ABSTRACT
This essay demonstrates the primacy of the concept of “attention”, understood ultimately as an “attention to life”, in Bergson’s philosophy. Its centrality can be found in the role it plays in Bergson’s philosophy of mind with respect to the workings of memory and perception (both normal and pathological), in his moral philosophy, and even in a Bergsonian metaphilosophy, whereby a “conversion of attention would be philosophy itself”. Utilising materials from his early work (Matter and Memory), later lectures (“The Perception of Change”), as well as his recently published lectures at the Collège de France on the Histoire des théories de la mémoire, we follow its development across his thought in all its dimensions.
