HENRI BERGSON: ACTIVIST MYSTICISM
AND THE OPEN SOCIETY
Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
(New York: Henry Holt and company, 1935). Authorized translation of Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion (Paris: Felix
Alcan, 1932), reprinted in Henri Bergson, Oeuvres (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1970), pp. 981-1245. All
references to the French are to the latter editions. Page numbers
in parentheses refer to the English translation, unless preceded by
"Fr." as in Fr. 1069.
enri Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion is a
classic of contemporary political theory. One of the properties
of a classic is that no matter how often one reads it, the freshness of its
analysis of the human condition is still there, and one makes new
discoveries about the work's meaning and its implications. Bergson's
study more than adequately fulfills this criterion.
The purpose of this review article is to consider The Two Sources in
relation to a critical theory of the open society. As with my previous
article on Karl Popper,' I shall first let Bergson speak for himself and
then offer my criticisms. Parts of the book must be ignored both
because of space limitations and because they do not bear centrally
upon the question "What is a political theory of the open society?"
Bergson divides his work into four lengthy chapters; in the following discussion, I shall follow his own division of subject matter,
although not necessarily his emphasis. The chapters on "Moral
Obligation" and "Static Religion" are twice as lengthy as those on
"Dynamic Religion" and "Mechanics and Mysticism."
H
I. Moral Obligation
Significantly, Bergson begins his analysis of moral obligation with
the question "Why did we obey?" rather than "Why should we
obey?" He presents moral obligation as an experience of the con.
1. "Karl Popper's Open Society," The Political Science Reviewer, VIII (Fall, 1978),
21-61).
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sciousness which at once constitutes the basis of and emanates from
something called "society." Unlike the social contract theorists who
hypothesize man out of a society which must then be constructed on
abstract, conjectural principles, Bergson begins with the concrete experience of a child's encountering a prohibition and raises the question of that prohibition's origin.
Why did we obey? The question hardly occurred to us. We had formed the habit
of deferring to our parents and teachers. All the same we knew very well that it
was because they were our parents, because they were our teachers. Therefore, in
our eyes, their authority came less from themselves than from their status in relation to us. [P]arents and teachers seemed to act by proxy. We did not fully realize
this, but behind our parents and our teachers we had an inkling of some enormous, or rather shadowy, thing that exerted pressure on us through them. Later
we would say it was society.(1)
To an unreflective consciousness, society is comparable to "an
organism whose cells, united by imperceptible links, fall into their
respective places in the highly developed hierarchy, and for the
greatest good of the whole naturally submit to a discipline that may
demand the sacrifice of the part." (Ibid.) Of course, human beings are
not cells; they are "free wills." Once organized, however, their wills
"assume the guise of an organism," and "in this more or less artificial
organism habit plays the same role as necessity in the work of
nature." (2)
From this first standpoint, social life appears to us a system of more or less deeply rooted habits, corresponding to the needs of the community. Some of them
are habits of command, most of them are habits of behavior, whether we obey a
person's commands by virtue of a mandate from society or whether from society
itself, vaguely perceived or felt, there emanates an impersonal imperative. Each
of these habits of obedience exerts a pressure on our will. We can evade it, but
then we are attracted towards it, drawn back to it, like a pendulum which has
swung away from the vertical. A certain order of things has been upset, it must
be restored. In a word, as with all habits, we feel a sense of obligation.(2)
The "pressure" of "social obligation" is so immeasurably greater
than that exerted by other habits that compared with them, it amounts
to a difference in kind. In any case, all of our habits of obedience
combine to lend each other mutual support within the context of
society, which is the "uttermost limit" of our "surroundings." Society appears as a great whole coordinating all our duties down to the
most trivial. It would be an intellectualist fallacy to assume that we
calculate whether to obey each and every single command or prohibi-
HENRI BERGSON
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tion: on the contrary, in its original condition, obligation is experienced as a "solid block." To refuse any one command would mean to
endanger the whole complex of prohibitions. The general proposition
" 'do what duty bids' triumphs over the hesitations we might feel in
the presence of a single duty" (2-3).
Initially, then, "everything conspires" to make the social order "an
imitation of the order observed in nature" (6). "Habit, served by intelligence and imagination," produces between the separate individuals a unity comparable to that of cells in an organism. At this
point, obligation is experienced as a "necessity." This necessity is not
entirely from without, however. "Each of us belongs as much to
society as to himself." Each of us possesses two selves: a "social self"
and an "individual self." The individual self is encountered only in
the "depths of our being," while the social self is at the "surface" of
the consciousness.
Obligation to obey the commands of society for Bergson is not
something rationalistic and abstract. Rather, it is rooted in the concrete experience of obligation to those who are closest to us, our family and our friends. Ordinarily, we do not hesitate and calculate about
the question "why obey?" before performing our obligations. Rather,
we experience ourselves at the center of a series of concentric circles.
