Intuition and freedom
Bergson, Husserl and the movement of philosophy
pp. 101-117
in: Michael Kelly (ed), Bergson and phenomenology, Berlin, Springer, 2010Abstract
The relation between Bergson's philosophy and French phenomenology has received far more attention than has the possibility of bringing Bergson's philosophy and Husserl's phenomenology into dialogue.1 This is not only because Levinas, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty all at some point directly engage with Bergson's philosophy in their work, but also because both the method and the aim of Bergson and Husserl's philosophies seem incompatible.2 Most generally stated, unlike Husserl, Bergson does not aim to provide a description of the essence of acts of consciousness; and unlike Bergson, Husserl is not at all interested in developing a metaphysics that would "penetrate more deeply into the interior of matter, of life, or reality in general.'3
