Bergson, Empiricism and System Spirit: Between Subjectivity and Science

Abstract

This paper argues that the resonances of Bergson’s philosophy in the French twentieth century overcome the division established by Foucault between “philosophies of the cogito” and “philosophies of the systems or the concepts”. The main reason for the impact of his work is the ability to articulate the return to experience (in an extended sense) and the incorporation of the data systematization work carried out by the nineteenth century sciences. This articulation delimits the empiricist inclination of Bergsons’s philosophy and it can be compared with the empiricists of the XVIII century. In this context, we examine how Bergson’s critics to abstract ideas taking philosophy to lose the way of the concrete experience is the convergence factor between Bergsonism and French phenomenology (mainly Merleau-Ponty’s position). On the other hand, we demonstrate that philosophical analysis on evolutionary biology relates Bergsonism to Canguilhem’s epistemological project.