Bergson’s masterwork on life as ceaseless creation. Against both mechanism and finalism, he argues that evolution is driven by the élan vital — an original impetus of life that diverges into instinct and intelligence — and that reality is a continuous, unforeseeable becoming which the intellect, built for action, can only carve into static snapshots.
5 chapters · Public domain
1
Introduction
~10 min · 5 pages
›2
I — The Evolution of Life: Mechanism and Teleology
~151 min · 74 pages
›3
II — The Divergent Directions of the Evolution of Life: Torpor, Intelligence, Instinct
~137 min · 67 pages
›4
III — On the Meaning of Life: The Order of Nature and the Form of Intelligence
~137 min · 66 pages
›5
IV — The Cinematographical Mechanism of Thought and the Mechanistic Illusion
~160 min · 78 pages
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