Society occupies the circumference; the individual is at the center; from the
center to the circumference are arranged, like so many ever-widening concentric
circles, the various groups to which the individual belongs. From the circumference to the center, as the circles grow smaller, obligations are added to
obligations, and the individual ends by finding himself confronted with all of
them together. Thus, obligation increases as it advances; but, if it is more complicated, it is less abstract, and the more easily accepted. When it has become fully concrete, it coincides with a tendency, so habitual that we find it natural, to
play in society the part which our station assigns to us. (10-11)
Against Kant, Bergson maintains that, considered as a whole,
obligation is habitual rather than rational in nature. The error of the
rationalist school of ethics is rooted in their failure to see that
resistance to duty is the exception and not the rule. Of course, we encounter specific obligations against which we internally rebel; we then
have to invent reasons to ourselves for obeying a specific command.
We generally have no difficulty in overcoming the "resistance" of the
self in a given instance, because "owing to the interdependence of our
duties, and because the obligation as a whole is immanent in each of
its parts, all duties are tinged with the hue taken on exceptionally by
one or the other of them" (11-12).
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It is a mistake to regard obligation as a "unique fact, incommensurate with others, looming above them like a mysterious apparition.
If a considerable number of philosophers, especially those who follow
Kant, have taken this view, it is because they have confused the sense
of obligation, a tranquil state akin to inclination, with the violent effort we now and again exert on ourselves to break down a possible
obstacle to obligation." (12-13) It is important to note that "from the
fact that we get back to obligations by rational ways, it does not
follow that obligation was of a rational order." (14)
Thus far, Bergson has argued that "the essence of obligation is a
different thing from a requirement of reason." (16) The only truly
"categorical imperative" is that in which intelligence supports instinct. When we question an obligation, reason ultimately supplies us
with the answer: "You must because you must." Social morality is at
bottom a matter of pressure
Despite his criticism of an abstract, intellectualist explanation of
obligation, Bergson does not maintain that any particular obligation
can be called instinctive. "What we must perpetually recall is that, no
one obligation being instinctive, obligation as a whole would have
been instinct if human societies were not... ballasted with variability
and intelligence." (20) Hence, as Bergson observes, human society
differs from a beehive or an ant hill in that it is "variable in form,
open to every kind of progress" (19).
From the "Closed" to the "Open" Society
At this point, Bergson brings up his famous distinction between
"closed societies" (in the plural) and the "open society." His first
mention of the open society is in the following passage:
We have said...that underlying moral obligation there was a social demand. Of
what society were we speaking? Was it of that open society represented by all
mankind? We did not settle the matter, any more than one usually does when
speaking of a man's duty to his fellows; one remains prudently vague; one
refrains from making any assertion, but one would like to have it believed that
"human society" is already an accomplished fact. (22)
From Bergson's initial formulation of the "open society" idea, it
appears to have been conceived as temporal and spatial. The open
society is a temporal concept because it remains to be realized in the
future; it is a global or spatial concept because it includes everyone
presently living. Thus, the "civilized" societies in which we presently
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live are only potentially open ones 2 ; in reality, they are "closed
societies." Our societies are closed because "their essential
characteristic is...to include at any moment a certain number of individuals and exclude others" (22). Although empires or large nations
may be "very extensive compared to the small agglomerations to
which we were drawn by instinct," they are nevertheless closed to a
part of humanity presently living on the globe:
The introduction of the closed-open society distinction by Bergson
represents a dramatic turn in the argument. Thus far, he had sounded
in places like Emile Durkheim and other sociologists who make the individual a mere "cell" of society. With the introduction of this concept of the open society, the whole question of obligation becomes
enormously complicated. What are we to do when the two sources of
obligation—the closed and the open—conflict? For the present,
Bergson is silent on this point. All he does is to introduce the terminology and to emphasize that "a moral philosophy which does not
emphasize this distinction misses the truth; its analysis will thereby be
inevitably distorted." Such a philosophy will not recognize that
"when we lay down...the duty of respecting the life and the property
of others" as a "fundamental demand of social life," it is the closed
society which we have in mind. To verify this conclusion:
We need only think what happens in time of war. Murder and pillage and perfidy, cheating and lying become not only lawful, they are actually praiseworthy.
The warring nations can say with Macbeth's witches: "Fair is foul, and foul is
fair." Would this be possible, would this transformation take place so easily,
generally, and instantaneously, if it were really a certain attitude of man towards
man that society had been enjoining on us up till then? (23)
Bergson clearly intends to shock the reader into recognizing as a
self-deception the common assumption of international politics: viz.,
that the duties enjoined by "society" are "indeed, in principle, duties
towards humanity, but that under exceptional circumstances, regrettably unavoidable, they are for the time being, inapplicable." Instead,
as we have seen, those duties are to the closed society into which we
are born. Far from being the norm, peace between nations has always
been a "preparation for defense or even attack, at any rate for war."
