Matter and Memory

by Henri Bergson

Book Overview

"Since the end of the last century," Walter Benjamin wrote, "philosophy has made a series of attempts to lay hold of the 'true' experience as opposed to the kind that manifests itself in the standardized, denatured life of the civilized masses. It is customary to classify these efforts under the heading of a philosophy of life. Towering above this literature is Henri Bergson's early monumental work Matter and Memory."

Along with Husserl's...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0085SCO94
• ISBN13: 9780942299052
• Release Date: November 1990
• Publisher: Zone Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.9"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Actually, not a review but a suggestion

Read Elizabeth Grosz's new book, In the Nick of Time, for a lucid account of Matter and Memory that could serve as a guidebook for the uninitiated who might find Deleuze equally tricky.

extremely difficult work by a forgotten genius

Matter and Memory is often taken as the cornerstone of Bergson's work by the few who still read him, and I can't disagree with them. This is certainly his most radical work, but unfortunately, it is also his most difficult. Speaking for myself, even though I was very well read in the literature on Bergson--especially Deleuze's--I still had to read the first chapter almost four times before I felt comfortable enough to move on to the second. And it really isn't that Bergson is just obscure here. He does not use neologisms, and he tries very hard to be as precise as possible. I would say, I guess, that this is why it is still necessary to bother with this work, because it's difficulty is quite evidently related to its profundity. The concepts of matter and memory developed at length by Bergson in this work were so novel in his time that they're pretty much still as novel today. That's partly because, as some reviewers below say, there's a general feeling that science has made his "queer" views obsolete. This is palpably false. And then, on the other hand, it's because this book is terribly dry and, as Leonard Lawlor has said, doesn't have any entertaining "characters," like Merleau-Ponty's Schneider, to keep people plastered to the page. Consequently, not many people, even professional philosophers, have read the book in its entirety. In sum: unless you're some sort of deity, you probably won't be drooling with a thirst for Bergson after reading this for the first time. The book is poorly organized and the chapters are all around 70-80 pages long, so ideas and arguments are jumbled about like lottery balls, and oftentimes Bergson just seems to write whatever pops into his mind at the moment. However, I re-iterate that with an open mind and some patience, the difficulty will be forgiveable, and the effort to get inside of it well worth your time. This gets five stars for the ideas, three for style.

Ho-hum

Gabriel Clark-Leach's comments reveal his ignorance of not only of "English students" but also of Damasio. His snide generalizing is indicitive of the quality of his thinking.

To locate myself (body and soul) back in the universe!

many philosophical thoughts amaze readers but often we found ourselves "lost" in following the philosopher's thought. Bergson, on the contrary, constantly calls the reader's attention to our own existence, better yet, "being" in the material world that many other idealist thinkers have tended to ignore. he gives us an answer to the question of body and soul (mind) with his key concept of "duration," with which we can locate ourselves both in space and "time." his idea is greatly immersed in many other thinkers, such as Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty, and even Foucault. the most important connection with the contemporary application of visual representation theory would be the idea of "time-image" which Deleuze did a good job to articulate. were it not for the understanding of "time-image," a great part of epistemological pursuit in cinema studies couldn't be possible. the 20th century's usurpage of subjectivity and abstract reason and restoration to body previously deprived its physicality under the psychological violence are surely debted to Bergson to a great extent. the more amazing is, that we could do that, still on and in the axes of time and memory, so that history can go on.

Greatest book I've ever read

Now I've read this book 7 times.So the contents of this book is much clearer than the first time. It's very logic and something heartfull.That's because Bergson argues logically and his theories are based on science.That sounds like his conclusions on human mind or something are severe: human mind depends on the brain and disappears when he or she dies.But Begson argues it's not. Both scientific facts and reasoning say that human mind is related to the brain but never depends on it. I find this book very beatiful though I haven't read the original.So I say his logic is beatiful but even in Japanese the greatness of his thoughts flows into my mind.