic Cambridge philosophers (including the early Wittgenstein) who thought philosophers should avoid the deceptive trappings of natural language by constructing ideal languages. Influenced by Moore's Common Sense and what they perceived as

3952-593: A universally accepted definition, but which has variably included all written work; writing that possesses literary merit; and language that emphasizes its own literary features, as opposed to ordinary language . Etymologically the term derives from the Latin word literatura /litteratura which means "writing formed with letters", although some definitions include spoken or sung texts . Literature can be classified as fiction or non-fiction ; poetry or prose . It can be further distinguished according to major forms such as

4104-541: A variety of settings, from small dance studios to large theaters. Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social , cultural , aesthetic , artistic , and moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as Folk dance ) to codified, virtuoso techniques such as ballet . The great traditions in art have a foundation in the art of one of the ancient civilizations, such as Ancient Japan , Greece and Rome , China , India , Greater Nepal , Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica . Ancient Greek art saw

4256-531: A veneration of the human physical form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty and anatomically correct proportions. Ancient Roman art depicted gods as idealized humans, shown with characteristic distinguishing features (e.g., Zeus ' thunderbolt). The emphasis on spiritual and religious themes in Byzantine and Gothic art of the Middle Ages reflected the dominance of

4408-555: A world where irrationality, despair, loneliness, and death are as conspicuous as birth, friendship, hope, and reason. The Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences 2013 report "The Heart of the Matter" supports the notion of a broad " liberal arts education ", which includes study in disciplines from the natural sciences to the arts as well as the humanities. Many colleges provide such an education; some require it. The University of Chicago and Columbia University were among

4560-476: Is a most welcome production and serves to bring together what Bergson wrote on the concept of mental force, and on his view of "tension" and "detension" as applied to the relation of matter and mind. In June 1920, the University of Cambridge honoured him with the degree of Doctor of Letters . In order that he might devote his full-time to the great new work he was preparing on ethics, religion, and sociology,

4712-640: Is also a specialized form of fine art in which the artists perform their work live to an audience. This is called Performance art . Most performance art also involves some form of plastic art, perhaps in the creation of props . Dance was often referred to as a plastic art during the Modern dance era. Musicology as an academic discipline can take a number of different paths, including historical musicology , music literature, ethnomusicology and music theory . Undergraduate music majors generally take courses in all of these areas, while graduate students focus on

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4864-527: Is also economics, because any rule about contract , tort , property law , labour law , company law and many more can have long-lasting effects on how productivity is organised and the distribution of wealth. The noun law derives from the Old English word lagu , meaning something laid down or fixed, and the adjective legal comes from the Latin word LEX . Literature is a term that does not have

5016-529: Is also used to describe methods of non-verbal communication (see body language ) between humans or animals ( bee dance , mating dance), and motion in inanimate objects ( the leaves danced in the wind ). Choreography is the process of creating dances, and the people who create choreography are known as choreographers. Choreographers use movement, music , and other elements to create expressive and artistic dances. They may work alone or with other artists to create new works, and their work can be presented in

5168-558: Is better characterized as Anglo-Austrian rather than the usual Anglo-American. University of Vienna philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano —in Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874) and through the subsequent influence of the School of Brentano and its members, such as Edmund Husserl and Alexius Meinong —gave to analytic philosophy the problem of intentionality or of aboutness. For Brentano, all mental events have

5320-602: Is called a performative turn . In Sense and Sensibilia (1962), Austin criticized sense-data theories. The school known as Australian realism began when John Anderson accepted the Challis Chair of Philosophy at the University of Sydney in 1927. His elder brother was William Anderson, Professor of Philosophy at Auckland University College from 1921 to his death in 1955, who was described as "the most dominant figure in New Zealand philosophy." J. N. Findlay

5472-404: Is commonly regarded as a social science . Based on current knowledge, it seems that all known cultures, both in the past and present, have some form of belief system or religious practice. While there may be isolated individuals or groups who do not practice any form of religion, it is not known if there has ever been a society that was entirely devoid of religious belief. The definition of religion

5624-450: Is contested. While the scientific study of language is known as linguistics and is generally considered a social science , a natural science or a cognitive science , the study of languages is also central to the humanities. A good deal of twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy has been devoted to the analysis of language and to the question of whether, as Wittgenstein claimed, many of our philosophical confusions derive from

5776-475: Is cut or shaved down to the desired form, like stone and wood. In the West, the history of the humanities can be traced to ancient Greece, as the basis of a broad education for citizens. During Roman times, the concept of the seven liberal arts evolved, involving grammar , rhetoric and logic (the trivium ), along with arithmetic , geometry , astronomy and music (the quadrivium ). These subjects formed

5928-403: Is distinguished from other ways of addressing these issues by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument, rather than experiments ( experimental philosophy being an exception). Philosophy used to be a very comprehensive term, including what have subsequently become separate disciplines, such as physics . (As Immanuel Kant noted, "Ancient Greek philosophy

6080-423: Is further characterized by an interest in language and meaning known as the linguistic turn . It has developed several new branches of philosophy and logic, notably philosophy of language , philosophy of mathematics , philosophy of science , modern predicate logic and mathematical logic . The proliferation of analysis in philosophy began around the turn of the 20th century and has been dominant since

6232-511: Is no formalized register of colors. However, the Pantone system is widely used in the printing and design industry to standardize color reproduction. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, for example, collage . This began with cubism and is not painting in strict sense. Some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand , cement , straw or wood for their texture. Examples of these are

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6384-546: Is no longer statistically significant. Humanities graduates can boost their incomes if they obtain advanced or professional degrees. Humanities majors are sought after in many areas of business, specifically for their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. While often considered "soft skills", humanities majors gain skills such as "include persuasive written and oral communication, creative problem-solving, teamwork, decision-making, self-management, and critical analysis". The Humanities Indicators , unveiled in 2009 by