Our social duties "aim at social cohesion"; whether we like it or not,
they foster in us an attitude of "discipline in the face of the enemy."
2. They are potentially open because, while purely instinctive or animal societies,
they are "open to every kind of progress." (19) Later he is to introduce a third category:
societies "on the way to becoming open."
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(23) Nonetheless, it is not mere hypocrisy that makes contemporary
nations (or "closed societies") speak as if they were generally faithful
to and recognized their obligations toward humanity at large: if they
did not do so, they would block the route to the progress of "another
morality" which is "not derived from it" and which it "has every inducement to honor" (23,F.1001).
Having begun with the insight that we derive our ideas of morality
from society and having established there are two radically different
concepts of society, the "closed" and the "open," Bergson proceeds
to a discussion of two types of morality. However, it should be emphasized that he purports to be dealing with "facts" of our consciousness and not with abstract ideals. The evolution of the closedopen distinction is alleged to be in line with and ultimately to be based
on the evolution of man as a biological species.
Before one can proceed to a discussion of that "other" morality
which is "not derived" from the first one, however, one needs to consider more fully what the author says about the "society" on which it
is based. This society, called humanity, may not be understood as the
result of a mere expansion of our experience of the closed society or
nation.
For between the nation, however big, and humanity there lies the whole distance
from the finite to the indefinite, from the closed to the open. We are fond of saying that the apprenticeship to civic virtue is served in the family, and that in the
same way, from holding our country dear, we learn to love mankind. Our sympathies are supposed to broaden out in an unbroken possession, to expand while
remaining identical, and to end by embracing all humanity. This is a priori
reasoning, the result of a purely intellectualist conception of the soUl. (24)
Humanity in general," then, is the third and largest group to which
we can "attach ourselves." In order to reach it, however, we cannot
"expand" our original consciousness but must acquire a new one. The
two sentiments, love of country and love of mankind, are so different,
Bergson maintains, that the latter can only take root with the help of
religion and philosophy, or faith and reason.
[I]t is only through God, in God—that religion bids man to love mankind'; and
likewise it is through reason alone that Reason in whose communion we are all
partakers, that philosophers make us look at humanity in order to show us the
3. Actually, Bergson here uses le genre humain rather than his usual! 'humanite.
HENRI BERGSON
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pre-eminent dignity of the human being, the right of all to command respect.
Neither in the one case nor in the other do we come to humanity by degrees,
through the stages of the family and the nation. We must, in a single bound, be
carried far beyond it, and, without having made it our goal, reach it by outstripping it. (25)
The "Open Morality"
Bergson is now prepared to pass on to a discussion of "another kind
of obligation" greater than that originating in "social pressure." This
is the obligation to the "open society"; it results in an "open
morality."
Using the "same method" as before—i.e., that of penetrating to the
origin of a morality—Bergson sets out in search of the source of open
morality. Whereas before when he invited us to join him in proceeding
from the starting point (our present moral consciousness)
"downward" as it were into our basic instincts for survival, he now
beckons us to follow him "upwards to the extreme limit" of our
moral potential. Whereas primitive man showed us what we were like,
the mystic saint or philosopher shows us what we could resemble:
In all times there have arisen exceptional men, incarnating this open morality.
Before the saints of Christianity mankind had known the sages of Greece, the
prophets of Israel, the Arahants of Buddhism, and others besides. It is to them
that men have always turned for that complete morality which we had best call
absolute morality. (25-26)
Here begins a series of contrasts between the closed or incomplete
and the open or complete moralities: whereas the former is reducible
to "impersonal formulae," the latter is "incarnate in a privileged person who becomes an example." We pass from the general acceptance
of a law to a "common imitation of a model" (26). Whereas we can
best understand the closed morality as an, undifferentiated block,
whose particular commands often seem arbitrary and irrational, in the
case of the open society we witness the reverse. By beginning with an
abstract, intellectualist appreciation, say, of the Sermon on the Mount
or the sayings of the prophets, we do not succeed in acting on them:
rather only when we consider them and their counsels in their
multiplicity and in relation to the unique personality of the originator
does the open morality become a moving force in our lives by working
on our wills (27).
It would be inadequate to describe the new morality as based on the
"love of humanity," for humanity if conceived as a mere expansion
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of the family and nation, is hopelessly abstract. On the contrary, it is
through recognizing in the mystic saint, prophet, or philosopher the
prototype of what each of us could become that we grow to love the
like potential in every other person. Our souls are flooded with emotion from the encounter—whether in person or through his teachings
left to posterity—with such a rare individual (28-29).
