Henri Bergson

In public discourse trauma is predominantly framed as an overwhelming event undergone by the individual. In this article I first provide a brief genealogy to trace the emergence of what is now the dominant temporal framework of psychological catastrophe. I supplement this evental nosology with a durational consideration of trauma by drawing on the works of Henri Bergson and his articulation of duration, memory, and lived experience. Durational trauma accommodates liminal and ongoing experiences of the catastrophic that are equally devastating (...) to the paradigmatic exemplars of PTSD. This alternate account entails different modalities of reparation and responsibility to the systemic traumatization of others. For this I draw on Levinas and his intersubjective ethics drawing out the relevancy his work has for this concept of durational trauma. Levinas’s emphasis on expiation avoids the reification of the trauma of the other as spectacle and draws into focus one’s own participation in the circulation and continuation of ongoing traumatic networks. This contributes to the emergent alchemy of reading Bergson and Levinas together, but likewise, to philosophy of trauma and the ethical responsibility and temporality of ongoing systemic harm. (shrink)

Em sua última obra, As Duas Fontes da Moral e da Religião, Henri Bergson investiga as origens, o desenvolvimento e a manutenção da sociedade humana por meio da distinção entre a sociedade fechada, baseada nos instintos primitivos de conservação da vida, e a sociedade aberta, fundada sobre a aspiração que impulsiona o homem à construção de uma vida em sociedade mais harmoniosa. Segundo o autor, os ideais democráticos são frutos da abertura de que as sociedades necessitam para seu progresso, o (...) qual, aos poucos, abrandaria a pressão das exigências impostas pela natureza para a conservação da vida em sociedade e possibilitaria aos homens conviverem mais livremente e mais afetuosamente com vistas a uma sociedade mais justa e sem tantos conflitos e mortes. Contudo, como escapar às determinações que a natureza impôs para que a vida em sociedade se mantivesse e conseguir que os homens se abram a outro tipo de vivência em conjunto? É esta a questão que o presente artigo procura investigar. Palavras-chave: Bergson, moral, política, mística. (shrink)

In this paper, I discuss Gaston Bachelard’s criticism of Henri Bergson’s employment of intuition as the specific method of philosophy, and as a reliable means of acquiring knowledge. I locate Bache...

« Percevoir, dit Bergson, finit par n'être plus qu'une occasion de se souvenir. » De se souvenir ou de réfléchir? De Descartes à Bergson, toute la différence est là. Et, dans le fond, les deux doctrines sont si proches que l'une ne tarde pas à nous paraître comme la variation de l'autre. Qu'on réfléchisse ou que l'on se souvienne, la perception se fait comme un oubli de ce que l'on perçoit. Mais, tôt ou tard, il faut bien que les choses (...) reviennent et qu'on en tienne compte: cela se voit au bout du souvenir, chez Bergson, au bout de cinq méditations, chez Descartes. Et, rétablies dans leur juridiction, elles nous forcent de penser d'autre façon ce que l'intelligence seule imaginait de concevoir. Du côté de Descartes comme dans celui de Bergson, la philosophie se présente alors comme l'effort pour composer un équilibre entre ces deux postulations adverses, celle de la perception et celle de la réflexion. « Endlich, sagt Bergson, ist die Wahrnehmung nur eine Gelegenheit zurückzudenken. » Zurück- oder nachzudenken? Darin besteht, zwischen Descartes und Bergson, die ganze Verschiedenheit. Und im Grunde genommen, sind die zwei Lehrgebäude so nahe verwandt, daß nicht viel daran fehlt, die eine als eine Veränderung der anderen erscheinen zu lassen. Ob man nun nachdenkt, oder sich erinnert, so stellt sich die Wahrnehmung als ein Vergessen dessen dar, was man vernimmt. Über kurz oder lang aber, müssen die Sachen wiederkommen und darauf muß man Wert legen: das geschieht, bei Bergson, am Ende der Erinnerung, bei Descartes, am Ende von fünf Meditationen. Und in ihrer Gerichtsbarkeit wiederhergestellt, zwingen sie (d. h. die Sachen) uns auf eine andere Weise zu denken was der Verstand allein zu fassen ersonnen hat. Seitens Descartes, sowie seitens Bergson, stellt sich die Philosophie dar als die Anstrengung ein Gleichgewicht zu bilden, zwischen jene zwei gegensätzlichen Forderungen, die der Wahrnehmung und die der Überlegung. (shrink)