6536-456: Is not universal, and different cultures may have different ideas about what constitutes religion. Religion may be characterized with a community since humans are social animals . Rituals are used to bound the community together. Social animals require rules. Ethics is a requirement of society, but not a requirement of religion. Shinto, Daoism, and other folk or natural religions do not have ethical codes. While some religions do include

6688-415: Is referred to as a draftsman or draughtsman . Literally, painting is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier (or medium ) and a binding agent (a glue ) to a surface (support) such as paper , canvas or a wall. However, when used in an artistic sense, it means the use of this activity in combination with drawing , composition and other aesthetic considerations in order to manifest

6840-415: Is seminal, containing Frege's puzzles and providing a mediated reference theory . His paper " The Thought: A Logical Inquiry " (1918) reflects both his anti-idealism or anti-psychologism and his interest in language. In the paper, he argues for a Platonist account of propositions or thoughts. British philosophy in the 19th century had seen a revival of logic started by Richard Whately , in reaction to

6992-440: Is systematically collected information about the past . When used as the name of a field of study , history refers to the study and interpretation of the record of humans , societies , institutions, and any topic that has changed over time. Traditionally, the study of history has been considered a part of the humanities. In modern academia , history can occasionally be classified as a social science , though this definition

7144-476: Is that graduates from such programs face underemployment and that incomes are too low for a humanities education to be worth the investment. Humanities graduates find employment in a wide variety of management and professional occupations. In Britain, for example, over 11,000 humanities majors found employment in the following occupations: Many humanities graduates may find themselves with no specific career goals upon graduation, which can lead to lower incomes in

7296-404: Is to be the value of a variable ". He also dubbed the problem of nonexistence Plato's beard . Quine sought to naturalize philosophy and saw philosophy as continuous with science, but instead of logical positivism advocated a kind of semantic holism and ontological relativity , which explained that every term in any statement has its meaning contingent on a vast network of knowledge and belief,

7448-515: The Académie française and was a fervent Catholic, extended to revealed truth his conventionalism, leading him to privilege faith, heart and sentiment to dogmas , speculative theology and abstract reasoning. Like Bergson's, his writings were placed on the Index by the Vatican. In 1922, Bergson's book Durée et simultanéité, à propos de la théorie d'Einstein ( Duration and Simultaneity: Bergson and

7600-542: The American Academy of Arts and Sciences , are the first comprehensive compilation of data about the humanities in the United States, providing scholars, policymakers and the public with detailed information on humanities education from primary to higher education, the humanities workforce, humanities funding and research, and public humanities activities. Modeled after the National Science Board's Science and Engineering Indicators, Humanities Indicators are

7752-1058: The Baháʼí Faith . Religions must adapt and change through the generations because they must remain relevant to the adherents. When traditional religions fail to address new concerns, then new religions will emerge. The performing arts differ from the visual arts in that the former uses the artist's own body, face, and presence as a medium, and the latter uses materials such as clay, metal, or paint, which can be molded or transformed to create some art object . Performing arts include acrobatics , busking , comedy , dance , film , magic , music , opera , juggling , marching arts , such as brass bands , and theatre . Artists who participate in these arts in front of an audience are called performers, including actors, comedians , dancers , musicians , and singers . Performing arts are also supported by workers in related fields, such as songwriting and stagecraft . Performers often adapt their appearance , such as with costumes and stage makeup , etc. There

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7904-605: The Creative Evolution . On the death of Gabriel Tarde , the sociologist and philosopher, in 1904, Bergson succeeded him as Chair of Modern Philosophy. From 4 to 8 September of that year, he visited Geneva , attending the Second International Congress of Philosophy, when he lectured on The Mind and Thought: A Philosophical Illusion (Le cerveau et la pensée : une illusion philosophique). An illness prevented his visiting Germany to attend

8056-725: The League of Nations , where he presided from 1920 to 1925 over the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (the ancestor of UNESCO , and which included Einstein and Marie Curie ). While living with his wife and daughter in a modest house in a quiet street near the Porte d'Auteuil in Paris, Bergson won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927 for The Creative Evolution . Because of serious rheumatic ailments , he could not travel to Stockholm, and sent instead

8208-526: The Palais Garnier (the old Paris opera house) in 1859. His father, the composer and pianist Michał Bergson , was of Polish-Jewish background (originally bearing the name Bereksohn ). His great-grandmother, Temerl Bergson , was a well-known patroness and benefactor of Polish Jewry, especially those associated with the Hasidic movement. His mother, Katherine Levison, daughter of a Yorkshire doctor,

8360-487: The Tractatus . The criticisms of Frank P. Ramsey on color and logical form in the Tractatus led to some of Wittgenstein's first doubts with regard to his early philosophy. Philosophers refer to them like two different philosophers: "early Wittgenstein" and "later Wittgenstein". In his later philosophy, Wittgenstein develops the concept of a " language-game " and, rather than his prior picture theory of meaning, advocates

8512-568: The Vichy government. Bergson inclined to convert to Catholicism, writing in his will on 7 February 1937: "My thinking has always brought me nearer to Catholicism, in which I saw the perfect complement to Judaism." Though wishing to convert to Catholicism, as stated in his will, he did not do so in view of the travails inflicted on the Jewish people by the rise of Nazism and antisemitism in Europe in

8664-566: The Western academic tradition, refers to the studies of the cultures of classical antiquity , namely Ancient Greek and Latin and the Ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Classical studies is considered one of the cornerstones of the humanities; however, its popularity declined during the 20th century. Nevertheless, the influence of classical ideas on many humanities disciplines, such as philosophy and literature, remains strong. History

8816-475: The comparative method and comparative research . Other methods used in the humanities include hermeneutics , source criticism , esthetic interpretation , and speculative reason . The word humanities comes from the Renaissance Latin phrase studia humanitatis , which translates to study of humanity . This phrase was used to refer to the study of classical literature and language, which

