The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
Henri Bergson’s The Two Sources of Morality and Religion argues that both morality and religion spring from two fundamentally different yet intertwined origins: a ‘closed’ source that stabilizes and protects social groups through obligation, habit, and myth; and an ‘open’ source that emerges in creative moral inspiration and mystical love reaching beyond the group to embrace all humanity. Bergson contrasts static morality and static religion—which bind individuals into cohesive, often exclusive communities—with dynamic morality and dynamic religion, rooted in exceptional personalities (saints, heroes, and mystics) who manifest the élan vital as creative love. The book aims to diagnose modern social and political tensions, explain the persistence and transformation of religious life, and show how authentic mysticism can guide humanity toward a more universal and peaceful ethical order.
At a Glance
- Author
- Henri Bergson
- Composed
- c. 1928–1932
- Language
- French
- Status
- original survives
- •Morality has two distinct and irreducible sources: a ‘closed’ morality rooted in social pressure and obligation that maintains the cohesion and survival of particular groups, and an ‘open’ morality that arises from the creative love of exceptional individuals who directly intuit and express a universal moral impetus.
- •Religion likewise has two sources: static religion, which serves primarily social and biological functions by allaying fear, legitimating authority, and sustaining group cohesion through myth and ritual; and dynamic religion, which is the outcome of genuine mystical experience opening the individual to an unlimited, creative love of God and all beings.
- •The closed society is natural and defensive—organized around instinctive and often unconscious mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion—whereas the open society is founded on a qualitatively different, expansive movement of love and sympathy that cannot be reduced to rational calculation or social instinct.
- •Mysticism, in its authentic and highest forms (exemplified above all by Christian mystics for Bergson), is the experiential peak of dynamic religion: it transforms the individual’s life into an expression of divine creative energy (élan vital) and serves as the principal historical source of open morality and open society.
- •Modern political, social, and technological developments—particularly scientific progress and large-scale warfare—have intensified the power of closed societies; thus, humanity must cultivate the dynamic, open source of morality and religion (through mysticism and creative love) if it is to avoid self-destruction and realize a more just and peaceful global order.
Historically, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion is one of Bergson’s most influential later works and a crucial text for 20th‑century discussions of ethics, religion, and political community. It shaped debates about the nature of obligation, the function of religion in social life, and the possibility of a universalist ethical orientation in a world dominated by nation-states. Bergson’s distinction between closed and open societies directly influenced later thinkers, most famously Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies, and resonates with sociological and political theories of inclusion, exclusion, and cosmopolitanism. The work also contributed to the phenomenological and existential interest in religious experience and mysticism, and it helped consolidate Bergson’s reputation as a bridge figure between classical metaphysics, social thought, and modern spiritual concerns. In contemporary scholarship, the book is often revisited for its insights into the relationship between biology, affect, and morality, and for its diagnoses of war and fanaticism that seem prescient in light of later global conflicts.
1. Introduction
Henri Bergson’s The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932) is a late work that proposes a dual-origin account of both ethical life and religious phenomena. The treatise examines how human beings come to feel obligated, how societies hold together, and why religious beliefs and practices persist and transform.
Bergson distinguishes between two qualitatively different “sources”:
- a socially conservative source that stabilizes groups through obligation, habit, and myth;
- a creative source that emerges in exceptional experiences of love and mystical intuition.
The work thus places morality and religion at the intersection of biology, psychology, sociology, and metaphysics, drawing on evolutionary ideas as well as concrete historical examples. It is written against the backdrop of the First World War and interwar crises, and it aims to analyze the mechanisms that both foster solidarity and generate conflict among human groups.
Readers have treated the book variously: as a major contribution to moral philosophy, a theory of religion, a political reflection on war and nationalism, and a culmination of Bergson’s earlier concepts, especially élan vital and creative evolution. The text remains a key reference point for debates about the relation between social cohesion, religious experience, and the possibility of a universal ethical outlook.
2. Historical Context and Intellectual Background
2.1 Interwar Europe and the Crisis of Civilization
Bergson composed The Two Sources in the late 1920s, publishing it in 1932, amid widespread reflection on the causes and meaning of the First World War. Intellectuals across Europe debated nationalism, mass politics, and the perceived crisis of liberal civilization. Bergson’s analysis of closed and open societies, and of war as rooted in group solidarity mechanisms, is often read as a philosophical response to these debates.
