The Creative Mind

The final published book by Nobel Prize-winning author and philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941), La pensée et le mouvant, "Thought and Movement"-here translated as The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics-is a masterly "autobiography" of his philosophical method. Through essays and lectures written between 1903 and 1923, Bergson retraces how and why he became a philosopher, along the way crafting a fascinating critique of philosophy itself. Until it leaves its false paths, he demonstrates, philosophy will remain only a wordy dialectic that at best "solves" false problems. With consummate skill and intensity Bergson shows that, for philosophy to become a genuine search for truth, metaphysics and science must be rooted in experience; and further, that to make real headway on this quest the spiritual dimension of human life and the importance of intuition must occupy center stage. The Creative Mind has been a source of inspiration for physicists as well as philosophers, as Bergson reveals in these pages a lively philosophy uniting man's spiritual drive with his mastery of the physical world-that is, a philosophy ever "in movement," as the original French title plainly states. This Angelico Press edition includes a new foreword by Iain McGilchrist that serves to situate and burnish the pivotal importance of Bergson and this book amid the dark warren of today's errant paths.