Project Bergson in Japan
An international collaborative research project
Project Bergson in Japan (PBJ) is an international collaborative research framework that takes Bergson’s philosophy as its starting point and aims to connect the history of philosophy with the contemporary sciences. Founded in 2007, it is funded by JSPS Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Kiban B).
Researchers from France and elsewhere work together with Japanese scholars, reading a single text closely over several years, and then bringing the issues that emerge into dialogue with researchers in philosophy of mind, philosophy of time, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and biology. Extended Bergsonism is the orientation that has grown out of this exchange.
- Official site: Project Bergson in Japan
- Director: Yasushi Hirai (Professor, Faculty of Letters, Keio University)
- 日本語ページ
Phases
| Phase | Period | Theme | Director |
|---|---|---|---|
| I–II | –2014 | Foundational Bergson studies | Shin Abiko |
| III | 2015–2018 | Matter and Memory: a comprehensive study | Yasushi Hirai |
| IV | 2019– | Time and Free Will: a comprehensive study | Yasushi Hirai |
| V | 2024– | Pluralistic developments of Bergson’s thought on time | Yasushi Hirai |
KAKEN database: Phase III (15H03154) | Phase IV (19H01190) | Phase V (24K00005)
Selected publications
Bergson’s Scientific Metaphysics: Matter and Memory Today
Yasushi Hirai (ed.), Bloomsbury, 2023. | Publisher’s page
An English-language volume growing out of the 2015 international symposium on Matter and Memory.
The Matter and Memory trilogy (Shoshi-Shinsui, in Japanese)
The Powers of Durée: New Horizons Opened by Bergson’s Time and Free Will
Yasushi Hirai and Hisashi Fujita (eds.), Shoshi-Shinsui, 2024 (in Japanese). | Publisher’s page
A volume of essays from Phase IV, in six parts: intensity and rhythm; time and space; personhood and freedom; developments after Time and Free Will; social-theoretical developments of the concept of duration; and its developments in Japan.
Translations
- Bergson, Histoire de l’idée de temps: Cours au Collège de France 1902–1903 (Japanese translation, 2019)
- Bergson, Histoire des théories de la mémoire: Cours au Collège de France 1903–1904 (Japanese translation, 2023)
Both are based on newly discovered stenographic records of Bergson’s lectures.
Activities
For symposia, workshops, and lecture series, see the activity record (in Japanese) and the PBJ official site.