I. Early Life:
Henri Bergson (1859-1941), the son of a Jewish musician and an English woman, was educated at the Lycée Condorcet and the École Normale Supérieure, where he studied philosophy. After a teaching career as a schoolmaster in various secondary schools, Bergson was appointed to the École Normale Supérieure in 1898 and, from 1900 to 1921, held the chair of philosophy at the Collège de France. In 1914 he was elected to the Académie Française; from 1921 to 1926 he was president of the Commission for Intellectual Cooperation of the League of Nations. Shortly before his death in 1941, Bergson expressed in several ways his opposition to the Vichy regime. Bergson's English background explains the deep influence that Spencer, Mill, and Darwin had on him during his youth, but his own philosophy is largely a reaction against their rationalist systems.
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