Suzanne Guerlac

I'm tired of resignedly pretending I don't think the capital-driven technocratic age we are galloping into will ultimately turn out to be a cul de sac for individual humans, human society, and the natural world of which we are still a part. Or that the possible "gains" represented by treating ourselves and the world as biochemical machines are not already being offset by incalculably larger losses. So Bergson, once considered reactionary because he rejected empiricism and dialectics, or "soft" because he championed the reality of subjective experience, including affect, is looking better than ever. And this is a great introduction, accessible to anyone with even a rudimentary interest in philosophy. Time is real, says Bergson, it is irreversible, it is a creative force, and living beings are always, inevitably, beings in time. Sounds much better to me than a dystopia where individuals (who can pay) meld themselves with machines to try to remain "living" as long as possible, or a disembodied, virtual experience completely replaces an embodied one. It seems truer than ever that if we as a species don't understand what it means to be alive, we won't be able to create a life worth living.… (mehr)