8968-600: The entry of the United States into the war. He was there when the French Mission under René Viviani paid a visit in April and May 1917 after America's entry into the conflict. Viviani's book La Mission française en Amérique (1917) has a preface by Bergson. Early in 1918, the Académie française received Bergson officially when he took his seat among "The Select Forty" as successor to Emile Ollivier (the author of

9120-691: The municipal college , known as the College Rollin , he received an appointment at the Lycée Henri-Quatre , where he remained for eight years. There, he read Darwin and gave a course on his theories. Although Bergson had previously endorsed Lamarckism and its theory of the heritability of acquired characteristics , he came to prefer Darwin's hypothesis of gradual variation, which were more compatible with his continual vision of life. In 1896, Bergson published his second major work, Matter and Memory . This rather difficult work investigates

9272-425: The novel , short story or drama ; and works are often categorised according to historical periods, or according to their adherence to certain aesthetic features or expectations ( genre ). Philosophy—etymologically, the "love of wisdom"—is generally the study of problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, justification, truth, justice, right and wrong, beauty, validity, mind, and language. Philosophy

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9424-460: The verification principle , according to which every meaningful statement is either analytic or synthetic. The truths of logic and mathematics were tautologies , and those of science were verifiable empirical claims. These two constituted the entire universe of meaningful judgments; anything else was nonsense. This led the logical positivists to reject many traditional problems of philosophy, especially those of metaphysics , as meaningless. It had

9576-475: The "manifest image" and the "scientific image" of the world. Sellars's goal of a synoptic philosophy that unites the everyday and scientific views of reality is the foundation and archetype of what is sometimes called the Pittsburgh School, whose members include Robert Brandom , John McDowell , and John Haugeland . Also among the developments that resulted in the decline of logical positivism and

9728-529: The 1930s; he did not want to appear to want to leave the persecuted. After the fall of France in 1940, Jews in occupied France were required to register at police stations. When completing his police form, Bergson made the following entry: "Academic. Philosopher. Nobel Prize winner. Jew." It was the position of the Archbishop of Paris, Emmanuel Célestin Suhard , that the public revelation of Bergson's conversion

9880-436: The 19th-century Enlightenment were shattered not only by new discoveries of relativity by Einstein and of unseen psychology by Freud , but also by unprecedented technological development. Increasing global interaction during this time saw an equivalent influence of other cultures into Western art. Drawing is a means of making a picture , using a wide variety of tools and techniques. It generally involves making marks on

10032-491: The British Society for Psychical Research , and delivered to it an address, Phantoms of Life and Psychic Research (Fantômes des vivants et recherche psychique). Meanwhile, his popularity increased, and translations of his work began to appear in a number of languages: English , German , Italian , Danish , Swedish , Hungarian , Polish , and Russian . In 1914 Bergson's countrymen honoured him by his election as

10184-451: The Collège de France relieved Bergson of the duties attached to the Chair of Modern Philosophy there. He retained the chair, but no longer delivered lectures, his place being taken by his disciple, the mathematician and philosopher Édouard Le Roy , who supported a conventionalist stance on the foundations of mathematics , which was adopted by Bergson. Le Roy, who also succeeded to Bergson at

10336-739: The Einsteinian Universe ) was published. Earlier that year, Albert Einstein had come to the French Society of Philosophy and briefly replied to a short speech made by Bergson. It has been alleged that Bergson's knowledge of physics was insufficient and that the book did not follow up contemporary developments on physics. On the other hand, in "Einstein and the Crisis of Reason", a leading French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty , accused Einstein of failing to grasp Bergson's argument. This argument, Merleau-Ponty says, which concerns not

10488-512: The English language from his mother. Before he was nine, his parents settled in France, and Henri became a naturalized French citizen. Bergson married Louise Neuberger, a cousin of Marcel Proust , in 1891. (Proust served as best man at the wedding.) Henri and Louise Bergson had a daughter, Jeanne, born deaf in 1896. Bergson's sister, Mina Bergson (also known as Moina Mathers ), married the English occult author Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers ,

10640-450: The English speaking world to logical positivism. The logical positivists saw their rejection of metaphysics in some ways as a recapitulation of a quote by David Hume : If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to

10792-681: The Fourth International Congress of Philosophy held at Bologna , in Italy, where he gave an address on "Philosophical Intuition". In response to invitations he visited England in May of that year and on several subsequent occasions. These visits were well received. His speeches offered new perspectives and elucidated many passages in his three major works: Time and Free Will , Matter and Memory , and Creative Evolution . Although necessarily brief statements, they developed and enriched

10944-546: The Huxley Memorial Lecture of 1911, "Life and Consciousness", in a revised and developed form under the title "Consciousness and Life". Signs of Bergson's growing interest in social ethics and in the idea of a future life of personal survival are manifested. The lecture before the Society for Psychical Research is included, as is also the one given in France, L'Âme et le Corps , which contains the substance of

11096-644: The Law of Causality" ( Sur les origines psychologiques de notre croyance à la loi de causalité ). In 1900, Felix Alcan published a work that had previously appeared in the Revue de Paris , Laughter ( Le rire ), one of the most important of Bergson's minor works. This essay on the meaning of comedy stemmed from a lecture he had given in his early days in Auvergne. The study of it is essential to an understanding of Bergson's views of life, especially its passages dealing with

11248-572: The Soul). In 1913, Bergson visited the United States of America at the invitation of Columbia University and lectured in several American cities, where very large audiences welcomed him. In February, at Columbia, he lectured both in French and English, taking as his subjects Spirituality and Freedom and The Method of Philosophy . Being again in England in May of that year, he accepted the presidency of