L'actualité de la pensée de Bergson serait liée non pas à un ensemble de thèses mais à l'insistance d'une interrogation qu'il aurait formulée pour la première fois dans sa radicalité. Cette interrogation est celle qui met à jour la difficulté d'un commencement proprement et seulement humain de la réflexion. The current importance of Bergson's thought is not due to any set of theorems, but to the urgency of an inquiry, whose radical nature he would have been the first to consider, (...) and which remains pressing to day. This inquiry brings to light the difficulty of a beginning of a reflexion wich is rightfully and solely human. (shrink)

This work aims to highlight the continuous game and the paradoxical relationship established between memory and forgetfulness based on the contributions of Friedrich Nietzsche and Henri Bergson. We will follow the hypothesis that the origin of memory and consciousness in Nietzsche is very close to that made by Bergson in Matter and Memory. I will try to expose how memory in Bergson arises in the interval between action and reaction, at the moment when man hesitates, organizes and selects the new (...) movement. The same hesitation movement occurs in Nietzsche, when man abandons the "animalistic" realm of the instant and begins to calculate and plan his actions. In the meantime, when man acquires the capacity to remember and distances himself from the instinctive animals, forgetfulness becomes vitally important, according to Nietzsche, since an excess of memory can resent and sadden the body. In Bergson, on the other hand, the brain mechanism - an organ of attention to life - also occupies a prominent place, from the moment it temporarily removes the totality of memories, and allows only some of them to become conscious. To this end, we will observe that what is behind this infinite game between memory and forgetfulness is the maintenance of a healthy body that does not get lost in excesses - of remembering too much or forgetting everything. A body that knows how to remember, but also how to forget in order to live. (shrink)

The forms of having morality in close and open societies are examined through the concept of morality in Bergson. Moreover, how static and dynamic moralities come into existence and what kind of enforcements they have in the social sphere are discussed. In this book, Bergson explained how close or open morality obtained and what kind of cultural effects it has in the social sphere. He set forth the forms of close and open moralities by the terms of below or above (...) consciousness. In addition, Bergson divides religions into two such as static religion and dynamic religion. According to him static religion is the religion of the city-state, which has the feature of being close and belongs to the society. On the other hand, dynamic religion is an open religion and it belongs to the humanity. In that respect he makes a general review of the forms of relations between the forms of morality, societies and religions. (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo pretende abordar aspectos esenciales del pensamiento de Henri Bergson en la dimensión de las prácticas políticas. Específicamente, esta indagación se centrará en un análisis del sentido de la democracia en Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion, en las escuetas, pero decisivas porciones de texto donde esta es abordada. Bajo este objetivo, se podrá extender una discusión de fondo, de carácter ontológico, en torno al rendimiento de una noción de Acontecimiento que pretende servir de (...) reflexión basal en torno al dominio de un concepto de lo político atribuible a este filósofo francés.: This article aims to address essential aspects of Henri Bergson’s thought in the dimension of political practices. Specifically, this inquiry will focus on an analysis of the meaning of democracy in Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion, in the succinct, but decisive portions of the text where it is focussed. Under this point, it will be possible to extend a substantive discussion, of an ontological nature, around the performance of a notion of Event that aims to serve as a basal reflection on the domain of a concept of the political attributable to this French philosopher. (shrink)

During the first quarter of the twentieth century, the French philosopher Henri Bergson became an international celebrity, profoundly influencing contemporary intellectual and artistic currents. While Bergsonism was fashionable, L. Susan Stebbing, Bertrand Russell, Moritz Schlick, and Rudolf Carnap launched different critical attacks against some of Bergson’s views. This book examines this series of critical responses to Bergsonism early in the history of analytic philosophy. Analytic criticisms of Bergsonism were influenced by William James, who saw Bergson as an ‘anti-intellectualist’ ally of (...) American Pragmatism, and Max Scheler, who saw him as a prophet of Lebensphilosophie. Some of the main analytic objections to Bergson are answered in the work of Karin Costelloe-Stephen. Analytic anti-Bergsonism accompanied the earlier refutations of idealism by Russell and Moore, and later influenced the Vienna Circle’s critique of metaphysics. It eventually contributed to the formation of the view that ‘analytic’ philosophy is divided from its ‘continental’ counterpart. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 1010-1025, December 2021.

مداخلة مترجمة عن الفرنسية للفيلسوف الفرنسي جيل دولوز.

