Vestiges of a Philosophy: Matter, the Meta-Spiritual, and the Forgotten Bergson (OXFORD STU WESTERN ESOTERICISM SERIES)
by: John Ó Maoilearca (Author)
Publisher: OUP USA
Publication Date: 15 Jan. 2023
Language: English
Print Length: 256 pages
ISBN-10: 0197613918
ISBN-13: 9780197613917
Book Description
Vestiges of a Philosophy: Matter, the Meta-Spiritual, and the Forgotten Bergson covers a fascinating yet little known moment in history. At the turn of the twentieth century, Henri Bergson and his sister, Mina Bergson (also known as Moina Mathers), were both living in Paris and working on seemingly very different but nonetheless complementary and even correlated approaches to questions about the nature of matter, spirit, and their interaction. He was a leading professor within the French academy, soon to become the most renowned philosopher in Europe. She was his estranged sister, already celebrated in her own right as a feminist and occultist performing on theatre stages around Paris while also leading one of the most important occult societies of that era, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. One was a respectable if controversial intellectual, the other was a notorious mystic-artist who, together with her husband and fellow-occultist Samuel MacGregor Mathers, have been described as the "neo-pagan power couple" of the Belle Époque. Neither Henri nor Mina left any record of their feelings and attitudes towards the work of the other, but their views on time, mysticism, spirit, and art converge on many fronts, even as they emerged from very different forms of cultural practice. In Vestiges of a Philosophy, John Ó Maoilearca examines this convergence of ideas and uses the Bergsons' strange correlation to tackle contemporary themes in new materialist philosophy, as well as the relationship between mysticism and philosophy.
About the Author
Review In this revelatory study of the intersecting interests of mystic Mina Bergson and her brother, philosopher Henri Bergson, Ó Maoilearca meticulously and cautiously tracks philosophical developments from nineteenth-century spiritualism to recent new materialism. In the process, he does no less than uncover occulture's and analytical philosophy's correlated investments in both spiritualism and materialism during the modernist period. This book will prove foundational to the study of modern mysticism as philosophical engagement and materialist analysis. ― Dennis Denisoff, author of Decadent Ecology in British Literature and Art, 1860-1910: Decay, Desire, and the Pagan RevivalHenri and Mina Bergson form one of the most enigmatic sibling duos of the fin-de-siècle. The unfamiliar reader might assume little common ground between the two―the former a highly respected philosopher, the latter a feminist occult leader largely unknown outside of specialist circles today. Exploring both siblings' thought in relation to the other and demonstrating their converging areas of interest, Ó Maoilearca offers a sophisticated, provocative, and beautifully crafted reconsideration of the relationship between Western esotericism and philosophy. A must-read for anyone seeking to understand the ambiguous position of mysticism and magic in the Western intellectual tradition. ― Manon Hedenborg White, author of The Eloquent Blood: The Goddess Babalon and the Construction of Femininities in Western EsotericismVestiges of a Philosophy performs its ideas with visionary urgency, as Ó Maoilearca sustains a diffractive reading of a vast array of sources―canonical works alongside obscure archival texts exhumed through meticulous archeology―that proposes conspicuous concordances between the thought of siblings Mina and Henri Bergson. The complex and exhilarating investigation significantly reconfigures the parallel Bergsonisms, contending with their strangeness and poetics, while aligning them with ideas of contemporary philosophy from Karen Barad and François Laruelle among others, in this volume's immaculate consideration of matter, memory, movement, and spirit. ― Matthew Goulish, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
About the Author John Ó Maoilearca is an honorary professor at Kingston University, London. He previously lectured in the philosophy departments of the University of Sunderland, England, and the University of Dundee, Scotland. He has published eleven books, including Philosophy and the Moving Image: Refractions of Reality (2010) and All Thoughts Are Equal: Laruelle and Nonhuman Philosophy (2015). Ó Maoilearca specializes in the areas of Continental Philosophy, film philosophy, metaphysics (especially of time and identity), and metaphilosophy.
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