Originally published on November 4, 2024 (Episode 381)
Introduction
In the early 20th century, Henri Bergson was a philosophical superstar—and a world-famous celebrity. At the Collège de France his lectures drew such crowds that students climbed in through windows just to hear him speak. During his first visit to New York, his lecture at Columbia University caused a one of the earliest recorded traffic jams. By 1917, such was his celebrity that the French government sent him as an public intellectual/ambassador to help persuade the United States to enter the Great War.
And yet, despite this astonishing fame, both the glow of his celebrity and Bergson’s philosophical ideas have slipped from memory. What made him so magnetic? And why has he faded from English-language memory? And what was the content of his philosophy? Emily Herring answers these and other questions.
About the Guest
Emily Herring received her PhD in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Leeds. She is the author of Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People, the first full English-language biography of Bergson.
For Further Investigation
Emily Herring, Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People (Basic Books, 2024)
Related Episodes
“City of Light, City of Shadows”— Michael Rapport on Paris in the Belle Époque
“The Thought of Giambattista Vico”—another conversation about an overlooked philosopher
“What’s the Good of Ambition?”—more philosophicalesque conversations, this time about some of the thought of Plato, who is most definitely neither forgotten nor overlooked
Other Resources
Another great French intellectual with a Clermont-Ferrand connection
Emily Herring, “The Timeliness of Henri Bergson”
Listen & Discuss
Would Bergson’s celebrity thrive in today’s age of TED Talks and YouTube clips? Share your thoughts below, and send this episode to a friend who loves philosophy (or French intellectual drama).
