An Introduction to Metaphysics

A reprint of the Library of Liberal Arts edition of 1949.

Peter A.Y. Gunter

With its signal distinction between 'intuition' and 'analysis' and its exploration of the different levels of Duration (Bergson's term for Heraclitean flux), An Introduction to Metaphysics has had a significant impact on subsequent twentieth century thought. The arts, from post-impressionist painting to the stream of consciousness novel, and philosophies as diverse as pragmatism, process philosophy, and existentialism bear its imprint. Consigned for a while to the margins of philosophy, Bergson's thought is making its way back to the mainstream. The reissue of this important work comes at an opportune time, and will be welcomed by teachers and scholars alike. -University of North Texas

HENRI BERGSON (1859-1941) is one of the truly great philosophers of the modernist period, and there is currently a major renaissance of interest in his unduly neglected texts and ideas amongst philosophers, literary theorists, and social theorists.

JOHN MULLARKEY is a Lecturer in philosophy at the University of Dundee, UK. He is the author of Bergson and Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press, 1999) and editor, with Keith Ansell Pearson, of Bergson: Key Writings (Continuum, 2002).

MICHAEL KOLKMAN is a Graduate Student at the University of Warwick, UK, currently completing a PhD on the philosophy of Henri Bergson.

KEITH ANSELL PEARSON is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Warwick, UK. He is the author of Germinal Life: The Difference and Repetition of Deleuze (Routledge, 1999), Philosophy and the Adventure of the Virtual (Routledge, 2001), An Introduction to Nietzsche as Political Thinker (CUP, 1994). He is the co-editor of a forthcoming 'Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche' (Stanford) and editor of the 1890-1930 volume of Acumen's forthcoming 7-volume series in the history of Continental Philosophy.