Emily Herring, Herald of a Restless World ***

Herald of a Restless World is a biography of the French philosopher Henri Bergson. It attempts to explain his key ideas, make sense of his immense popular fame in the years before World War I, and account for his disappearance from our cultural memory.

Bergson's first fundamental insight was the notion of durée, the subjective experience of time. Bergson noted that physical laws treat time as something that can be cut up into measurable units, whereas we experience time as a continuous flow.

What would happen, Bergson asked, if, through some magic spell, the earth completed a rotation on its own axis every twelve hours instead of every twenty-four? What it every other natural phenomenon accelerated proportionally? To the elaborate equations the astrophysicist devises to predict celestial phenomena this major shirt in tempo would make no difference at all.

Bergson builds on the concept of durée to examine mind/body dualism and free will.

Bergson had a compelling style in both his writing and his speaking, rich with metaphor, and his lectures were open to the public. His ideas about the limits of scientific thought spoke to a populace that was feeling uneasy about the positivism of the times.

The same forces that made Bergson so popular in the early 20th century have ensured his lack of subsequent influence. He gave public lectures so he never developed the types of followers he would have as a professor. His views about the shortcomings of rationality got him labeled as anti-intellectual. His large female audience made people take him less seriously. During and after WWI, Bergson stopped lecturing and became part of the establishment, making him less attractive to the modernist movements that previously claimed him as inspiration.

I often found Herald of a Restless World to be superficial. I didn't feel like I got a good understanding of Bergson's philosophy nor a good sense of his reputedly electric speaking style. Notable events, such as Bergson's debate with Einstein and his role in getting the United States involved in WWI, are covered somewhat cursorily. We don't learn much about his lifelong health issues or his family. The author clearly conveys how popular Bergson was in his prime but can't really answer the critics who claim that most of his audience didn't understand his ideas. Nor does she provide compelling counterarguments against critics of his philosophy like Bertrand Russell or Albert Einstein.