Levinas is a contemporary thinker. But what, beyond mere temporal proximity, makes contemporary thought “contemporary”? Surely much of what passes for thinking today not only derives from sources and perspectives from a bygone past, but does little more than reproduce those perspectives in a contemporary idiom, old wine repackaged in “new” flasks. One way, perhaps even the best way, to grasp the radical difference between contemporary thought and all prior thought is to appreciate the intellectual revolution effected by the work of Henri Bergson (1859–1941). Although other names are often paraded – Marx, Nietzsche, Freud – and credited as originators of vast paradigm shifts, in the light of Bergson's achievement the radical nature of their contributions, undeniably original as they are, is dimmed. In form if not in content they carry on a tradition of intellectual abstraction, with all the strains and dangers, real and theoretical, idealist and egoist, which are the price of abstraction. In subtle ways they end up continuing the very heritage they allege to overturn. So, too, there are thinkers who followed Bergson – most obviously Heidegger – who though often credited with a revolution in thought are but continuing a revolution that had already taken place, beneficiaries of it.

Though today his reputation is somewhat eclipsed, we are not the first to recognize the importance of Bergson's accomplishments. Indeed, the depth and revolutionary character of his thought were recognized very early, and perhaps it is only because contemporary thought has adopted Bergson's fundamental point of view – duration (durée) – that we have forgotten his originality.