Abstract

CARVALHO, Magda Costa. Indecision charged with promise: Images of life and childhood in Henri Bergson’s philosophy. Educação e Filosofia [online]. 2020, vol.34, n.71, pp.565-580.  Epub Feb 06, 2022. ISSN 1982-596X.  https://doi.org/10.14393/revedfil.v34n71a2020-56831.

In a passage in his Évolution Créatrice, Bergson reclaims the image of the child to argue that living nature works through divergent tendencies. Although Bergson’s work doesn’t focus specifically on education, it does contain references that, on the one hand, reclaim the creative and creating nature of childhood, while on the other hand accentuating the childlike nature of élan vital’s movements (vital impetus). These references are part of Bergson’s repertoire of imagery and demonstrate how his thought evokes uneven readings. The invitation to cross the image of life as childhood with that of childhood as life ultimately evokes a rethinking of what inhabits us as constitutively other: the child we were and the nature we are. And it is through the notion of image - as a form of dynamic contact with reality - that we will find some answers for Bergson’s suggestion that schools promote a childlike knowledge (enfantin).

Keywords : childhood; child; nature; image; Bergson.

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