L'Évolution créatrice

About this book

French philosopher Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution was published in 1907 and translated into English in 1911. Very popular at the time, it gives an alternate mechanism for evolution - that it is motivated by an "elan vital" a vital impetus, also graspable as our natural creative urge. It also looks at Bergson's conception of time, a subjective "duration" (rather than the quantifiable time of a clock) that is best understood not through the intellect but through our creative intuition, an idea that influenced Marcel Proust and other modernist thinkers.

Themes & subjects

About the author

Henri Bergson

1859 – 1941

French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century.