Overview

This book is a philosophical study of the concept of affect in the thought of Henri Bergson. It provides an account of the place and evolution of the idea throughout Bergson's works and argues that an understanding of the changing nature of this central concept reveals important ruptures in Bergson's own philosophical development. As Bergson shows, affectivity plays a central role in philosophical thinking about consciousness. In his early work, Bergson's describes an embodied, temporal subject whose very subjectivity relies on a productive notion of affectivity. As his thought develops, however, Bergson's metaphysics take an increasingly utilitarian turn characterized by the minimization of affectivity. Through a series of transformations, disappearances, and displacements, affectivity comes to qualify the way Bergson understands everything from the body, to subjectivity, to life as such. The book concludes by discussing the pivotal role these ideas played in how Bergson was received by 20th Century phenomenology.

Full Product Details

Author:   Miguel José Paley
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
ISBN:  

9781399544719

ISBN 10:   1399544713
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   31 March 2026
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction: Some Notes on Affect, “Affect Theory,” and Bergson On “Affect Theory” The Meaning of Affect in Bergson A Tension at the Heart of Affect Brief Outline of Our Investigation Chapter I: Consciousness, Process, & Intuition Living and Reflecting on Consciousness Philosophical Analysis & Intuition Intuition as Method Intuition & Language Intensity Intensity as Quality Quality and Synchronization Quality and Duration Affect Multiplicity, Space, & Duration Chapter II: Affect & Utility in Bergson’s Matter & Memory From the Essai to Matter and Memory Metaphysics and the Principle of Utility Matter The Human Subject The Body Perception Memory Affect Chapter III: Subjectivity, Individuality, & The Élan Vital. 109 Introduction Élan of life Life and Individual Consciousness The Dual Genesis of the Intellect and Matter (the Body as Nervous System) Life, Death, and Individuality Chapter IV:The Moral and Mystical Transformations of Affectivity Method and Aims of The Two Sources Closed Morality, Emotion, and War Open morality, Emotion, and Mysticism Conclusion: On Two Bergsons What Our Investigation Has Accomplished: On Affect Bergson’s Critics: Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, and Barbaras On Two Bergsons On Utility, Selfhood, and Analysis. Bibliography Notes

Reviews

At once historical and urgent, this book recovers the freshness of early Bergson—the revolution of Time and Free Will and Matter and Memory—through the most vital topic: how affect and embodiment shape selfhood and subjectivity. Paley changes how we read Bergson and why he matters. -- Alexandre Lefebvre, University of Sydney Paley sets himself the ambitious task of uncovering an ”affective Bergson.” Since Bergson rarely speaks of affect directly, the question has to be excavated, disentangled, and reconstructed from other lines of argument. This is what Paley accomplishes as he works through Bergson’s entire oeuvre with remarkable clarity, economy and rigor. His sustained and respectful challenge to Deleuze’s reading of Bergson marks a turning point in Bergson studies -- creating an opening beyond the “New Bergson” – even as it casts new light on questions of affect, and, indeed, of life. -- Suzanne Guerlac, University of California, Berkeley.

At once historical and urgent, this book recovers the freshness of early Bergson—the revolution of Time and Free Will and Matter and Memory—through the most vital topic: how affect and embodiment shape selfhood and subjectivity. Paley changes how we read Bergson and why he matters. -- Alexandre Lefebvre, University of Sydney

Author Information

Miguel José Paley is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. His research explores the ideas of affectivity, subjectivity, and the body with particular focus on the thought of Henri Bergson and phenomenology. His publications include Affect, Utility, and Self-Constitution. A Bergsonian Reading of Whitehead and Levinas (Bergsoniana, 2022), The Concept of Substitution in Bergson and Levinas in The Bergsonian Mind (Routledge, 2021) and Bergson and Levinas on the Genealogy of Mind (Journal for the British Society of Phenomenology, 2017).

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