The Creative Mind

The final published book by Nobel Prize-winning author and philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941), La pensée et le mouvant (translated here as The Creative Mind), 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, and crafts a fascinating critique of philosophy itself. Until it leaves its false paths, he demonstrates, philosophy will remain only a wordy dialectic that surmounts false problems.
With masterful skill and intensity, Bergson shows that metaphysics and science must be rooted in experience for philosophy to become a genuine search for truth. And in the quest for unanswered questions, the spiritual dimension of human life and the importance of intuition must be emphasized. A source of inspiration for physicists as well as philosophers, Bergson's introduction to metaphysics reveals a philosophy that is always on the move, blending man's spiritual drive with his mastery of the material world.

"The Creative Mind", the last of Henri Bergson's works to be published, is a masterly autobiography of his philosophical method: how he became a philosopher, why he is a philosopher, and what philosophy must be. These, the man and his work, compose a definite critique of philosophy. His skill is matched by his intensity: his "calling" shines through on every page.

Until philosophy leaves its false paths, Bergson demonstrates, it will remain a wordy dialectic, a beating of false problems, and it will never become a search for truth. How this search is to be undertaken is carefully outlined by the author. He builds as he destroys, using the rubble of the old to build the new. His is a philosophy on the move, the rationale of man's spiritual drive, the mind gathering strength from its mastery of the of the material world to contemplate itself, to find at the core of intuition the moving element of discovery and free the possessive sense of novelty. Life is to be grasped in handfuls, but with the sure grasp of discipline.