Bøger af Barry (Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy Allen

Barry Allen here explains the philosophical ideas of Henri Bergson, a French philosopher prominent in the early 20th century. Allen puts forward Bergson as worthy of re-appraisal, and explains and interprets the arguments across Bergson's work in order to show why they are relevant to Anglophone philosophy today. A chapter is devoted to each of Bergson's four major works, explaining his theories of time, perception, memory, and panpsychic consciousness, hisinnovative concept of virtual existence, his objection to Darwin, his controversy with Einstein, his philosophy of creative evolution, and his social philosophy of closed and open society.

Empiricisms is about the value of experience and experiments. Why do we esteem them and what is their contribution to knowledge? The work is unique in the detail with which it explains empiricism, from its beginning in ancient medicine to its emergence as a philosophy of modern science. It elucidates the ideas of the so-called radical empiricists, clarifying their relation to historical empiricism, and explaining what is "radical" about them, and develops acomparison between European empiricism and ideas and practice in traditional China. Bringing China into the argument is an unexpected innovation, and makes the work a model for comparative philosophy.