The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
Bergson's 1932 late masterpiece — closed and open society, static and dynamic religion, the place of mysticism in the moral life of humanity
Tradition: French process philosophy / philosophy of religion
Two moralities — closed and open — and two religions — static and dynamic — are not stages of a single process but two distinct sources, the second always exceptional and always personal
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion is Bergson's last major book, published twenty-five years after Creative Evolution. Its central thesis: morality and religion each have not one source but two. Closed morality is the biological-social product of group cohesion, expressed in obligation, customary law, and the defensive self-identification of the in-group against the out-group. Open morality is the rare, irruptive achievement of individual moral geniuses (the Hebrew prophets, the Sermon on the Mount, the great mystics) who transcend the closed circle and address humanity as such; it works not by pressure but by attraction. Correspondingly, static religion is the social mechanism by which the in-group consoles itself against the threat of death and the contingency of nature, generating myth, ritual, and the gods of obligation. Dynamic religion is the personal contact with the creative source itself — what Bergson, with care, calls "complete" mysticism, exemplified above all by the Christian mystics (Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, but also Plotinus and the Sufi tradition). The book applies the durée-élan vital framework of Creative Evolution to social and religious life and was a major influence on Catholic philosophy of religion (Maritain, Marcel) and on later existential and process theologians.
Author
Editions cited
- Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion (Paris: Alcan, 1932); English trans. R. Ashley Audra & Cloudesley Brereton, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Henry Holt, 1935); standard French edition Œuvres, Édition du Centenaire (PUF, 1959)
School Embodiments
The Two Sources extends Creative Evolution's durée-élan framework into the moral and religious spheres: open morality and dynamic religion are durational, creative, never finally settled — closed morality and static religion are the spatialised crusts they leave behind.
"Between the closed and the open society there is a difference in kind, not in degree." (Two Sources, ch. 1)
The book is the principal Bergsonian text behind twentieth-century process theology: God is the creative source that the mystic touches, not an immutable substance; dynamic religion is the on-going communication between created and creative.
"The great mystic is to be conceived as an individual being, capable of transcending the limitations imposed on the species by its material nature, and thus continuing and extending the divine action." (Two Sources, ch. 3)
Bergson's descriptive method — close attention to the lived qualitative texture of moral obligation, ritual, and mystical experience — is implicitly phenomenological and shaped continental philosophy of religion (Marcel, Levinas).
"Static religion attaches man to life, and consequently the individual to society, by telling him tales on a par with those with which we lull children to sleep." (Two Sources, ch. 2)
Closed morality and static religion are given a naturalistic explanation — they are biological-social functions, evolutionary products of the species's need for cohesion against threats.
"Religion is a defensive reaction of nature against the dissolvent power of intelligence — against the depressing effect of the certainty of death." (Two Sources, ch. 2)
The treatment of the Hebrew prophets and the Christian mystics as bearers of "open morality" — universalising, exceeding the closed group — fits the liberal-theological reading of religion as ethical universalism.
"The Christian mystics... do not merely accept humanity in general; they extend their love to the whole of creation." (Two Sources, ch. 3)
The implicit ontology — a single creative source from which both moral genius and social cohesion derive — has a Spinozistic register, though Bergson rejects the geometric method.
"The mystic identifies himself with this creative effort, which is God himself, or rather is of God." (Two Sources, ch. 3)
James's Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) was a major background influence; Bergson treats mystical experience as a source of pragmatic insight, not as illusion.
"The complete and perfect mysticism is action: action that is creative and that proceeds from contact with the creative effort." (Two Sources, ch. 3)
Internal Tensions
Bergson's late religious turn made the book a touchstone for Catholic philosophy (Maritain, Marcel) — even though Bergson himself, born Jewish, never formally converted, partly out of solidarity with Jews under rising anti-Semitism. The book's tribute to Christian mysticism as "complete" mysticism, contrasted with what Bergson reads as more contemplative Greek and Hindu mysticisms, is widely contested (Underhill, Zaehner); the closed/open society distinction influenced Popper's Open Society and its Enemies (1945), though Popper drew anti-Bergsonian conclusions.
I. Time
The durée framework from Creative Evolution applied to moral and religious life — open morality and dynamic religion are durational and creative, closed morality and static religion are their spatialised residues.
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II. Space
The "closed society" is the spatially bounded in-group; the "open society" of moral genius extends to humanity without boundary.
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III. Matter
Embodied moral life — closed morality has a biological substrate (the species's need for cohesion); dynamic religion exceeds it without denying it.
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IV. Observer
The "moral hero" or "complete mystic" as the individual who contacts the creative source and brings new moral possibilities into being.
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V. Energy
The creative effort itself — the élan vital, here read as the source contacted in dynamic religion.
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VI. Information
Open morality is exemplary, not codifiable; the mystic communicates by attraction rather than rule.
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Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How The Two Sources of Morality and Religion resolves each dilemma
51 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 16 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 6 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.
6 mainstream positions
Matter · 7 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
What stuff is — fundamental, relational, or appearance.
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.