Emily Herring - Herald of a Restless World | Monday 4 November, 6.30pm

Mankind lies groaning, half-crushed beneath the weight of its own progress. Men do not sufficiently realise that their future is in their own hands. Theirs is the task of determining whether they want to go on living or not.

- Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932)

French philosopher Henri Bergson has now been largely forgotten. But in his lifetime, he 
was an international celebrity. The press reported the weekly riots that occurred whenever he lectured at the Collège de France in Paris. The talks he delivered in London in 1911 filled venues to their “utmost capacity” and he was greeted to the sound of “loud cheers.” Two years later, a visit to New York caused the first ever traffic jam on Broadway.

And yet, aside from a handful of scholars, who now remembers Bergson? Today, he is perhaps best known for being mentioned in a Monty Python sketch. In this first ever biography of Henri Bergson in English, Emily Herring brings his fascinating story back into the public eye.

This book is about what was profound, interesting, unusual, extraordinary, and compelling about Bergson’s life and his ideas. It consists of three intertwined and inseparable portraits. A portrait of a man, with hopes, dreams, and contradictions. A portrait of his philosophy that in many ways changed the world. And a portrait of the world in which this man and these ideas evolved, became famous around the world, and eventually disappeared from memory. Today, new technologies have us fearing for our freedom and humanity, and the climate crisis means that the survival of our species 
depends on our ability to come up with creative solutions to unprecedented challenges. 
Who better to turn to than the thinker and proponent of radical change and creativity?

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Emily Herring is a writer based in Paris. She studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and 
received her PhD in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Leeds. 
Her work has appeared in the TLS and Aeon. At this event, she will be in conversation with Emily Thomas, Professor of the history of philosophy at Durham University.