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Note sur M. Bergson et la philosophie bergsonienne
1914 · translated from the French · 50 pages
Note sur M. Bergson et la philosophie bergsonienne
by Charles Péguy
The full French text is public domain and free to read — linked below. This English translation is ours.
On this page: a summary of Note sur M. Bergson et la philosophie bergsonienne, which translation this edition uses, and our clean edition as a PDF or EPUB.
Péguy came out of militant socialism and unbelief and returned to Catholicism around 1908, without ever quite rejoining the church’s institutions. The Note sur M. Bergson, written in the last months of his life, defends Bergson against the placing of his works on the Index and is Péguy’s most direct engagement with philosophy, grace and freedom. He was killed at the Marne in September 1914.
The convert behind the argument
Péguy was a scholarship boy from Orléans, a Dreyfusard and a socialist who kept a bookshop and edited the Cahiers de la Quinzaine, and an unbeliever for years. His return to Catholicism around 1908 was private and idiosyncratic — he did not have his children baptized and rarely received the sacraments — but it reshaped everything he wrote afterwards.
Summary
The Note begins in the middle of a public quarrel: the arguments of the preceding years over Bergson and Bergsonism, which Péguy says would have been much clearer if anyone had been willing to examine what is meant by intellectualism — and adds, in his characteristic aside, that clarity may not have been what anyone wanted.
His defense separates terms that the polemic had run together: reason is not wisdom, neither is logic, and none of the three is intelligence. Bergson’s achievement, on his account, was not to rearrange these domains but to work a revolution inside them.
The most quoted passages are the ones on grace and freedom, where Péguy uses the image of a besieged city: grace is the relieving army, but the freedom of the besieged must make a sortie to meet it. He wrote this in 1914 and was killed at the front on 5 September of that year, the day before the battle of the Marne began in earnest.
Who was Charles Péguy?
Charles Péguy (1873–1914) was born in Orléans to a family of small means, won his way through the education system to the École Normale Supérieure, and became a socialist, a militant Dreyfusard, and the founder of the review Cahiers de la Quinzaine, which he ran from a Paris bookshop.
He returned to Catholic belief around 1908 while remaining outside the ordinary practice of the church, and wrote the long religious poems — the Mystère de la charité de Jeanne d’Arc, Ève — on which his reputation rests. He was commissioned as a lieutenant of infantry in 1914 and was killed on 5 September, on the eve of the Marne.
Which translation of Note sur M. Bergson et la philosophie bergsonienne is this?
The French text is free at Wikisource as a clean, proofread transcription from the Œuvres complètes. The English translations that exist are under copyright; our own English edition is a machine translation with automated review, and says so on the book page and in the file.
Common questions
- What is the Note sur M. Bergson?
- Charles Péguy’s 1914 defense of the philosopher Henri Bergson, written after Bergson’s works were placed on the Index, and his most direct treatment of philosophy in relation to faith, grace and human freedom.
- Is it available in English?
- Not freely. The English translation by Bruce K. Ward (Cascade, 2019) is in copyright. The French text is free at Wikisource, and we offer our own English edition — a machine translation with automated review, not a human translator’s work.
A note on the text. The French text of Note sur M. Bergson et la philosophie bergsonienne is in the public domain. This English translation is not — it is ours. It was made by machine translation with editorial review, not by a human translator working from scratch. We say so because it is the honest description of what it is, and because it is why this edition costs a fraction of a scholarly translation rather than competing with one. The original text is also available free here.
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