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Notes on video lecture:
Henri Bergson on WWI Germany and France
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on July 31, 2016 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
wills, vitality, confident, mechanization, Bismarck, spontaneity, machine, November, lucidity, women, conscience, nemesis, public, metaphysical, sacrée, intellectual, destruction, certain, French, reputation, brutality, mind, Evolution, life, propaganda, soldiers, war, categories, death, succumb
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Henri Bergson
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French philosopher
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by WWI had achieved an unparalleled                     
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1914, election to the Académie française
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his lectures at the Collège de France were wildly popular, especially with           
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exhibited clarity of insight, controlled form of prose, and                 
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a person who was entirely dedicated to the life of the         
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during Dreyfus Affair, remained aloof and distant from              debates
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but at the outbreak of WWI, immediately supported the              war effort
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produced speeches and texts meant to embolden and bolster French                  and the population
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the paradox of whether it is possible to both remain a philosopher and think through the historical moment while at the same time attempting to act upon it
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gives a certain vigorous vitality to his wartime engagement as the premier philosopher of the French nation
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Bergson's                  text
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dramatic opening statement
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sets a defiant,                    tone
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"This issue of struggle is not doubtful: Germany will               ."
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establishes himself as the moral                      of the nation and as a font of philosophical wisdom
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soldiers would be exalted in the sense that the knowledge of the future is               
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he is the moral conscience of the nation with an official institution of                      directly meant for soldiers
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to assemble and unit the 'union                           '
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he avoids using the word       , "guerre" but speaks instead of struggle, i.e. lutte
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this quiet displacement of one term for another linguistically anchors and signals a complex operation
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suspends any political or economic conception
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anchors a                          conception of the war
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a class between two forms of life
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France is in a sacred mission to defend the primacy of         , values of justice and freedom against the aggressiveness of German destructiveness and militarism
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backwashing of metaphysics through political meaning
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apparent in Bergson's philosophical assessment of what is at stake between Germany and France
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Bergson mobilizes his own philosophical                      in order to arrive at philosophical portraits of the German and the French
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largely drawn from his 1907 work, "Creative                   "
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a distinction between life as renewal, as creativity, as spontaneity, and freedom
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as opposed to mechanism, atomization, and the inertness of           
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Germany
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has a rich                          history, a deep philosophical tradition
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Prussia
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represents militarism, modern bureaucracy and                           
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argues that Germany has become militarized through Prussian influence
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speaks of                  as the Evil Genius
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what is it to be German
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a form of life that is fundamental attached not to creativity but to death and                       
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reflected in the organization of the German spirit as bent on mechanization, atomization, that the German military is a               
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as opposed to the French army which is tied to ideals of courage, spontaneity,                 , freedom and justice
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so the war is not an antagonism or a duel between two           , as Clausewitz understood it, but existentially an antagonism between two forms of life
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and what is pitted against each other is nothing less than life and death
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thus demanding the ultimate sacrifice from the French nation to preserve justice, freedom, life and                       
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by completely destroying the German               
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"But the energy of our soldiers is drawn from something which does not waste, from an ideal of justice and freedom. Time has no hold us. To the force which feeds only on its own                   , we are opposing that which seeks, outside and above itself, a principle of life and renovation. While the one is gradually spending itself, the other is continually remaking itself. The one is already wavering; the other abides, unshaken. Have no fear; our foe will be slayed."

Spelling Corrections:

nemisis ⇒ nemesis
Carl von Clausewitz: On War
The Nature of Colonialism Wars
1916 Zurich and Perspectives on the Great War
The Necessity of War in Politics
Eucken's Interpretation of Fichte
Husserl, the Great War, and the Meaning of Death
Henri Bergson on WWI Germany and France
Hermann Cohen on Judentum and Deutschtum during WWI
Hodgson and Reinach on Foreboding