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Henri Bergson

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French philosopher

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by WWI had achieved an unparalleled reputation

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1914, election to the Académie française

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his lectures at the Collège de France were wildly popular, especially with women

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exhibited clarity of insight, controlled form of prose, and lucidity

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a person who was entirely dedicated to the life of the mind

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during Dreyfus Affair, remained aloof and distant from public debates

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but at the outbreak of WWI, immediately supported the French war effort

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produced speeches and texts meant to embolden and bolster French soldiers and the population

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the paradox of whether it is possible to both remain a philosopher and think through the historical moment while at the same time attempting to act upon it

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gives a certain vigorous vitality to his wartime engagement as the premier philosopher of the French nation

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Bergson's November text

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dramatic opening statement

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sets a defiant, confident tone

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"This issue of struggle is not doubtful: Germany will succumb."

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establishes himself as the moral conscience of the nation and as a font of philosophical wisdom

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soldiers would be exalted in the sense that the knowledge of the future is certain

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he is the moral conscience of the nation with an official institution of propaganda directly meant for soldiers

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to assemble and unit the 'union sacrée'

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he avoids using the word war, "guerre" but speaks instead of struggle, i.e. lutte

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this quiet displacement of one term for another linguistically anchors and signals a complex operation

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suspends any political or economic conception

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anchors a metaphysical conception of the war

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a class between two forms of life

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France is in a sacred mission to defend the primacy of life, values of justice and freedom against the aggressiveness of German destructiveness and militarism

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backwashing of metaphysics through political meaning

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apparent in Bergson's philosophical assessment of what is at stake between Germany and France

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Bergson mobilizes his own philosophical categories in order to arrive at philosophical portraits of the German and the French

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largely drawn from his 1907 work, "Creative Evolution"

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a distinction between life as renewal, as creativity, as spontaneity, and freedom

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as opposed to mechanism, atomization, and the inertness of death

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Germany

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has a rich intellectual history, a deep philosophical tradition

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Prussia

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represents militarism, modern bureaucracy and mechanization

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argues that Germany has become militarized through Prussian influence

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speaks of Bismarck as the Evil Genius

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what is it to be German

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a form of life that is fundamental attached not to creativity but to death and destruction

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reflected in the organization of the German spirit as bent on mechanization, atomization, that the German military is a machine

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as opposed to the French army which is tied to ideals of courage, spontaneity, vitality, freedom and justice

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so the war is not an antagonism or a duel between two wills, as Clausewitz understood it, but existentially an antagonism between two forms of life

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and what is pitted against each other is nothing less than life and death

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thus demanding the ultimate sacrifice from the French nation to preserve justice, freedom, life and spontaneity

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by completely destroying the German nemesis

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"But the energy of our soldiers is drawn from something which does not waste, from an ideal of justice and freedom. Time has no hold us. To the force which feeds only on its own brutality, we are opposing that which seeks, outside and above itself, a principle of life and renovation. While the one is gradually spending itself, the other is continually remaking itself. The one is already wavering; the other abides, unshaken. Have no fear; our foe will be slayed."