Henri Bergson

High school (ages 12+)
History & Culture

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Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/henri-bergson

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. When was Henri Bergson born?October 18, 1859
2. When did Henri Bergson die?January 4, 1941 (age 81)
3. Where was Henri Bergson born?Paris, France
4. Who was Henri Bergson?Henri Bergson was a French thinker born in 1859 who believed feelings and intuition help us understand reality. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927.
5. What is intuition in Bergson's philosophy?Intuition is a way of putting yourself inside an object to feel what is unique and cannot be described. It is not guessing but a special kind of understanding.

Positivism: A philosophical approach that emphasizes empirical evidence and scientific observation as the sole source of true knowledge.
Intuition: A direct, immediate apprehension of truth or reality, achieved through intellectual sympathy rather than logical deduction.
Duration (Durée): Bergson's concept of subjective, continuous, and qualitative time, distinct from the spatialized, measurable time of science.
Vitalism: The belief that living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than inanimate things.