Abstract

Henri Bergson was born in Paris on October 18, 1859, the son of a Polish father (Varsovie Michael Bergson) and an English mother (Katherine Levinson Bergson). Both Michael and Katherine Bergson were Jewish, and they shared a Hasidic background. Though Henri Bergson did not consider himself Jewish in any orthodox sense, he conceded that the awareness of belonging to an unfairly treated minority was to have a lasting influence on his life. While his father was a pianist – a popularizer of Chopin – and composer, his mother was deeply interested in the arts, especially the contemporary literary world.