2.2 French Intellectual Milieu
In France, the book intervenes in ongoing discussions shaped by:
| Current | Relevance for Bergson |
|---|---|
| Durkheimian sociology | Accounts of religion as a social fact and morality as collective constraint. |
| Republican secularism (laïcité) | Questions about the public role of religion in a modern state. |
| Catholic revival | Renewed interest in mysticism and spiritual experience. |
Bergson engages sociological functionalism while insisting on an irreducible experiential and creative dimension in morality and religion.
2.3 Philosophical Precursors
Several traditions inform the work:
- Evolutionary thought (including Bergson’s own Creative Evolution): the idea that moral and religious forms develop with life’s adaptive strategies.
- Kantian ethics: the concept of duty as central to morality, which Bergson reinterprets in terms of social pressure for group cohesion.
- Mystical and religious philosophy: Christian, but also broader comparative reflection on saintly and mystical figures as sources of moral innovation.
The book thus integrates contemporary social science with Bergson’s distinctive metaphysics of life and intuition.
3. Author and Composition
3.1 Bergson’s Intellectual Trajectory
By the time he wrote The Two Sources, Bergson was an internationally prominent philosopher, known for Time and Free Will, Matter and Memory, and Creative Evolution. Scholars often present the 1932 treatise as the ethical–religious culmination of themes developed in these earlier works:
| Earlier Work | Relevant Theme for Two Sources |
|---|---|
| Time and Free Will | Inner duration and freedom, later tied to creative moral action. |
| Matter and Memory | Embodiment and action, informing the practical dimension of morality. |
| Creative Evolution | Élan vital and evolution, applied to social and religious forms. |
3.2 Period of Composition
The book was likely drafted between about 1928 and 1932, following years of lectures and essays on moral and religious issues. Commentators note that Bergson’s role in the Académie française and his public engagement with questions of war, peace, and international society shaped the final form of the work.
3.3 Publication and Authorial Intent
First published in French by Librairie Félix Alcan (1932), the volume was quickly recognized as a major statement of Bergson’s mature thought. In the preface, he acknowledges a debt to Félix Ravaisson, indicating continuity with a French spiritualist tradition. Bergson characterizes the project as an attempt to clarify, with philosophical rigor, the twofold origin of moral obligation and religious life, in order to illuminate contemporary social and political tensions without offering a simple program of reform.
4. Structure and Organization of the Work
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion is divided into four major parts, each addressing one “source” or its implications.
4.1 Overall Architecture
| Part | Title (approximate) | Focused Theme |
|---|---|---|
| I | First Source of Morality | Closed morality and social obligation. |
| II | Second Source of Morality and First Source of Religion | Open (dynamic) morality and static religion. |
| III | Second Source of Religion | Dynamic religion and mysticism. |
| IV | Final Considerations | Closed/open societies, war, and future of civilization. |
The progression moves from everyday obligation to heroic morality, then from socially functional religion to mysticism, culminating in political and civilizational implications.
4.2 Internal Organization
- Part I analyzes, in increasingly psychological and sociological detail, how obligation arises from group-preserving mechanisms.
- Part II juxtaposes the affective inspiration of saints and heroes (second source of morality) with a functional account of religious beliefs and practices (first source of religion).
- Part III concentrates on exemplary mystics, treating their experience as the origin of dynamic religion and a new kind of love.
- Part IV applies the earlier distinctions to large-scale social forms, contrasting the natural tendency to closed societies with the ideal of an open society.
Each part builds conceptually on the previous ones, but Bergson frequently recapitulates key distinctions (closed/open, static/dynamic) to clarify their shifting applications.
5. Central Arguments and Key Concepts
5.1 Two Sources of Morality
Bergson argues that morality has two irreducible sources:
- Closed morality: a system of obligations grounded in social pressure, habit, and what he sometimes likens to “instinct.” Its function is to secure group cohesion, obedience, and survival.
- Open morality: a creative movement arising from exceptional individuals who experience a direct, affective intuition of a universal love extending beyond any particular group.
Proponents of sociological readings highlight the continuity between closed morality and Durkheimian collective constraint, while more spiritualist interpreters emphasize the originality of open morality as a breakthrough beyond social instinct.