The spiritual individual of the open morality is altogether different
from the robot of the closed morality, however. In the closed morality
the "individual" (so-called) moves about in the circle of society: his
psyche is concerned only with self-preservation, which means that,
just as a part of it desires to escape society's demands, another part
recognizes that it draws strength and vitality from society just as a cell
does from an organism. The ultimate "utilitarianism" of the closed
morality is its counsel that even apparent sacrifices eventually redound
to the individual's own interest.
In the case of the "open soul," [1' ame ouverte (Fr. 1006)] all
calculation is thrown to the winds. Such a soul "embraces all humanity" as well as "animals, plants...and all nature." None of these things
is capable of defining that soul, however, for its form is independent
of its content. "We have just filled it; we could as easily empty it
again. 'Charity' would persist in him who possesses 'charity' though
there be no other living creature on earth." (30).
Bergson is at pains to distinguish the love (or charity) which is infinite in its content—the love which forms the "open soul"—from
those forms of love which are dependent on their content such as love
of family or country. He grants that it is much easier for us to understand the closed morality, because of its fixed nature: its "duties are a
matter of current practice,...have a clear precise formula, and it is
therefore easy for us, grasping them where they are entirely visible,
and then going down to the roots, to discover the social requirements
from which they sprang." By contrast, the "other half" of our
morality "expresses a certain emotional state" and is the result of
yielding to an "attraction" rather than a "pressure" (41).
Today the two moralities, the closed and the open, are intermingled
and may not be found in their pure state. The closed morality has lent
the open morality "something of its imperative character," while the
open morality has leavened the closed so that it is "less strictly social,
more broadly human" (41). Thus, "civilized" morality is a mixture of
the closed and the open; or better, it is a "morality on the way to
becoming open."
The "maxims" of the second, or open morality,
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do not work singly, like those of the first: as soon as one of them, ceasing to be
abstract, becomes filled with significance and acquires the capacity to act, the
others tend to do the same: at last they all fuse in the warm emotion which left
them behind long ago, and in the men, now come to life again, who experienced
it. (42)
Whereas the closed morality is impersonal, the open morality is per-
sonal:
Founders and reformers of religion, mystics and saints, obscure heroes of the
moral life whom we have met on our way...they are all there: inspired by their
example, we follow them, as if we were joining an army of conquerors. They are
indeed conquerors: they have broken down natural resistance and raised
humanity to a new destiny. (42)
Although Bergson characterizes the open morality as "triumphing"
over nature, in a deeper sense it too is responding to a drive or push by
that very same nature acting indirectly rather than directly:
[I] f we went down to the roots of nature itself we should perhaps find that the
same force which manifests itself directly, rotating on its own axis, in the human
species, once constituted, also acts later and indirectly, through the medium of
privileged persons, in order to drive humanity forward. (42)
If we examine in their "pure" states (in which we today, however,
almost never find them), we shall observe the following contrasts between the two moralities (or the two halves of the same morality):
Closed morality
Open Morality
Based on pressure
Aims at self-preservation
Static, immobile
Gives feeling of pleasure, well being
Derived from society
Applies to one's fellow-citizens
Repose
Based on aspiration
Aims at fuller life
Dynamic, progressive
Gives feeling of joy
Derived from God
Applies to all men and all life
Movement
Contact with the Elan Vital
At this point Bergson introduces a symbol with which readers of his
earlier books, and especially Creative Evolution (1911), will be
familiar: l'elan vital, variously translated as "vital impulse," "impetus of life," or the like. (Among the many meanings of elan are
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"start, spring, flight, glow, soaring, burst, outburst, transport.' ' 4 It
has always been from the "generative principle of the human species"
(le principe generateur de I ' espece humaine) that one derives the
"strength to love mankind" (46,Fr.1021). Those leaders of mankind
who have by a sudden break with the closed morality of defensiveness
and war "broken down the gates of the city" have "placed themselves
again in the current of the vital impulse (L 'elan vital)" so that it might
continue its work of "creative evolution" (49, Fr. 1023). "There is a
genius of the will as there is a genius of the mind."
"[B]etween the first [or closed] morality and the second [or open]
morality lies the whole distance between repose and movement." The
elan resumes its movement again, for the open morality "is a forward
thrust, a demand for movement; it 'is the very essence of mobility."
(50). The mobile nature of the open morality means that it is all the
more difficult to express it in final propositional form:
For our intelligence and our language deal...with things; they are less at home in
representing transitions or progress. The morality of the Gospels is essentially
that of the open soul: are we not justified in pointing out that it borders upon
paradox, and even upon contradiction in its more definite admonitions? (50)
Thus, "turn the other cheek" makes a mockery of justice, and giving to the poor all we possess would make the rich burdened with the
same temptations as we were formerly. Yet, the "intent of these maxims" is all-important. That intent is to "create a certain disposition of
the soul." The rich man is to become poor "in spirit" and the just
man should be beyond requiring restitution so far as his own soul's
health is concerned.
