Matter and Memory

Rating:
Summary: As always, fascinating ideas
Review: Athough some of the reviewers pick up some very important points such as the lack of clarity in "Matter and Memory", which is very evident, this is contrasted with "Creative Evolution" (CE) which was far clearer, but then different translators were involved in each case. I do believe some of the translations suffer as a result of this. However I have also found that Bergson must be read at least twice in order to grasp the, at times, convoluted concepts. I found this book to be far less whole as a complete text in comparison with CE but nonetheless there were some fascinating ideas. Some of these ideas were developed but others I felt were left to lie idle. There is much depth in Bergson and one feels maybe that ordinary language is not very good at expressing his ideas which are dynamic, process based rather than, as European languages are, on nouns, a static concept.

I disagree with one of the reviewers saying how his science has been surpasssed, since almost all of his psychology is still valid as are the most important points related to a human beings own perception, I see no reason or any information which makes one state categorically that the brain must be the centre of the mind, a tool perhaps or a way of allowing the mind to come into expression but nothing like as solid which is needed for a proof of a mechanistic paradigm.

I also feel that Bergson coud be easily updated and made less convoluted by someone willing to take on his mode of thought and take into account the new science since Bergson's day, it has been 80 years or so. I believe that most of Bergson's work will in fact still be relevant, maybe even more so.

Bergson argues well that both materialism and idealism are bound to fail for in fact much the same reasons and that they are products of the same mode of thought even though their concepts are at polar opposites, sometimes a mode of thought is easily hidden by a different concept which maintains the same underpinning implicit/unconsciuous way of thinking.

Bergson is always worth reading not simply for his ideas which are fascinating even if outmoded but because of his radical thought process which allows a remarkable degree of expansion eg "There are real movements" this has many possible connotations in physics, psychology, metaphysics the realms of interest are endless. As such Bergson should be read for the ideas and the development which can occur from his work. As always with Bergson patience and multiple reads are the ways to a rewarding understanding and expansion of the mind.

Rating:
Summary: Ho-hum
Review: Gabriel Clark-Leach's comments reveal his ignorance of not only of "English students" but also of Damasio. His snide generalizing is indicitive of the quality of his thinking.

Rating:
Summary: extremely difficult work by a forgotten genius
Review: Matter and Memory is often taken as the cornerstone of Bergson's work by the few who still read him, and I can't disagree with them. This is certainly his most radical work, but unfortunately, it is also his most difficult. Speaking for myself, even though I was very well read in the literature on Bergson--especially Deleuze's--I still had to read the first chapter almost four times before I felt comfortable enough to move on to the second. And it really isn't that Bergson is just obscure here. He does not use neologisms, and he tries very hard to be as precise as possible. I would say, I guess, that this is why it is still necessary to bother with this work, because it's difficulty is quite evidently related to its profundity. The concepts of matter and memory developed at length by Bergson in this work were so novel in his time that they're pretty much still as novel today. That's partly because, as some reviewers below say, there's a general feeling that science has made his "queer" views obsolete. This is palpably false. And then, on the other hand, it's because this book is terribly dry and, as Leonard Lawlor has said, doesn't have any entertaining "characters," like Merleau-Ponty's Schneider, to keep people plastered to the page. Consequently, not many people, even professional philosophers, have read the book in its entirety.
In sum: unless you're some sort of deity, you probably won't be drooling with a thirst for Bergson after reading this for the first time. The book is poorly organized and the chapters are all around 70-80 pages long, so ideas and arguments are jumbled about like lottery balls, and oftentimes Bergson just seems to write whatever pops into his mind at the moment. However, I re-iterate that with an open mind and some patience, the difficulty will be forgiveable, and the effort to get inside of it well worth your time. This gets five stars for the ideas, three for style.