This book brings together papers from a conference that took place in the city of L'Aquila, 4–6 April 2019, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the earthquake that struck on 6 April 2009. Philosophers and scientists from diverse fields of research debated the problem that, on 6 April 1922, divided Einstein and Bergson: the nature of time. For Einstein, scientific time is the only time that matters and the only time we can rely on. Bergson, however, believes that scientific time (...) is derived by abstraction, even in the sense of extraction, from a more fundamental time. The plurality of times envisaged by the theory of Relativity does not, for him, contradict the philosophical intuition of the existence of a single time. But how do things stand today? What can we say about the relationship between the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of time in the light of contemporary science? What do quantum mechanics, biology and neuroscience teach us about the nature of time? The essays collected here take up the question that pitted Einstein against Bergson, science against philosophy, in an attempt to reverse the outcome of their monologue in two voices, with a multilogue in several voices. (shrink)

In in the second half of the 1940s, Jan Patočka emphasized the essentially negative character of human existence. He thus found himself in the neighborhood of Sartre’s existentialism, Heidegger’s philosophy of being, and Hegel’s dialectic, and at the same time in opposition to schools of thought which either completely reject the substantive use of “the nothing,” such as Carnap’s positivism, or relativize it, like Bergson. It is the latter polemic, Patočka’s with Bergson, which is discussed in this article. The concept (...) of negativity in Patočka basically refers to the idea that human existence is defined by a capacity to adopt a distance toward what is pre-given, be it the reality of the physical world or the established habits and rules of a particular society. Negativity qua distance has in Patočka an absolute character. It is this claim that he defends in his critique of Bergson. The article attempts to reconstruct Patočka’s position. I claim that the wager on absolute negativity does not make Patočka a nihilist, but a philosopher of a negative holism, and, in a sense, even a moralist. Above a reconstruction of Patočka’s stance, I spell out some reservations focused especially on the systematic meaning of Patočka’s recourse to negativity. I suggest that negation is an indispensable part of a more complex existential structure Patočka is aiming at. The terms he uses for this structure include “thirst for the absolute,” “thirst for reality,” “restlessness of the heart” and “desire.” To translate these allusions onto a general plan, it is useful to talk about the capacity to establish differences that matter. As general as it seems, this turn of phrase can grasp both Patočka’s emphasis on negativity, and his emphasis on the absolute, the latter – nevertheless – not residing in a distance from being, but in differences established, maintained and abandoned by ourselves within being. (shrink)

This article attempts to grasp the relationship between the film Queen Lear and élan vital drawing on the kinship of life as a creative evolution with art as a free act, which was established by Henri Bergson. According to Bergson, the élan vital, as the creative force of life, which is in a state of constant change and formation, is an invisible bond that passes through all living things. It is a free and creative flow. The qualities of élan vital, (...) opening a door to aesthetic comprehension and helping us to gain a deeper understanding as to the relationship between artistic creation and life, trigger our conceptions about cinema. In this context, the film Queen Lear, which creates an aesthetic experience concerning the change and the transformation proceeded by élan vital, is discussed with the guidance of the intuition method and the cinephilosophical approach. Intuition is a method that offers a holistic insight that captures the unique and inexpressible within the subject; the cinephilosophical approach has also enabled the film to move forward and interact with it. Queen Lear makes the élan vital visible and palpable as the peasant women who do theater; as the director and the film. The film deals with the élan vital against the limits, inertia and habits imposed by social conditions, by focusing on the process, not the end, but the being, flow and change. The film joining the permanent flow between past, present and future, reveals the movement in duration. Making the transference movement of vital impetus between individuals and facts visible, turns the film into a transitional space. Images oscillating between women’s life, acting and the staging process of the play, higlights the production process of the film. At the same time they make the coexistence and relationality of life obvious. Consequently, as a living tissue that stimulates intuition, the film motivates to participate in the creative effort of the director. Bringing the audience closer to the direct vision of the reality, the film makes the audience feel the being and real movement in life. (shrink)

Henri Bergson’s statements on Plotinus are an interesting case-study for his readers, contrasting between an avowed sympathy and an almost absence of references. While Bergson-the-professor is interested in the study of Plotinus’ work for its own sake, Bergson-the-philosopher identifies the Neoplatonist with the matrix of an entire metaphysical body of knowledge: the Ancient Greek philosophy. The article seeks to highlight the articulation between the professor and the philosopher, exploring the scope of Plotinian influences in the construction and consolidation of Bergson’s (...) thought - whether by adherence or demarcation -, focusing on three essential concepts: soul, sympathy, and causality. (shrink)