Bergson maintains that the resumption of the movement of the elan
toward the creation of a complete humanity and a complete morality
takes place decisively only with the Gospels. Stoicism, which might
have provided for such resumption was still bound by the old static
morality:
The Stoics proclaimed themselves citizens of the world, and added that all men
were brothers, having come from the same God...If...[the Stoics] did not succeed in drawing humanity after them, it is because Stoicism is essentially a
philosophy. (52)
4. John Joseph Kelly, Bergson's Mysticism (Fribourg, St. Paul's Press, 1954), p. 24,
n. 1.
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With Socrates, we are closer to the origin of the open morality. This
is because he was greater than any system or than any of the rational
arguments which Plato put in his mouth. Socrates' mission "is of a
religious and mystic order...his teaching, so perfectly rational, hinges
on something that seems to transcend pure reason" (53). Had he not
seen it as his first mission to overcome the "moral empiricism" of his
time and the "incoherences" of Athenian democracy—had he not
largely refused the Oriental, intuitive, lyrical side of his nature in
favor of the Greek, rational, dialectical side—he very possibly would
have been the great teacher of the West rather than Jesus. For a time it
was "Socrates against Jesus" as Christians and Neo-Platonists battled
it out for supremacy (54-55).
Despite all the credit he gives Socrates and other ancient teachers
for their contributions to the development of the open morality,
Bergson insists that by itself Greek philosophy would never have advanced beyond the "half-virtue" of contemplative detachment. Ancient philosophy saw brilliantly the evanescent character of bodily,
material pleasures and the greater enduringness of intellectual ones; it
could lead men from the infra-intellectual to the intellectual, but not
to the supra-intellectual realm. Much as he is to be praised, Socrates is
not an open soul as much as a soul "in the process of opening" (55).
In the end, Greek philosophy is elitist; its universalist implications
become clear only from hindsight through the lenses of Christianity.
A purely intellectualist philosophy cannot succeed in explaining "how
a moral motive can have a hold upon the soul of men" (57).
Behind each moral motive there are two forces, one "social" and
the other "supra-social," which endow it with strength. Thus, if we
say that we act from "self-respect," or from the "dignity of man" we
have further to inquire of the source of this dignity and respect. The
"higher" self to which the average personality defers is the "social
self." We feel the social pressure of our group or country. However,
beyond this social pressure which is experienced as impersonal is the
attraction of the open society, an attraction which is quintessentially
personal.
...the great moral figures that have made their mark in history join hands across
the centuries, above our human cities; they unite into a divine city which they bid
us to enter. We may not hear their voices distinctly... [but] something answers
from the depths of our soul; from the real society in which we live we betake
ourselves in thought to this ideal society; to this ideal society we bow down when
we reverence the dignity of man within us, when we declare that we act from selfrespect. (59)
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Why do we obey the commands of reason? It is not enough to speak
of reason abstractly: as, for example, when we say that "reason constitutes the dignity of man" and the like. Rather, it is because that
behind reason there are the
men who have made mankind divine, and who have thus stamped a divine
character on reason, which is the essential attribute of man. It is these men who
draw us to an ideal society, while we yield to the pressure of the real one. (60)
Here the open society becomes in effect, the "true city," the City of
God, of Augustine. In part, at least, the resemblance is there; but in
using the terms "real" and "ideal" society, he is using a language different from that of Augustine. The latter would call the City of God
the truly "real" society.
Bergson's Theory of Moral Obligation—Recapitulation
The final section of the opening chapter on "Moral Obligation" is
devoted to a recapitulation of the book's main thesis: viz, that there
are two sources of morality, and that it is inadequate to say that moral
obligation is a dictate of pure "reason." Behind the "rationality" of a
moral imperative, there is either the habit making for social discipline
(a command of the "closed morality") or the aspiration to emulate
the example of a "mystic hero" (the appeal of the "open morality").
Philosophers from Plato to Kant have failed to adumbrate the key
features of moral obligation, Bergson insists, and he writes with the
excitement of someone who claims to be, in the words of Kant applied
to Rousseau, the "Newton of the moral world."
Bergson is well aware that his method has the obvious drawback of
seeming simplistic when applied to the actual human conditions where
we find neither the pure animality of the closed society nor the quasidivinity of the open society. Nonetheless, he insists, it is necessary to
use his method of disentangling sources that have become intermingled if we are rightly to comprehend the subject of moral obligation.
II. STATIC RELIGION
The second great theme of the Two Sources is religion. Although
man has been defined ever since the Greeks as a "rational animal," he
could with at least equal justification be called a "religious animal":
We find in the past, we could find today, human societies with neither science
nor art nor philosophy. But there has never been a society without religion. (92)
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Religion, we like to say, is a product of a human faculty called "imagination." This observation helps us little, however, because science,
art, and philosophy are also inconceivable without imagination. With
greater precision we might say that religion is the product of the act of
fabulation (Fr. 1066, 1067), a word which the English translator
renders as "myth-making."
