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Research keywords:
Phenomenology; Bergson; 19th and 20th Century Continental Philosophy
Dissertation title:
The Concept of Affect in the Philosophy of Henri Bergson
Dissertation abstract:
My dissertation examines the concept of affect in the work of Henri Bergson. It traces the appearance and changes of this concept through a consideration of his Essai, Matter and Memory, and Creative Evolution. Throughout, I show that affectivity is an essential concept for Bergson’s thought in that it plays a defining role for both consciousness and subjectivity in general. Affectivity is that which distinguishes a proper subject of experience from an impersonal, abstract subject of whom subjective experience can be spoken of but never accounted for. The former—the thoroughly affective subject—I locate in the Essai, while the latter is developed as the notion of affectivity changes in Matter and Memory and Creative Evolution. In exploring this change, my dissertation also posits a split in Bergson’s philosophical development which goes against Bergson’s own claims regarding the continuity in his work. My work sets up a contrast between the "early" Bergson of the Essai and the "later" Bergson of Creative Evolution. Matter and Memory is shown to have a somewhat ambivalent place between the two but is nevertheless categorized as part of the later Bergson. In this way, my dissertation is also a critique of Bergson’s later philosophy and a defense of what was developed in the Essai. In the end, I argue that Bergson’s later work failed to heed the warnings that he himself spelled out regarding the aims and motivation behind metaphysical thought and thus ended up with a philosophy which vitiated many of the key insights that the Essai first made possible. Further, by recovering one possible interpretation of Bergson’s early understanding of affectivity and its role for the living subject, I show that many of Bergson’s key insights can be saved from the various critiques deployed against his philosophy in the 20th century.
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