Notes on Bergson and Descartes: Philosophy Christianity and Modernity in Contestation: 34 (Veritas)

Charles Peguy (1873-1914) was a French religious poet philosophical essayist publisher social activist Dreyfusard and Catholic convert. There has recently been a renewed recognition of Peguy in France as a thinker of unique significance a reconsideration inspired in large part by Gilles Deleuzes Difference et repetition which ranked him with Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. In the English-speaking world however access to Peguy has been hindered by a scarcity of translations of his work. This first complete translation of one of his most important prose works with accompanying interpretive introduction and notes will introduce English-speaking readers to a new voice which speaks in a powerful and original way to a modern West in a condition of cultural and spiritual crisis. The immediate circumstance of the writing of this last prose essay unfinished at the time of Peguys early death was the placing of Henri Bergsons philosophical works on the Catholic Index and Peguys undertaking to defend his former teacher from his critics both Catholic and secular. But the subject of Bergson is also a springboard for the exploration of the perennial themes--philosophical theological and literary--most central to Peguys thought.