Abstract

According to Merleau-Ponty, the renewal of philosophy has led to a new relation between philosophy and literature, from which we can assist to a real collaboration: novels are being used as real experiences inducing philosophical ideas, but without being reduced to them. This observation allows us reevaluate the possible philosophical implications of the influence of Bergson on the Greek writer Kazantzakis, envisaging a similar work to the one that did Lapoujade in his book Fictions du pragmatisme William et Henry James. Applying in our reading the requirements of this new relation between literature and philosophy, we will show that a philosophical approach of the Greek writer’s works cannot submit its understanding to an external knowledge or try to abstract ideas from the fiction as if they were really belonging to it. As an example, we will consider a new approach which would differ from the multiple theological interpretations of the Kazantzakis’ texts based on the influence of Bergson, by giving priority to the inner richness of the experience in the novel as a formal totality, from which it will be possible to complete the Bergsonian philosophical ideas rather than to come back to them.