Bergsonism in the Thought of Léopold Sédar Senghor

Abstract

This chapter examines the role of Bergson’s thought in Léopold Sédar Senghor’s philosophy of Negritude, showing how the distinction between modes of perception made by Bergson is integral to Senghor’s characterization of African art. For Senghor, Bergson’s distinction between modes of knowing and perception (an analytic, separating intelligence versus a comprehending or synthetic intelligence) is translated into the distinction between the “reason-eye” characteristic of Western aesthetic perception and the “reason-embrace” integral to the full experience of African art. Recognizing that this distinction between modes is between “two depths of the soul” rather than “two [fundamentally different] souls” not only defends Senghor’s thought against accusations that it is the unacknowledged reprisal of French philosopher and anthropologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl’s theories of primitive mentality, but also leads away from a relatively common view of this thought as reductively essentializing.