11400-481: The Third Congress held at Heidelberg . In these years, Bergson strongly influenced Jacques Maritain , perhaps even saving Maritain and his wife Raïssa from suicide. Bergson's third major work, Creative Evolution , the most widely known and most discussed of his books, appeared in 1907. Pierre Imbart de la Tour remarked that Creative Evolution was a milestone of a new direction in thought. By 1918, Alcan ,

11552-437: The West, but elsewhere white may be. Some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe , Kandinsky , Isaac Newton , have written their own colour theories . Moreover, the use of language is only a generalization for a colour equivalent. The word " red ", for example, can cover a wide range of variations on the pure red of the spectrum. Unlike music, where notes such as C or C# are universally accepted, there

11704-551: The World were in essential agreement. While social revolutionaries endeavoured to make the most out of Bergson, many religious leaders, particularly the more liberal-minded theologians of all creeds, e.g., the Modernists and Neo-Catholic Party in his own country, showed a keen interest in his writings, and many of them found encouragement and stimulus in his work. The Roman Catholic Church , however, banned Bergson's three books on

11856-544: The additional effect of making (ethical and aesthetic) value judgments (as well as religious statements and beliefs) meaningless. Logical positivists therefore typically considered philosophy as having a minimal function . For them, philosophy concerned the clarification of thoughts, rather than having a distinct subject matter of its own. Several logical positivists were Jewish, such as Neurath, Hans Hahn , Philipp Frank , Friedrich Waissmann , and Reichenbach. Others, like Carnap, were gentiles but socialists or pacifists. With

12008-412: The ambiguities of ordinary language that, in their opinion, often made philosophy invalid. During this phase, they sought to understand language (and hence philosophical problems) by using logic to formalize how philosophical statements are made. An important aspect of Hegelianism and British idealism was logical holism —the opinion that there are aspects of the world that can be known only by knowing

12160-1020: The ancient capital of Anjou . Two years later he settled at the Lycée Blaise-Pascal (Clermont-Ferrand)  [ fr ] in Clermont-Ferrand , capital of the Puy-de-Dôme département . The year after his arrival at Clermont-Ferrand, Bergson displayed his ability in the humanities by the publication of an edition of extracts from Lucretius , with a critical study of De Rerum Natura , issued as Extraits de Lucrèce , and of Lucretius's materialist cosmology (1884), repeated editions of which attest to its value in promoting Classics among French youth. While teaching and lecturing in this part of his country (the Auvergne region), Bergson found time for private study and original work. He crafted his dissertation, Time and Free Will , which

12312-485: The anti-logical tradition of British empiricism . The major figure of this period is English mathematician George Boole . Other figures include William Hamilton , Augustus de Morgan , William Stanley Jevons , Alice's Adventures in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll , Hugh MacColl , and American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce . British philosophy in the late 19th century was dominated by British idealism ,

12464-434: The appearance of novelty as a result of pure undetermined creation, instead of as the predetermined result of mechanistic forces. His philosophy emphasizes pure mobility, unforeseeable novelty, creativity and freedom; thus one can characterize his system as a process philosophy . It touches upon such topics as time and identity, free will , perception, change, memory, consciousness, language, the foundation of mathematics and

12616-482: The bulk of medieval education, with the emphasis being on the humanities as skills or "ways of doing". A major shift occurred with the Renaissance humanism of the fifteenth century, when the humanities began to be regarded as subjects to study rather than practice, with a corresponding shift away from traditional fields into areas such as literature and history ( studia humaniora ). In the 20th century, this view

12768-564: The charge of pantheism (that is, of conceiving of God as immanent to his Creation and of being himself created in the process of the Creation). They were placed on the Index of prohibited books (Decree of 1 June 1914). In 1914, the Scottish universities arranged for Bergson to give the famous Gifford Lectures , planning one course for the spring and another for the autumn. Bergson delivered

12920-405: The church. However, in the Renaissance , a renewed focus on the physical world was reflected in art forms that depicted the human body and landscape in a more naturalistic and three-dimensional way. Eastern art has generally worked in a style akin to Western medieval art , namely a concentration on surface patterning and local colour (meaning the plain colour of an object, such as basic red for

13072-439: The comic consists in "something mechanical encrusted on the living". In 1901, the Académie des sciences morales et politiques elected Bergson as a member. In 1903 he contributed to the Revue de métaphysique et de morale an essay, Introduction to Metaphysics ( Introduction à la metaphysique ), which is useful as a preface to the study of his three large books. He detailed in this essay his philosophical program, realized in

13224-518: The coming to power of Adolf Hitler and Nazism in 1933, many members of the Vienna and Berlin Circles fled to Britain and the United States, which helped to reinforce the dominance of logical positivism and analytic philosophy in anglophone countries. In 1936, Schlick was murdered in Vienna by his former student Hans Nelböck . The same year, A. J. Ayer 's work Language Truth and Logic introduced

13376-417: The concept of deities, others do not. Therefore, the supernatural does not necessarily require the existence of deities. Rather, it can be broadly defined as any phenomena that cannot be explained by science or reason. Magical thinking creates explanations not available for empirical verification. Stories or myths are narratives being both didactic and entertaining. They are necessary for understanding

13528-649: The debates remains active. The rise of metaphysics mirrored the decline of logical positivism, first challenged by the later Wittgenstein. Wilfred Sellars 's criticism of the "Myth of the Given", in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (1956), challenged logical positivism by arguing against sense-data theories. In his "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man" (1962), Sellars distinguishes between

13680-649: The degree of Doctor of Science . Two days later he delivered the Huxley Lecture at the University of Birmingham , taking for his subject Life and Consciousness . This subsequently appeared in The Hibbert Journal (October 1911), and, revised, is the first essay in the collected volume Mind-Energy ( L'Énergie spirituelle ). In October he again travelled to England, where he had an enthusiastic reception, and delivered at University College London four lectures on La Nature de l'Âme (The Nature of

