Investigates the philosophy of M. Bergson on knowledge, especially on discrepancies between knowledge and the object of knowledge, concluding that the contradictions and difficulties in Bergson's philosophy can be escaped by shaping one's epistemology on what an observation of science shows human knowledge to be.

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This incisive critique of the thought of Henri Bergson is Jacques Maritain's first book. In it he shows himself already to have an authoritative grasp of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and an uncanny ability to show its relevance to alternative systems such as that of Bergson. It would be difficult to overestimate the role that Bergson played in helping French philosophy extricate itself from the deadening materialism which had dominated the Sorbonne. It was that materialism that brought Jacques and Raissa Maritain to the brink of suicide. They drew back for two major reasons. First was the lectures of Henri Bergson in the College de France. Here was an alternative to the thought that had made them suicidal. The second great reason was Leon Bloy and their subsequent conversion to Catholicism.It was not long before their Catholicism turned them to the thought of Thomas Aquinas. When Maritain compared Bergson and Thomas, he was immediately struck by the weaknesses of the former. This book is a relentless criticism of the philosophy of the man whose lectures had meant so much to Maritain. It is a young man's book and twenty-five years later Maritain, while not retracting his criticisms, regretted their triumphal tone. Bergson himself came into the Church on his deathbed. Knowledge of this doubtless caused Maritain to recognize a harmony beyond criticisms of this book. Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism presents us with a philosopher who mastered his craft, a Thomist who acquired the mind of Thomas himself, and a critic of rare perception and refinement.

This book proposes a new reading of Bergsonism based on the admission that time, conceived as duration, stretches instead of passes. This swelling time is full and so excludes the negative. Yet, swelling requires some resistance, but such that it is more of a stimulant than a contrariety. The notion of élan vital fulfills this requirement: it states the immanence of life to matter, thereby deriving the swelling from an internal effort and allowing its conceptualization as self-overcoming. With self-overcoming as the inner dynamics of reality, Bergson dismisses all forms of dualism and reductionist monism because both the absence of negativity and the swelling nature of time posit a creative process yielding a qualitatively diverse world. This graded oneness is how the lower level activates intensification by turning into limitation, making possible higher levels of achievement, in particular through the union of mind and body and the integration of openness and closed sociability.