ABSTRACT
Henri Bergson represents a distinctively French approach to philosophy. Heavily influenced by his teachers at the elite Ecole Normale Superieure, Jules Lachelier and Felix Ravaisson, he maintained and developed a Cartesian tradition of thought that gave priority to consciousness and freedom over matter. Bergson is one of those philosophers who grappled most deeply with the temporal nature of existence. As with many modern European philosophers, the starting point for Bergson’s philosophy lies with Immanual Kant. He links duration to freedom. Bergson gave little attention to religion in his main early works. He distinguished two tendencies in the movement of duration: a tendency to conserve the past and a tendency to differentiate the future. Bergson derives obligation from habit, and habit from the need for social cohesion. Bergson draws on a notion of group survival of the fittest: the purpose of social cohesion is to offer discipline in the face of the enemy.