RésuméJ'analyse la façon dont Bergson caractérise la logique tel un organe de simplification, de dissimulation, d'ordonnance, de limitation, de systématisation, comme habitude de pensée et comme ontologie foncière. Partout, la logique semble la prérogative de l'entendement et inapte à s'appliquer à la durée, voire à la réalité elle-même. Pour sortir d'un tel dualisme, je montre que Bergson conçoit une logique de l'absurde et de l'imagination, avec le rêve, la folie et le comique, laquelle transmute la logique dans le domaine du (...) pathologique et de l'art littéraire, et offre à l'image une seconde gloire.In this paper, I analyze the sense in which Henri Bergson characterizes logic, which he understands to be a means of simplification, dissimulation, ordering, limitation and systematizing, as well as a habit of thinking and something basically ontological. Overall, logic seems to be the privilege of the understanding; it is unfit to apply itself to duration, or to reality itself. To help us out of such dualism, I show that Bergson — considering dreams, madness, and comedy — conceives of a logic of the imagination and of the absurd that transplants logic into the field of the pathological and literary art, and that offers a second glory to images. (shrink)

L’intérêt que Bergson porte aux arts est bien connu. À travers l’ensemble de son œuvre, les exemples souvent inspirés par la littérature et la lecture semblent révéler une certaine affinité pour cette forme d’art. Pourtant, malgré sa récurrence, ce thème n’est jamais étudié frontalement ni profondément. Cette brève étude se veut un tour d’horizon du répertoire bergsonien, une recherche d’éléments qui permettraient peut-être d’articuler une pensée bergsonienne de la lecture. Plus précisément, nous examinons les exemples utilisés par Bergson pour illustrer (...) les notions de suggestion, d’attention et de sympathie, pour déterminer si ces descriptions du phénomène de lecture ne sont que des exemples, ou s’ils ont une valeur philosophique propre. (shrink)

Though one of anti-intellectualism’s key historical figures, Henri Bergson’s thought has not played a significant role in ongoing discussions of that topic. This paper attempts to help change this situation by discussing the notion at the centre of Bergson’s anti-intellectualism (namely, intuition) alongside the notion at the centre of a central form of contemporary anti-intellectualism (namely, know-how or skill). In doing so, it focuses on perhaps the most common objection to both Bergson and contemporary anti-intellectualists: that their anti-intellectualisms are rather (...) forms of irrationalism. It argues that in fact only a narrow charge of irrationalism applies to Bergsonian intuition and that a form of contemporary anti-intellectualism may offer help in responding to this remaining accusation. (shrink)

Riassunto : Questo articolo propone un confronto tra la teoria mente-corpo di Henri Bergson e gli ultimi sviluppi della filosofia della mente e, più specificamente, con il cosiddetto “esternalismo”. Lo scopo è duplice. In primo luogo, si vuole sostenere che l’opera del filosofo francese ha anticipato i principali punti teorici dell’esternalismo: la teoria della percezione di Bergson, infatti, ha molti e rilevanti tratti in comune con la cosiddetta 4E Cognition, che finora non sono stati adeguatamente riconosciuti. In secondo luogo, l’articolo (...) intende anche mostrare come il quadro ontologico in cui Bergson colloca la propria interpretazione dell’esperienza cosciente, possa fungere da utile riferimento per il modello esternalista, al fine di sistematizzare i dati sperimentali entro un orizzonte teorico coerente. La teoria della "percezione pura" di Bergson, infatti, supera il modello correlazionista dell’esperienza, rilevando come quest’ultima, allo stato puro, si collochi nelle cose stesse, a un livello di realtà che precede la divaricazione dell’esperienza tra soggetto e oggetto, livello che deve essere pensato come l’origine impersonale della coscienza soggettiva. Parole chiave: Esternalismo; Percezione; Azione; Problema mente/corpo The mind/body problem in Henri Bergson e the externalism in philosophy of mind. Towards an ontological model: In this article we contrast Henri Bergson’s mind-body theory with the latest developments in Philosophy of Mind, more specifically, in so-called “Externalism”. This paper has two specific aims. First, we argue that the work of this French philosopher anticipated the main theoretical concepts of Externalism. Indeed, Bergson’s theory of perception shares many important features, which have not been adequately recognized until now, with so-called 4E Cognition. Second, we show how Bergson’s basic ontology, which frames his interpretation of conscious experience, could offer a coherent theoretical framework to systematize experimental data in an externalist model. Bergson’s theory of “pure perception” goes beyond correlation, showing that our experience, in its purest state, takes place within things themselves, at a level of reality that precedes the bifurcation of experience into a subject and an object. This undivided level of reality can be considered the impersonal origin of subjective consciousness. Keywords: Externalism; Perception; Action; Mind/Body Problem. (shrink)