5.2 Two Sources of Religion
Similarly, religion has two sources:
| Religion Type | Source and Function |
|---|---|
| Static religion | Emerges from collective needs to reduce fear (especially of death), legitimize authority, and stabilize customs through myth, ritual, and belief. Closely aligned with closed morality. |
| Dynamic religion | Originates in mystical experience—a felt union with the divine élan vital—generating an unlimited, expansive love. Provides the deepest ground for open morality. |
Some commentators read static religion as a functionalist theory akin to early anthropology, whereas others stress that dynamic religion is presented as experiential rather than doctrinal.
5.3 Closed and Open Society
From these analyses Bergson derives the contrast between closed society (natural, defensive, bounded, organized around obligations to the group) and open society (oriented toward universal inclusion and inspired by mystical love). Later political theorists have debated whether this distinction is descriptive, normative, or both.
5.4 Élan Vital and Creative Love
Underpinning the whole argument is Bergson’s notion of élan vital, the creative drive of life. In The Two Sources, this appears as creative love in moral heroes and mystics, who are portrayed as conduits of life’s generative force into social and historical reality. Critics dispute how literally this metaphysical claim should be taken, and whether it can be reconciled with contemporary scientific understandings of life and mind.
6. Famous Passages, Method, and Legacy
6.1 Notable Passages
Several passages have become touchstones for interpretation:
- The articulation of closed and open society in Part III and IV, widely cited in later political thought.
- The distinction between static and dynamic religion in Part II, seen as a compact statement of Bergson’s philosophy of religion.
- The analysis of obligation in Part I, where Bergson describes moral pressure as akin to instinctual force.
An often-quoted formula summarizes his view of social closure:
“La société close est celle dont les membres se tiennent les uns les autres par des obligations qui les ramènent toujours au groupe.”
— Bergson, Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion
(Translations vary, but all emphasize mutual holding through obligations that return individuals to the group.)
6.2 Method: Intuition, Analysis, and Empirical Materials
Bergson combines:
- Intuitive metaphysics (grasping duration and élan vital),
- Conceptual analysis (of obligation, fear, love),
- Empirical references to sociology, anthropology, and history.
Supporters see this as an interdisciplinary method anticipating later phenomenological and hermeneutic approaches. Critics argue that the reliance on intuition and metaphor can obscure argument structure and empirical testability.
6.3 Early and Long-Term Legacy
Within Bergson’s own lifetime, the book was influential among religious thinkers, moral philosophers, and political commentators. Its concepts—especially open society—were later taken up, reworked, and sometimes criticized by figures such as Karl Popper, as well as by sociologists and theologians exploring inclusion, pluralism, and mysticism. This legacy has shaped how the work is received and debated in subsequent decades.
7. Legacy and Historical Significance
7.1 Influence on Ethics and Political Theory
The Two Sources has been widely cited in ethical and political debates. The closed/open society distinction informed:
| Field | Representative Uses |
|---|---|
| Political philosophy | Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies reinterprets Bergson’s term in a liberal–rationalist key. |
| Sociology | Analyses of inclusion/exclusion, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism draw on Bergson’s idea of natural group closure. |
Some theorists build on Bergson to argue for forms of moral universalism grounded in affect and empathy, while others criticize what they see as an overly utopian reliance on mystical love.
7.2 Significance for Philosophy of Religion and Mysticism
The book has been pivotal for 20th‑century reflection on religious experience. It offers one of the most elaborate modern philosophical accounts of mysticism as a source of social and moral transformation. Christian thinkers have often welcomed Bergson’s positive appraisal of mystics, whereas theologians and historians of religion question his emphasis on Christian examples and his relatively schematic division of static and dynamic religion.
7.3 Place in Bergson’s Oeuvre and Later Reception
Many commentators treat The Two Sources as the culminating ethical–religious synthesis of Bergson’s philosophy of life. It extended his influence beyond academic philosophy into theology, peace movements, and debates on international order, especially in the decades surrounding the Second World War.
In contemporary scholarship, the work is revisited for its:
- anticipation of discussions on biopolitics and the biological bases of social cohesion;
- analysis of fanaticism and war;
- exploration of affective and spiritual sources of solidarity beyond the nation-state.
Interpretations diverge on whether Bergson offers a realistic path toward an “open society” or a primarily regulative ideal, but most agree that the book remains a significant reference point in 20th‑century thought on morality, religion, and civilization.
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title = {the-two-sources-of-morality-and-religion},
author = {Philopedia},
year = {2025},
url = {https://philopedia.com/works/the-two-sources-of-morality-and-religion/},
urldate = {December 11, 2025}
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