The term Open Society was rigorously presented by Bergson in Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion (1932), but it was Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) that made the expression famous. It was under the influence of this last approach and not Bergson's that the term came to be used practically as a synonym for democracy or a scientific, rational, free, tolerant, inclusive, pluralist and humanist social order. The term has come to encompass (...) nearly every core value held by the free world; but what it gained in breadth it lost in depth, approaching common sense at the expense of its philosophical value. This article, therefore, tries to revert this conceptual impoverishment, returning to Bergson's original perspective, in dialogue with Karl Popper's rationalist and critical reflection. (shrink)

Iniciamos esse artigo com alguns aspectos básicos do pensamento dos pré-socráticos, principalmente de Parmênides, com o intuito de facilitar a exposição da interpretação que dois filósofos contemporâneos, Heidegger e Bergson, fazem dos primórdios da filosofia, mais especificamente da metafísica e de seu natural desenvolvimento. Tanto Heidegger quanto Bergson possuem leituras críticas da metafísica tradicional e ambos sugerem novas formas de compreensão do Ser. No entanto, enquanto Heidegger interpreta o nada como um aspecto privilegiado para essa nova forma de compreensão metafísica, (...) Bergson compreende a ideia do nada como a origem de muitos falsos problemas acerca do Ser. (shrink)