Work · Life & Existential Philosophy
Creative Evolution
The élan vital as an answer to the mechanism of evolution.
Introduction
Bergson’s best-known book appeared in Paris in 1907 and made him internationally famous. It argues that neither mechanism, which explains life by blind physical causes, nor finalism, which sees it as carrying out a preset plan, can grasp evolution. Life is an original impulse that divides as it develops, along lines leading to plants and animals, and among animals to instinct in insects and intelligence in humans. Intelligence, made for handling solid bodies, takes snapshots of reality like a cinematograph; intuition, instinct become conscious of itself, can grasp duration. William James received the book with enthusiasm.
Read the full text
Free full text, often an older edition or translation
Connections
Responds to
- On the Origin of Species1859 · Charles Darwin
Taken up in
- Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies1921 · Liang Shuming
- The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam1930 · Muhammad Iqbal
- Négritude and Humanism (Liberté I)1964 · Léopold Sédar Senghor
- Difference and Repetition1968 · Gilles Deleuze
- African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson, and the Idea of Negritude2007 · Souleymane Bachir Diagne
More works by Henri Bergson
As of November 2026 · Improve this page · How Agora is made