Creative Evolution: Beyond Mechanism and Finalism

Bergson’s Creative Evolution was published in 1907, with the English translation coming out in 1911. His first two major works, Time and Free Will and Matter and Memory, had argued that duration is central to understanding the nature of reality, with our natural tendency to spatialise time leading to intractable problems. These “false problems” are a theme in all of Bergson’s work and the various freedom problematics that we have been examining. Following the method of intuition to explore the nature of freedom for Bergson we will see that mechanism and finalism will emerge as the problematic that will be ultimately resolved in what Bergson will describe as purposiveness without purpose, or a revised finalism.