Work Classification Layer
Compare Works
Pick two or more works to set their attribute fingerprints, dimension-by-dimension passages, and shared school embodiments side by side. Especially useful for author-stage comparisons (Wittgenstein early vs late) and for setting a single tradition's foundational texts against each other.
The Two Sources of Morality and 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
Attribute Fingerprint
Rows where works disagree are highlighted in gold. The full ontology grid is shown.
| Attribute | The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Late (Bergson's last major book, written after a long convalescence)) |
|---|---|
| Time · Extent | Infinite |
| Time · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Time · Grain | Continuous |
| Time · Freedom | Non-Deterministic |
| Time · Traversability | Linear |
| Time · Dimensionality | One |
| Time · Direction | Uni-directional |
| Space · Extent | Infinite |
| Space · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Space · Curvature | Flat |
| Space · Dimensionality | Three |
| Space · Locality | Local |
| Matter · Extent | Infinite |
| Matter · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Matter · Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Matter · Dimensionality | Three |
| Matter · Locality | Local |
| Observer · Time Instance | Single |
| Observer · Space Instance | Single |
| Observer · Knowledge Extent | Partial |
| Observer · Knowledge Retainment | Total |
| Observer · Physicality | Embodied |
| Observer · Agency | Active |
| Observer · Number | Plural |
| Observer · Metaphysical Agency | Cosmic-ordering |
| Observer · Moral Authority | Experience |
| Observer · Theological Method | — |
| Energy · Extent | Infinite |
| Energy · Ontological Status | Substantival |
| Energy · Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Energy · Dispersibility | Irreversible |
| Information · Ontological Status | Emergent |
| Information · Cosmic Conservation | Non-conserved |
| Information · Personal Conservation | Conserved |
| Information · Granularity | Continuous |
Dimension-by-Dimension Evidence
What each work's passages reveal about its stance on each of the six dimensions.
Time
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
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.
Space
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
The "closed society" is the spatially bounded in-group; the "open society" of moral genius extends to humanity without boundary.
Matter
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
Embodied moral life — closed morality has a biological substrate (the species's need for cohesion); dynamic religion exceeds it without denying it.
Observer
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
The "moral hero" or "complete mystic" as the individual who contacts the creative source and brings new moral possibilities into being.
Energy
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
The creative effort itself — the élan vital, here read as the source contacted in dynamic religion.
Information
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
Open morality is exemplary, not codifiable; the mystic communicates by attraction rather than rule.
Internal Tensions
Where each work's argument pulls against itself.
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.