Bergson

1. He is writing in the immediate aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, that period that very roughly occurs in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century in Europe and America. How does the emergence of the machine, of the technological apparati that come to dominate life, influence his philosophical observations?

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1. He is writing in the immediate aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, that period that very roughly occurs in the latter part of the Nineteenth Century in Europe and America. How does the emergence of the machine, of the technological apparati that come to dominate life, influence his philosophical observations?

we have all this privilege and convenience but on some level we don't trust machinery because it lacks spirituality

. He is writing in 1900, almost exactly at the same time that motion pictures emerge (c. 1895 for most scholars); can you read Laughter as a sort of prophecy?

Consider Bergson's ideas in the context of our ever-evolving conflict between vision (what we see literally, the sense world, knowledge, etc. and imagination (what we "see" in our hearts and minds, the spiritual aspect of life that is beyond sense, our beliefs and hopes, etc.)

once you see something, you can't unsee

. How is an arrangement of acts and events comic, according the the selection?

anything that fuses the organic w/ the inorganic and doesnt work

something that mechanistic that wants to be alive

What does the reading suggest is the basis for comic elements in situations?

childhood games

Moliere's Tartuffe

play satirizing the power of the Roman Catholic Church

Bergson uses it as an example

Jack in the Box

getting back to play, spontaneity

like a puppet on strings, a character thinks he is speaking and acting freely, but he appears to be a mear toy in the hands of another

absentmindedness

youre not always there