In its "original and elementary form" the myth-making faculty
both "plays a social role" and "brings added strength to the individual." To illustrate how it works for the individual, Bergson gives
an example from the contemporary psychic research, concerning a
lady whose instinctive or "somnambulistic self" prevented her from
plunging to her death down an elevator shaft: the gate to the elevator
shaft was open as if the elevator was there. Instead, unknown to her, it
was out of order and on another floor. Just as she was about to fling
herself through the gate down the gaping void of the elevator shaft,
she experienced a life-saving hallucination: it was as if the elevator
man appeared and pushed her backwards onto the landing (110).
Had the lady followed only her intelligence (which correctly
reasoned that if the gate on her landing were open the elevator was
there) she could have met her death. Instead, the "instinctive or somnambulistic self which underlies the reasoning personality...had seen
the danger...inducing in a flash the fictitious, hallucinatory perception" best fitted to "evoke and explain the apparently unjustified
movement" (110).
Analogously, in primitive and rudimentary societies, a
"penumbra" of instinct survives in a being otherwise ruled by intelligence to prevent the individual from taking the destructive course
of egoism counselled by unbridled intelligence.
The myth-making function of the mind easily embroiders upon the
material it is given by nature, and we witness, in the name of religion,
the emergence of countless absurdities and monstrosities. To allay the
fear of death, the idea of a deathless "spirit" or "shade" is called
forth. From there people will devise ways of winning over the spirits
and seeking their aid.
Once started on this road, there is hardly any absurdity into which intelligence
may not stumble. The myth-making function works well enough by itself alone:
what will it not do when it is spurred on by fear and necessity! To avert a danger
or secure a favor the living are ready to offer anything they fancy the dead man
may want. They will go so far as the cutting off of heads, if it may be pleasing in
his sight. (125-126)
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Evil and monstrous actions such as head-hunting and human
sacrifice are probably later refinements of primitive man, however.
"The true primitives were probably more reasonable..." (126). Over
time, through the "double effect of repetition and exaggeration and
irrational passes into the realm of the absurd, and the strange into the
realm of the monstrous" (127).
Magic, Religion, and Science
Continuing his reconstruction of the primitive consciousness,
Bergson hypothesizes that "primitive intelligence divides its experience into two separate parts.":
There is, on the one side, that which obeys the action of the hand or the tool, that
which can be foreseen and relied on: this part of the universe is conceived
physically, until such time as it is conceived mathematically; it appears as a concentration of causes and effects...; we need only look at what intelligence does in
order to know what it implicitly thinks. Then, on the other hand, there is that
part of experience upon which homo faber feels he has entirely lost his grip. This
part is treated no longer physically, but morally. Since we can exert no power
over it, we hope it will exert some power in our behalf. (153)
Within the second, or unknown part of experience on which "homo
faber feels he has entirely lost his grip," there is room for the mythmaking function of our mind:
For the pressure of instinct has given rise, within intelligence, to that form of
imagination which is the myth-making function. Myth-making has but to follow
its own course in order to fashion...gods that assume more and more exalted
form than those of mythology, or deities even more degraded, such as mere
spirits or even forces which retain only one property from their psychological
origin, that of not being purely mechanical, and of...bending to our will. The
first and second directions are those of religion, the third that of magic. (154)
Magic, then, is that product of the myth-making function of the
mind which claims to make "non-mechanical" forces of nature comply with our wishes. It is a mechanism of control through the
knowledge of secret forces of nature. The Melanesian mana, the orenda of the Iroquois Indians, the wakanda of the Sioux are all examples
of magic forces that were believed to permeate nature (154).
Throughout his analysis of "static" religion—and magic is treated
as a manifestation or quasi-perversion of such a religion—Bergson
emphasizes the primacy of the practical or utilitarian over the
theoretical. "Before any man can philosophize he must live," he insists. "Scholars and philosophers" he declares
HENRI BERGSON
15
are too much inclined to believe that the mind works in all men as with them, for
the sheer love of thinking. The truth is that the mind aims at action, and that, if
there really is any philosophy to be found in the uncivilized man, it is certainly in
action rather than in thought...(154-155)
In other words; the magical action came first and then the symbol
(mana, orenda or whatever) to designate the force in nature "impregnated with humanity," which resulted in the change in the outside
world—over and beyond the mechanical, physical laws of its operation—desired. Magic enabled man to "extend his actions further than
physical laws permitted" (155). The origin of a practice such as
voodoo is in the desire to punish an enemy who is absent but who can
be impersonated by a puppet or dummy (158) just as the sorcerer's
ritual rain dance originates as a response to the very real practical problem of drought (159).