13832-504: The early Russell claimed that the problems of philosophy can be solved by showing the simple constituents of complex notions. Wittgenstein developed a comprehensive system of logical atomism with a picture theory of meaning in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ( German : Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung , 1921) sometimes known as simply the Tractatus . He claimed the universe is the totality of actual states of affairs and that these states of affairs can be expressed and mirrored by

13984-487: The early stages of their career. On the other hand, graduates from more career-oriented programs often find jobs more quickly. However, the long-term career prospects of humanities graduates may be similar to those of other graduates, as research shows that by five years after graduation, they generally find a career path that appeals to them. There is empirical evidence that graduates from humanities programs earn less than graduates from other university programs. However,

14136-405: The empirical evidence also shows that humanities graduates still earn notably higher incomes than workers with no postsecondary education, and have job satisfaction levels comparable to their peers from other fields. Humanities graduates also earn more as their careers progress; ten years after graduation, the income difference between humanities graduates and graduates from other university programs

14288-463: The expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Painting has been used throughout history to express spiritual and religious ideas, from mythological scenes on pottery to the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel , to body art. Colour is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in

14440-486: The first course, consisting of 11 lectures, under the title The Problem of Personality , at the University of Edinburgh in the spring of that year. The course of lectures planned for the autumn months had to be abandoned because of the outbreak of war. Bergson was not silent during the conflict, and gave some inspiring addresses. As early as 4 November 1914, he wrote an article, "Wearing and Nonwearing Forces" ( La force qui s'use et celle qui ne s'use pas ), that appeared in

14592-474: The first schools to require an extensive core curriculum in philosophy, literature, and the arts for all students. Other colleges with nationally recognized, mandatory programs in the liberal arts are Fordham University , St. John's College , Saint Anselm College and Providence College . Prominent proponents of liberal arts in the United States have included Mortimer J. Adler and E. D. Hirsch, Jr. In 1950, 1.2% of Americans aged 22 had earned

14744-828: The first two of these in Time and Free Will . In 1890–91 appeared the two volumes of James's monumental work The Principles of Psychology , in which he refers to a pathological phenomenon Bergson observed. Some writers, taking merely these dates into consideration and overlooking that James's investigations had been proceeding since 1870 (registered from time to time by various articles that culminated in The Principles ), have mistakenly dated Bergson's ideas as earlier than James's. William James hailed Bergson as an ally. In 1903, he wrote: I have been re-reading Bergson's books, and nothing that I have read for years has so excited and stimulated my thoughts. I am sure that his philosophy has

14896-486: The flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. After World War II , from the late 1940s to the 1950s, analytic philosophy became involved with ordinary-language analysis. This resulted in two main trends. One strain of language analysis continued Wittgenstein's later philosophy, from the Philosophical Investigations (1953), which differed dramatically from his early work of

15048-582: The four London lectures on the Soul. The seventh and last article is a reprint of Bergson's famous lecture to the Congress of Philosophy at Geneva in 1904, The Psycho-Physiological Paralogism (Le paralogisme psycho-physiologique), which now appears as Le cerveau et la pensée : une illusion philosophique . Other articles are on the False Recognition, on Dreams, and Intellectual Effort. The volume

15200-568: The function of the brain and undertakes an analysis of perception and memory, leading up to a careful consideration of the relationship of body and mind. Bergson spent years of research in preparation for each of his three large works. This is especially obvious in Matter and Memory , which shows thorough acquaintance with the extensive pathological investigations carried out during the period. In 1898, Bergson became maître de conférences at his alma mater, École Normale Supérieure, and later that year

15352-482: The historical work L'Empire libéral ). A session was held in January in his honour at which he delivered an address on Ollivier. In the war, Bergson saw the conflict of Mind and Matter, or rather of Life and Mechanism; and thus showed his philosophy's central idea in action. As many of Bergson's contributions to French periodicals remained relatively inaccessible, he had them published in two volumes. The first of these

15504-573: The human predicament. Some other possible characteristics of religion are pollutions and purification, the sacred and the profane, sacred texts, religious institutions and organizations, and sacrifice and prayer. Some of the major problems that religions confront, and attempts to answer are chaos, suffering, evil, and death. The non-founder religions are Hinduism , Shinto , and native or folk religions . Founder religions are Judaism , Christianity , Islam , Confucianism , Daoism , Mormonism , Jainism , Zoroastrianism , Buddhism , Sikhism , and

15656-520: The humanities accounted for 15% of the bachelor's degrees awarded by colleges and universities in the United States. As of 2022, they accounted for less than 9%. Researchers in the humanities have developed numerous large- and small-scale digital corporations, such as digitized collections of historical texts, along with the digital tools and methods to analyze them. Their aim is both to uncover new knowledge about corpora and to visualize research data in new and revealing ways. Much of this activity occurs in

15808-553: The humanities and closer to the formal sciences , becoming much more analytic. Analytic philosophy is marked by emphasis on the use of logic and formal methods of reasoning, conceptual analysis, and the use of symbolic and/or mathematical logic , as contrasted with the Continental style of philosophy . This method of inquiry is largely indebted to the work of philosophers such as Gottlob Frege , Bertrand Russell , G.E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein . Religious Studies

15960-456: The humanities are called humanities scholars or sometimes humanists . The term humanist also describes the philosophical position of humanism , which antihumanist scholars in the humanities reject. Renaissance scholars and artists are also known as humanists . Some secondary schools offer humanities classes usually consisting of literature , history , foreign language , and art . Human disciplines like history and language mainly use

16112-485: The humanities encompass law and religion due to their shared characteristics, such as the study of language and culture. However, these definitions are not universally accepted, as law and religion are often considered professional subjects rather than humanities subjects. Professional subjects, like some social sciences, are sometimes classified as being part of both the liberal arts and professional development education, whereas humanities subjects are generally confined to

