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French philosopher Henri Berksson was born in Paris in 1859 and died in January

1941 after waiting hours in the cold to register as Jewish in Nazi-occupied France. The Englishman

Bertrand Russell was no fan of Berkson, but the two thinkers nevertheless did have one thing in common.

They both won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Although his impact is barely felt today, as his biographer Emily Herring

explains, Berkson was hugely famous during his lifetime. Emily Herring, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

Hi, thank you so much for having me. The topic we're going to talk about today is

Henri Berkson. Who was he? So Henri Berkson was a French philosopher. You may not be familiar with

his name, but about 100 years ago, he was kind of unavoidable. He was a philosopher, but he was also

a celebrity. The lectures he gave at the

College de France in Paris on topics such as time and memory and creativity were in extremely

high demand. People would climb up the side of the window to listen in. And in the English-speaking

world, he was extremely famous, which is no longer the case today.

That's true of many French philosophers, actually, that they do somehow break through into the public awareness. But was there something special about him?

There was something about his lecturing style, first of all, that really drew in a lot of people.

From testimony I've read, there was some kind of really enchanting musical

quality almost to his lecturing style. And he lectured without notes as well. I've read lots

of testimony of people saying they had the impression he was sort of coming up with the ideas

...