Recent years have witnessed in philosophy a major renaissance of interest in Bergsonism, that is, with the conceptual innovations introduced by the work of Henri Bergson (1859-1939). The aim of this module is to examine the key ideas and concepts of Bergsonism both with respect to Bergson's key writings and through the mediating influence of Gilles Deleuze (1925-95). Deleuze is widely recognised as the one of the most inventive thinkers of our time and devoted a number of texts to Bergson's philosophy and to developing a novel Bergsonism. The ideas and concepts the course will pay close attention to include: the notion of duration and the distinction between duration and space, the distinction between types of multiplicities (notably continuous and discrete), and the notion of the virtual as it applies to life, time, memory and perception, and creative evolution. The course will seek to show that Bergsonism offers a new metaphysics but that it is a metaphysics pursued in the spirit of a radical empiricism. There will be scope for exploring the rapport between Bergson and William James in terms of their commitment to a superior and radical empiricism and in relation to their attempts to develop a philosophical psychology. The founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, also defined the philosophical projects as one of radical empiricism and the affinities between Bergson and Husserl have been noted by commentators such as Emmanuel Levinas and Deluze. The affinities and differences between Bergsonism and phenomenology will also be explored. The course will conclude by examining the way in which Deluze applied Begsonism to modern cinema and came up with a highly original appreciation of the image, especially the time-image, in film. The course will serve to provide graduate students with a rigorous and incisive introduction to one of the major if, until recently, largely neglected contributions to philosophical modernism.