CONTRIBUTI / 4 / Tommaso Giordani /
Taking issue against an established view, which reduces the interactions between Bergson and Sorel to a shared ‘irrationalism’, the article reconstructs successive phases of engagement between the two, focussing on the question of the effective impact of Bergsonian ideas on Sorel’s Reflections on violence. It identifies two complementary dynamics of engagement: a first one dictated by a philosophical affinity on the conceptualization of human agency and a second, more instrumental one, determined by Sorel’s need to find an established and popular philosophical support to his syndicalism. This latter issue was particularly urgent for Sorel, since his previous attempt to implant in France Labriola’s and Croce’s non-deterministic materialismo storico – the original theoretical foundation of Sorelian revisionism – had ended in failure.