16264-438: The ideas in his books and clarified for English audiences the fundamental principles of his philosophy. In May 1911, Bergson gave two lectures, The Perception of Change ( La perception du changement ), at the University of Oxford . The Clarendon Press published these in French in the same year. His talks were concise and lucid, leading students and the general reader to his other, longer writings. Oxford later conferred on him

16416-770: The intellectualist method and the current notion that logic is an adequate measure of what can or cannot be". It had induced him, he continued, "to give up logic, squarely and irrevocably" as a method, for he found that "reality, life, experience, concreteness, immediacy, use what word you will, exceeds our logic, overflows, and surrounds it". These remarks, which appeared in James's book A Pluralistic Universe in 1909, impelled many English and American readers to investigate Bergson's philosophy, but no English translations of Bergson's major work had yet appeared. James encouraged and assisted Arthur Mitchell in preparing an English translation of Creative Evolution . In August 1910, James died. It

16568-447: The language of first-order predicate logic. Thus a picture of the universe can be constructed by expressing facts in the form of atomic propositions and linking them using logical operators . Wittgenstein thought he had solved all the problems of philosophy with the Tractatus . The work further ultimately concludes that all of its propositions are meaningless, illustrated with a ladder one must toss away after climbing up it. During

16720-740: The late 1920s to 1940s, a group of philosophers known as the Vienna Circle , and another one known as the Berlin Circle , developed Russell and Wittgenstein's philosophy into a doctrine known as " logical positivism " (or logical empiricism). The Vienna Circle was led by Moritz Schlick and included Rudolf Carnap and Otto Neurath . The Berlin Circle was led by Hans Reichenbach and included Carl Hempel and mathematician David Hilbert . Logical positivists used formal logical methods to develop an empiricist account of knowledge. They adopted

16872-505: The later Wittgenstein's quietism , the Oxford philosophers claimed that ordinary language already represents many subtle distinctions not recognized in the formulation of traditional philosophical theories or problems. While schools such as logical positivism emphasize logical terms, which are supposed to be universal and separate from contingent factors (such as culture, language, historical conditions), ordinary-language philosophy emphasizes

17024-453: The latter half of the 20th century. Central figures in its historical development are Gottlob Frege , Bertrand Russell , G. E. Moore , and Ludwig Wittgenstein . Other important figures in its history include Franz Brentano , the logical positivists (particularly Rudolf Carnap ), the ordinary language philosophers , W. V. O. Quine , and Karl Popper . After the decline of logical positivism, Saul Kripke , David Lewis , and others led

17176-421: The lead in rebellion, and I followed, with a sense of emancipation. Bradley had argued that everything common sense believes in is mere appearance; we reverted to the opposite extreme, and that everything is real that common sense, uninfluenced by philosophy of theology, supposes real. With a sense of escaping from prison, we allowed ourselves to think that grass is green, that the sun and stars would exist if no one

17328-401: The limits of reason. Analytic philosophy Analytic philosophy is an analysis focused , broad, contemporary movement or tradition within Western philosophy , especially anglophone philosophy. Analytic philosophy is characterized by a clarity of prose ; rigor in arguments; and making use of formal logic and mathematics, and, to a lesser degree, the natural sciences . It

17480-531: The office of President of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques by Alexandre Ribot , and then delivered a discourse on "The Evolution of German Imperialism". Meanwhile, he found time to issue at the Minister of Public Instruction's request a brief summary of French philosophy. Bergson did a large amount of traveling and lecturing in America during the war. He participated in the negotiations that led to

17632-433: The other performing arts. In addition to the standard narrative dialogue style, theatre takes such forms as opera , ballet , mime , kabuki , classical Indian dance , Chinese opera , mummers' plays , and pantomime . Dance (from Old French dancier , perhaps from Frankish ) generally refers to human movement either used as a form of expression or presented in a social , spiritual or performance setting. Dance

17784-456: The physics of special relativity but its philosophical foundations, addresses paradoxes caused by popular interpretations and misconceptions about the theory, including Einstein's own. Duration and Simultaneity was not published in the 1951 Edition du Centenaire in French, which contained all of his other works, and was only published later in a work gathering different essays, titled Mélanges . This work took advantage of Bergson's experience at

17936-399: The place of the artistic in life. The paper's main thesis is that laughter is a corrective evolved to make social life possible for human beings. People laugh at those who fail to adapt to society's demands of society if it seems their failure is akin to an inflexible mechanism. Comic authors have exploited this human tendency to laugh in various ways, and what is common to them is the idea that

18088-418: The present epoch will be a sort of turning point in the history of philosophy. As early as 1880, James had contributed an article in French to the periodical La Critique philosophique , of Renouvier and Pillon, titled Le Sentiment de l'Effort . Four years later, a couple of articles by him appeared in the journal Mind : "What is an Emotion?" and "On some Omissions of Introspective Psychology". Bergson quoted

18240-448: The private judgments or mental states of individual mathematicians and logicians. Following Frege, the logicists tended to advocate a kind of mathematical Platonism . Frege also proved influential in the philosophy of language and analytic philosophy's interest in meaning . Michael Dummett traces the linguistic turn to Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic and his context principle . Frege's paper " On Sense and Reference " (1892)

18392-466: The publisher, had issued 21 editions, making an average of two editions per annum for ten years. Following the appearance of this book, Bergson's popularity increased enormously, not only in academic circles but among the general public. At that time, Bergson had already extensively studied biology, including the theory of fecundation (as shown in the first chapter of the Creative Evolution ), which had only recently emerged, ca. 1885 – no small feat for

18544-526: The quiet life of a French professor, marked by the publication of his four principal works: In 1900, the Collège de France appointed Bergson Chair of Greek and Roman Philosophy, which he remained until 1904. He then replaced Gabriel Tarde as the Chair of Modern Philosophy until 1920. The public attended his open courses in large numbers. Bergson was born in the Rue Lamartine in Paris, not far from

