Encountering Bergson in Eliot: A Report on Philosophy, Science, and Religion

Abstract

Despite there being deep lines of convergence between the philosophies of Henri Bergson and T. S. Eliot, it is still debatable whether Eliot remained a ‘Bergsonian’ till the end or not. Also, the conversation between Bergson and Eliot scholars has been found to be limited in this direction. I will argue that it is in Bergson’s philosophy and the multiple tangents arising out of it that the investigation about time can find the coherence Eliot was looking for. Bergson’s philosophy of time embodied in the experience of duration provides not only a kind of ontological ‘awareness’ but an epistemological and psychological one as well to the extent that both the investigated concept and the investigator undergo a radical transformation. Therefore, this ‘new’ philosophy of time, based on genuine indeterminacy and affirming multiplicity, can provide grounds for the emergence of something entirely new. It is in these explorations about philosophy, science, and religion that the Bergsonian influence on Eliot becomes most engaging. Eliot has been a difficult poet raising pertinent questions about the Modernist era and its culture but Eliot, the philosopher, and his position on the problems of time and reality still remains undefined. Bergson’s treatment of time, his views on coexistence, and the creative force too requires further exploration as they hold considerable relevance in our times. I will show that it is in their philosophical attempts to arrive at a proper understanding about the nature of reality that Eliot comes very close to Bergson.