Tässä artikkelissa käsittelen Henri Bergsonin (1859–1941) intuition käsitettä ja sen suhdetta hänen filosofiseen menetelmäänsä. Bergsonin on nähty tarkoittavan intuitiolla yhtäältä filosofian metodia ja toisaalta tiettyä älyyn verrattavaa filosofialle ainutlaatuista tiedon muotoa. Esitän, että Bergsonille intuitio on samanaikaisesti näitä molempia. Se on todellisuuden ajattelemista kestona, sisäistä jatkuvuuttamme muistuttavana liikkeenä. Intuitiossa tavoitetaan todellisuuden luonne sikäli kuin se on läsnä myös meissä itsessämme tällaisena jatkuvuutena. Metodologisesti se on todellisuuden tarkastelua ajallisuuden ja muutoksen perspektiivistä. Tiedon muotona se on välitöntä ymmärrystä tarkastelun kohteesta itsestään.

Contemporary debates on freedom traverse questions concerning metaphysics, the mind/body relationship, evolution, morality, and religion. Throughout his life, the French philosopher Henri Bergson dealt with these questions from the perspective of time, believing that spatializing these problems led to inadequate solutions. That freedom was a centralizing concern in his oeuvre can be demonstrated in the way he approached these questions in challenging determinism, materialism, mechanism, and finalism. Bergson studies, despite noting the importance of freedom for Bergson, have focussed on intuition (...) and duration as his seminal contributions. Bergson himself never thematized freedom in any specific way, but by working with a positive conception of freedom, as a creation of the new within the fiow of duration, freedom can be seen as a centralizing motif in his work. By clarifying the nature of freedom and its centrality, the ground can be cleared for a Bergsonian intervention into contemporary debates on freedom. (shrink)

Introduction to the first special issue of Bergsoniana, a new journal in Bergson studies.

It is important for the theory of knowledge to understand the factors involved in the generation of the capacities of knowledge. In the history of modern philosophy, knowledge is generally held to originate in either one or two sources, and the debates about these sources between philosophers have concerned their existence, or legitimacy. Furthermore, some philosophers have advocated scepticism about the human capacity to understand the origins of knowledge altogether. However, the developmental aspects of knowledge have received relatively little attention (...) both by past philosophers and in current philosophical discussions. This dissertation provides a historical approach to this developmental problem of knowledge by interpreting the developmental theories of knowledge of Maine de Biran (1766–1824) and Henri Bergson (18591941) from the perspective of a theory of the ‘generative factors of knowledge.’ It first studies the philosophies of Maine de Biran and Bergson separately and then brings together and compares the metaphilosophical aims drawn from these philosophers. The dissertation’s novel analysis, provided by its theory and structure, has far-reaching consequences. From a wide point of view, it fills in considerable scholarly gaps and provides great opportunities for future research in the study of the history of philosophy. From more specific points of view, it provides its most decisive contributions in such metaphysical and epistemological topics as the nature of causality, self-generated activity, the role of effort in knowing and learning, the complementary relationship between philosophy and science, and the non-conceptual basis of knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter examines the topicality of Bergson's philosophy of evolution. Because of his rejection of Darwinism, his scientific approximations and his metaphorical style, Bergson was never truly considered a philosopher of science. Biologists as philosophers of biology no longer refer to Bergson since the second half of the twentieth century, i.e., the advent of the Modern Synthesis. At best Bergson's poetic talents are praised, but rarely the penetration of his intuitions. In this text, this qualification that defines Bergson as a (...) poet is taken seriously. The status of the Bergsonian images, and more specifically the status of the élan vital, is analysed. It is argued that the élan vital is less a literary image than a true "fluid concept", whose heuristic scope is brought to light today through the discoveries and problems raised by contemporary biology. (shrink)

Bergson’s critique of intensive magnitude in Time and Free Will mainly targets Kant’s “Anticipations of Perception”, in which the Kantian distinction between matter and form is lowered. Bergson pra...