18696-562: The realism of Karl Marx and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as hostile to all forms of intellectualism, and argued, therefore, that supporters of Marxist socialism should welcome a philosophy such as Bergson's. Other writers, in their eagerness, claimed that the thought of the holder of the Chair of Philosophy at the Collège de France and the aims of the Confédération Générale du Travail and the Industrial Workers of

18848-417: The realms of morality, religion, and art, in 1932. It was respectfully received by the public and the philosophical community, but all by that time realized that Bergson's days as a philosophical luminary were past. He was, however, able to reiterate his core beliefs near the end of his life, by renouncing all the posts and honours previously awarded him rather than accept exemption from the antisemitic laws of

19000-718: The revival of metaphysical theorizing was Harvard philosopher W. V. O. Quine 's attack on the analytic–synthetic distinction in " Two Dogmas of Empiricism ", published in 1951 in The Philosophical Review and republished in Quine's book From A Logical Point of View (1953), a paper "sometimes regarded as the most important in all of twentieth-century philosophy ". From a Logical Point of View also contains Quine's essay " On What There Is " (1948), which elucidates Russell's theory of descriptions and contains Quine's famous dictum of ontological commitment , "To be

19152-459: The sciences or the humanities , he decided on the latter, to his teachers' dismay. When he was 19, he entered the École Normale Supérieure (during this period, he read Herbert Spencer ). He obtained there the degree of licence ès lettres , and then an agrégation de philosophie in 1881 from the University of Paris . The same year, he received a teaching appointment at the lycée in Angers ,

19304-513: The seminal text of classical logic and of the logicist project, encouraged many philosophers to renew their interest in the development of symbolic logic . It used a notation from Italian logician Giuseppe Peano , and it uses a theory of types to avoid the pitfalls of Russell's paradox. Whitehead developed process metaphysics in Process and Reality . Additionally, Russell adopted Frege's predicate logic as his primary philosophical method,

19456-425: The speaker's conception of the entire world. In his magnum opus Word and Object (1960), Quine introduces the idea of radical translation , an introduction to his theory of the indeterminacy of translation , and specifically to prove the inscrutability of reference . Important also for the revival of metaphysics was the further development of modal logic , first introduced by pragmatist C. I. Lewis , especially

19608-547: The successor of Claude Bernard at the Chair of Experimental Medicine in the Collège de France. Bergson served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal , a grant given between 1919 and 1954 to painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians. Bergson travelled to London in 1908 and met there with William James , the Harvard University philosopher who

19760-534: The theory of evolution , according to which humanity shares a common ancestry with modern primates , a process sometimes construed as needing no creative deity. At the lycée, Bergson won a prize for his scientific work and another, in 1877, when he was 18, for the solution of a mathematical problem. His solution was published the next year in Nouvelles Annales de Mathématiques . It was his first published work. After some hesitation about whether to pursue

19912-457: The total number of Americans with college degrees has increased significantly, resulting in a greater number of people with degrees in the humanities as well. The proportion of degrees awarded in the humanities has declined in recent decades, even as the overall number of people with humanities degrees has increased. In 1954, 36% of Harvard undergraduates majored in the humanities, but in 2012, only 20% took that course of study. As recently as 1993,

20064-422: The traditional liberal arts education . Although sociology , anthropology , archaeology , linguistics and psychology share some similarities with the humanities, these are often considered social sciences . Similarly, disciplines such as finance , business administration , political science , economics , and global studies have closer ties to the social sciences rather than the humanities. Scholars in

20216-480: The two traditions as being based on institutions, relationships, and ideology, rather than anything of significant philosophical substance. The distinction has also been drawn between "analytic" being academic or technical philosophy and "continental" being literary philosophy. Analytic philosophy was deeply influenced by what is called Austrian realism in the former state of Austria-Hungary , so much so that Michael Dummett has remarked that analytic philosophy

20368-614: The use of language by ordinary people. The most prominent ordinary-language philosophers during the 1950s were P. F. Strawson , J. L. Austin , and Gilbert Ryle . Ordinary-language philosophers often sought to resolve philosophical problems by showing them to be the result of misunderstanding ordinary language. Ryle, in The Concept of Mind (1949), criticized Cartesian dualism , arguing in favor of disposing of " Descartes' myth " via recognizing " category errors ". Strawson first became well known with his article "On Referring" (1950),

20520-401: The vocabulary we use; literary theory has explored the rhetorical, associative, and ordering features of language; and historical linguists have studied the development of languages across time. Literature, covering a variety of uses of language including prose forms (such as the novel ), poetry and drama , also lies at the heart of the modern humanities curriculum. College-level programs in

20672-427: The whole world. This is closely related to the doctrine of internal relations , the opinion that relations between items are internal relations , that is, essential properties of the nature of those items. Russell and Moore in response promulgated logical atomism and the doctrine of external relations —the belief that the world consists of independent facts. Inspired by developments in modern formal logic ,

20824-404: The work of Saul Kripke and his Naming and Necessity (1980). Humanities The humanities include the studies of philosophy , religion , history , language arts ( literature , writing , oratory , rhetoric , poetry , etc.), performing arts ( theater , music , dance , etc.), and visual arts ( painting , sculpture , photography , filmmaking , etc.). Some definitions of

20976-569: The works of Jean Dubuffet or Anselm Kiefer . Modern and contemporary art has moved away from the historic value of craft in favour of concept ( conceptual art ); this has led some e.g. Joseph Kosuth to say that painting, as a serious art form, is dead, although this has not deterred the majority of artists from continuing to practise it either as whole or part of their work. Sculpture involves creating three-dimensional forms out of various materials. These typically include malleable substances like clay and metal but may also extend to material that