Magic, then, resolves itself into two elements:
the desire to act on a thing, even on that which is out of reach, and the idea that
things are charged, or can be charged, with what we should call human fluid. We
must revert to the first point to draw the comparision between magic and science,
and to the second to show the connection of magic and religion. (159)
Magic is the "reverse of science" (161). Science "measures and
calculates with a view to anticipation and action. It first supposes,
then verifies, that the universe is governed by mathematical laws"
(159). Science "demands a twofold effort, that of a few men to find
some new thing and that of all the others to adopt it and-adapt
themselves to it" (160). Bergson continues significantly:
A society may be called civilized when you find in it such a power to lead and
willingness to be led....What was lacking among the uncivilized was probably
not the exceptional man...but the chance for such a man to show his superiority
and the readiness of other men to follow him. (160-161)
What sets a society on the "road to civilization"? Perhaps the
"menace of extermination, such as that created by the discovery of a
new weapon by an enemy tribe" (161). Societies which are not
challenged and for whom life is too easy become "contaminated by
the products of their own laziness"—i.e., by magic (161).
For magic is the reverse of science. So long as the inertia of the environment does
not cause it to proliferate, it has its function to perform. It temporarily calms the
uneasiness of an intelligence whose form exceeds its content, which is vaguely
aware of its ignorance and realizes the danger of it, which divines, outside the
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very small circle in which action is sure of its effect, where the immediate future
is predictable and within which therefore science already prevails, a vast area of
the unpredictable such as may well discourage action. (161)
Magic is separated from science by the "whole distance between
wishing and willing. Far from paving the way for science...it has been
the greatest obstacle against which methodical knowledge has had to
contend" (162). "Civilized man" is distinguished from "non-civilized
man" by his eagerness to encroach, through science, on "that magic
which was occupying the rest of the field." By contrast, non-civilized
man, "disdaining effort" conceals "incipient science" and replaces it
with magic to the greatest extent possible.
What, in summary, is Bergson's argument regarding "static
religion"? It is that this religion which appeared in varying forms over
millennia, is grounded on man's primal experience of the world
beyond the control of his intelligence as composed of "semi-personal
powers" or "efficient presences." (185) This experience itself posited
a "fundamental demand of life" which in turn called forth the
"myth-making faculty." The myth-making function of the mind was
called forth as a necessity to balance the narrowness of man's "toolcontriving intelligence." (186-187) Static religion, which originated as
a practical need of life (man must live before he can philosophize,
Bergson is fond of repeating) then runs away with itself and piles absurdity upon absurdity, even to the point of sanctioning the torture
and sacrifice of humans to appease the avenging gods.
One of Bergson's objectives in this chapter is to explain how static
religion, with its countless monstrosities and absurdities, could have
appealed to an intelligent being. This he does as follows:
Man is the only animal whose actions are uncertain....He is alone in realizing
that he is subject to illness, alone in knowing that he must die...But this is not
saying enough. Of all the creatures that live in society, man alone can swerve
from the social line by giving way to selfish preoccupations when the common
good is at stake; in all other societies the interests of the individual are inexorably
coordinate with and subordinate to the general interest. This twofold shortcoming in man is the price paid for intelligence. (193-194)
Nature, which ordained intelligence, also took the precaution that
the condition of order, disturbed in the above respect by intelligence,
should be re-established by the myth-making function. The role of this
function fabulatrice, which "belongs to intelligence" but which is not
the same as intelligence, is to
HENRI BERGSON
17
elaborate that religion we have been dealing with up to now, that which we call
static, and of which we should say that it was natural religion, if the term were
not used [presumably in the Eighteenth Century Englightenment] in another
sense. We have then only to sum up what we have said to define this religion in
clear terms. It is a defensive reaction of nature against what might be depressing
for the individual and dissolvent for society, in the exercise of intelligence. (194)
(Emphasis added)
The particular aim of static or "natural" religion in the evolution of
mankind has been to "preserve" and "tighten" the traditional bond
which holds together the members of a given society and which makes
it possible for each of them to "defend the group against other groups
and to set it above everything." Religion in this primal sense has the
following characteristics:
it is common to the members of a group
it associates them intimately with each other in rites and ceremonies
it distinguishes the group from other groups
it guarantees the success of the common enterprise, and
[it] is an assurance against the common danger. (195-196)
Static religion will appear absurd and illogical if we look at it
from some abstract point of view. If we "place man back in nature
as a whole," however, we will perceive intelligence in need of being
balanced by something akin to instinct that will help man to recover
the serenity and tranquility enjoyed by other created things. This is
the function of religion:
Unrest and myth-making counteract and nullify each other. In the eyes of a god,
looking down from above, the whole would appear indivisible, like the perfect
confluence of flowers unfolding to the spring. (197)'
III. DYNAMIC RELIGION
Given the centrality of the chapter on "Dynamic Religion" to
5. In his exposition of static religion's "cunning of reason"—to use Hegel's
term—Bergson even claims to show the "rationality" of human sacrifice. It was
doubtless an offering made to turn away the wrath or to buy the favor of a god. "If so,
the greater the cost and the more valuable the thing sacrificed, the more acceptable it
was likely to be." In addition, it took place in the context of a meal in which the god
and his worshippers were supposed to partake in common. Finally, there was the element of blood. "As the principle of life, it gave the god strength, and enabled him the
better to help man..." (191-192)
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Bergson's argument, it is surprising that it is barely more than half the
length of the chapter on "Static Religion." (The former is 56 pages
whereas the latter is 105 pages.) Indeed, the chapter consists primarily
of a rather sketchy treatment of mysticism (and even here only Christian mysticism is dealt with fully). The result is to leave most of the
burden of explaining Bergson's theory of the open society to the final
chapter.