This chapter examines Bertrand Russell’s various confrontations with Bergson’s work. Russell’s meetings with Bergson during 1911 would be followed in 1912 by the publication of Russell’s earliest polemical pieces. His 1912 review of Bergson’s Laughter ridicules the effort to develop a philosophical account of humour on the basis of some formula. In his 1912 “The Philosophy of Bergson”, Russell develops a series of objections against Bergson’s accounts of number, space, and duration. Bergson’s position is defended against Russell’s onslaught by H. (...) W. Carr (1913) and Karin Costelloe-Stephen (1914), though Russell only replies to the former. By contrast to Bergson’s silence in the face of Russell’s criticisms, Russell would continue responding to Bergson’s views in multiple works during the 1910s and 1920s. As this chapter shows, Russell not only develops further objections against specific theses upheld by Bergson, but also comments upon the political implications of Bergson’s philosophy, as well as its positioning within the history of French philosophy. (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

In Bergson and Intensive Magnitude: Dismantling his Critique, Florian Vermeiren argues that Bergson’s critique of intensive magnitude in Time and Free Will is inconsistent with his later philosophy, and even inconsistent with the role of a “difference in degrees of freedom” in Time and Free Will. I argue that it is rather Vermeiren’s analysis which mischaracterizes Bergson’s critique and therefore the interpretation of an inconsistency cannot stand. In the first two sections I reevaluate Bergson’s critique, showing what, according to Bergson, (...) are the good and bad senses of intensity, and how this critique allowed Bergson to institute a new conception of difference as expressed in concrete continuity. In the final section I examine the importance of infinitesimal thought in Bergson’s good sense of intensity. (shrink)

Bergson was a pre-eminent European philosopher of the early twentieth century and his work covers all major branches of philosophy. This volume of essays is the first collection in twenty years in English to address the whole of Bergson's philosophy, including his metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of life, aesthetics, ethics, social and political thought, and religion. The essays explore Bergson's influence on a number of different fields, and also extend his thought to pressing issues of our time, including (...) philosophy as a way of life, inclusion and exclusion in politics, ecology, the philosophy of race and discrimination, and religion and its enduring appeal. The volume will be valuable for all who are interested in this important thinker and his continuing relevance. (shrink)

In this work I propose a theory of evolution as a process of unfolding. This theory is based on four logically concatenated principles. The principle of evolutionary order establishes that the more complex cannot be generated from the simpler. The principle of origin establishes that there must be a maximum complexity that originates the others by logical deduction. Finally, the principle of unfolding and the principle of actualization guarantee the development of the evolutionary process from the simplest to the most (...) complex. These logical principles determine the existence of a virtual ideological matrix that contains the sequence of the preformed and folded morphogenetic fields. In this manner, the evolutionary process consists of the sequential unfolding and actualization of these fields, which is motorized by a process of teleologization carried out by the opening consciousness of the forms included in the fields of the ideological matrix. This theory leads to a radical change of perspective regarding the materialist worldview, and places life at the center of the evolutionary process as an activity carried out by a consciousness that seeks to fulfill a purpose by actualizing its own potentialities. (shrink)

Though scholarship has explored Karin Costelloe-Stephen’s contributions to the history of psychoanalysis, as well as her relations to the Bloomsbury Group, her philosophical work has been almost completely ignored. This paper will examine her debate with Bertrand Russell over his criticism of Bergson. Costelloe-Stephen had employed the terminology of early analytic philosophy in presenting a number of arguments in defence of Bergson’s views. Costelloe-Stephen would object, among other things, to Russell’s use of an experiment which, as she points out, was (...) first conducted by Carl Stumpf. Russell appeals to Stumpf's experiment in his attempt to prove that sense data are terms in logical relations, a thesis presupposed by the project of logical analysis outlined in Our Knowledge of the External World. A reformulated version of Costelloe-Stephen's argument put forth by this paper shows that Russell's argument fails to provide adequate proof for his thesis. Further modifications of the argument can also address a reconstruction (based on contemporary reports) of Russell's reply to Costelloe-Stephen. In his reply, Russell would use, already in 1914, the term ‘analytic philosophy’ in contrasting his and Moore’s approach to a continental one, exemplified by Bergson and Costelloe-Stephen. (shrink)