21128-498: Was Bergson's senior by 17 years, and who was instrumental in calling Bergson's work to the attention of the Anglo-American public. The two became great friends. James's impression of Bergson is given in his Letters under the date of 4 October 1908: So modest and unpretending a man but such a genius intellectually! I have the strongest suspicions that the tendency which he has brought to a focus, will end by prevailing, and that

21280-515: Was a German geometry professor at the University of Jena who is understood as the father of analytic philosophy. Frege proved influential as a philosopher of mathematics in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. He advocated logicism , the project of reducing arithmetic to pure logic. As a result of his logicist project, Frege developed predicate logic in his book Begriffsschrift (English: Concept-script , 1879), which allowed for

21432-539: Was a student of Ernst Mally of the Austrian realists and taught at the University of Otago . The Finnish Georg Henrik von Wright succeeded Wittgenstein at Cambridge in 1948. One striking difference with respect to early analytic philosophy was the revival of metaphysical theorizing during the second half of the 20th century, and metaphysics remains a fertile topic of research. Although many discussions are continuations of old ones from previous decades and centuries,

21584-613: Was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented". In 1930, France awarded him its highest honour, the Grand-Croix de la Legion d'honneur . Bergson's great popularity created a controversy in France, where his views were seen as opposing the secular and scientific attitude adopted by the Republic 's officials. Bergson lived

21736-1164: Was aware of them, and also that there is a pluralistic timeless world of Platonic ideas." Bertrand Russell, during his early career, was much influenced by Frege. Russell famously discovered the paradox in Basic Law V which undermined Frege's logicist project. However, like Frege, Russell argued that mathematics is reducible to logical fundamentals, in The Principles of Mathematics (1903). He also argued for Meinongianism . Russell sought to resolve various philosophical problems by applying Frege's new logical apparatus, most famously in his theory of definite descriptions in " On Denoting ", published in Mind in 1905. Russell here argues against Meinongianism. He argues all names (aside from demonstratives like "this" or "that") are disguised definite descriptions, using this to solve ascriptions of nonexistence. This position came to be called descriptivism . Later, his book written with Alfred North Whitehead , Principia Mathematica (1910–1913),

21888-413: Was being planned when war broke out. The conclusion of strife was marked by the appearance of a delayed volume in 1919. It bears the title Spiritual Energy: Essays and Lectures (reprinted as Mind-Energy – L'Énergie spirituelle : essais et conférences ). The advocate of Bergson's philosophy in England, Wildon Carr , prepared an English translation under the title Mind-Energy . The volume opens with

22040-473: Was divided into three sciences: physics, ethics, and logic.") Today, the main fields of philosophy are logic , ethics , metaphysics , and epistemology . Still, it continues to overlap with other disciplines. The field of semantics , for example, brings philosophy into contact with linguistics . Since the early twentieth century, philosophy in English-speaking universities has moved away from

22192-457: Was from an English-Jewish and Irish-Jewish background. The Bereksohns were a famous Jewish entrepreneurial family of Polish descent. Henri Bergson's great-great-grandfather, Szmul Jakubowicz Sonnenberg called Zbytkower  [ pl ] , was a prominent banker and a protégé of Stanisław II Augustus , king of Poland from 1764 to 1795. Bergson's family lived in London for a few years after his birth, and he obtained an early familiarity with

22344-605: Was his intention, had he lived to see the translation finished, to introduce it to the English reading public by a prefatory note of appreciation. The next year, the translation was completed and still greater interest in Bergson and his work ensued. By coincidence, in that same year (1911), Bergson wrote a 16-page preface, Truth and Reality , to the French translation of James's book Pragmatism . In it, he expressed sympathetic appreciation of James's work, together with certain important reservations. From 5 to 11 April, Bergson attended

22496-635: Was in turn challenged by the postmodernist movement, which sought to redefine the humanities in more egalitarian terms suitable for a democratic society since the Greek and Roman societies in which the humanities originated were elitist and aristocratic. A distinction is usually drawn between the social sciences and the humanities. Classicist Allan Bloom writes in The Closing of the American Mind (1987): Social science and humanities have

22648-458: Was promoted to a professorship. The year 1900 saw him installed as a professor at the Collège de France , where he accepted the Chair of Greek and Roman Philosophy in succession to Charles Lévêque  [ fr ] . At the first International Congress of Philosophy , held in Paris during the first five days of August 1900, Bergson read a short paper, "Psychological Origins of the Belief in

22800-531: Was seen as an important aspect of a refined education in the Renaissance . In its usage in the early 15th century, the studia humanitatis was a course of studies that consisted of grammar, poetry, rhetoric, history, and moral philosophy, primarily derived from the study of Latin and Greek classics. The word humanitas also gave rise to the Renaissance Italian neologism umanisti , whence "humanist", " Renaissance humanism ". Classics , in

22952-745: Was submitted, along with a short Latin thesis on Aristotle ( Quid Aristoteles de loco senserit , "On the Concept of Place in Aristotle") for his doctoral degree, which was awarded by the University of Paris in 1889. The work was published in the same year by Félix Alcan . He also gave courses in Clermont-Ferrand on the Pre-Socratics , in particular Heraclitus . Bergson dedicated Time and Free Will to Jules Lachelier  [ fr ] (1832–1918), then public education minister ,

23104-779: Was too dangerous at the time, when the city was occupied by the Nazis, to both the Church and the Jewish population. On 3 January 1941, Bergson died in occupied Paris of bronchitis. A Roman Catholic priest said prayers at his funeral per his request. Bergson is buried in the Cimetière de Garches, Hauts-de-Seine . Bergson rejected what he saw as the overly mechanistic predominant view of causality (as expressed in reductionism). He argued that free will must be allowed to unfold in an autonomous and unpredictable fashion. While Kant saw free will as something beyond time and space and therefore ultimately

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