More than anywhere else in the book, in this chapter the reader is
made aware of the extent to which Bergson's moral, social, and
political reflections rest on his biology as expounded in his book
Creative Evolution. It is his contention that the evidence of biology
and mysticism intersect with and confirm each other, with mysticism
enabling him to go beyond the conclusions of his much earlier book
Creative Evolution in dealing with fundamental philosophical questions.
We left man in the possession of static religion, or natural religion,
which is "that element which, in beings endowed with reason, is called
upon to make good any deficiency of attachment to life." (199) Intelligence itself caused man anxiety, for as an "intelligent being" man
was not "living in the present alone; there can be no reflection without
foreknowledge, no foreknowledge without inquietude, no inquietude
without a momentary slackening of the attachment to life." "Above
all, there is no humanity without society, and society demands of the individual an abnegation which the insect, in its automation, carries to the point of an utter
obliviousness of self....A new species coming on to the scene brings with it...all
the elements that impart life to it. (199)
Thus, along with intelligence man was equipped with the function
fabulacitrice, or myth-making function, which "elaborates
religions" 6 (presumably "static" religions). The "office" and
"significance" of static religion, then, is to make up for any deficiency, caused by the possession of intelligence, of attachment to life.
There is another way out, however, for that mind which, having
perceived that man is the "purpose of the entire process of evolution"
(200), aspires to establish contact with the elan vital itself. This contact cannot be established through intelligence, for intelligence
6. Fr. 1154. The English text has "contrives the pattern of religions" for elabore les
religions.
HENRI BERGSON
19
would be more likely to proceed in the opposite direction; it was provided for a
definite object [tool-making], and when it attempts speculation on a higher
plane, it enables us, at the most, to conceive possibilities, it does not attain any
results. But we know that all around intelligence there lingers still a fringe of intuition, vague and evanescent. Can we not fasten upon it, intensify it, and above
all, consummate it in action, for it has become pure contemplation only through
a weakening in its principle, and if we may put it so, by an abstraction practiced
on itself? (201)
Here we see the extraordinary emphasis Bergson placed on action:
the mystical impulse is conceived of in contemplative fashion, "only
through a weakening in its principle" and by an "abstraction practiced on itself." What is to be noted in this hypothetical account of the
genesis of "dynamic" religion is that
A soul strong enough, noble enough to make this effort would not stop to ask
whether the principle with which it is now in touch [i.e., the elan vital] is the
transcendent cause of all things or merely its earthly delegate [i.e., whether it is
God or a force originating in God]. It would be content to feel itself, pervaded,
through retaining its own personality, by a being immeasurably mightier than
itself, just as iron is pervaded by the fire which makes it glow. Its attachment to
life would henceforth be its inseparability from this principle, joy in joy, love of
that which is all love. (201)
Thus we witness the anomaly of two nations at war, each declaring
that it has God on its side, each thinking that it is invoking the God of
mysticism, the "God common to all mankind." In reality, they are invoking the "natural god of paganism," i.e., god of the static religion.
Despite the absurdity of this situation, we should not overlook the
great potential influence of the mystical, universal spirit and the fact
that its existence has created a new epoch in human history. Needless
to say, if a true version of the mystic God could be attained by all men
it would "mean the immediate abolition of war" (204).
From the Mysteries to Mysticism
Leading up to the "indivisible act by which dynamic religion is
posited" are various events which in retrospect appear as preparatory
stages. Nonetheless, Bergson says, the final achievement of dynamic
religion was marked by a saut brusque or "sudden leap" (Fr. 1159,
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205). He proceeds to discuss the pagan mystery religions (they contributed the Dionysian element of religious enthusiasm, in contrast to
the "serenity of the gods upon Olympus") (207). It is probably to the
mystery cults (Orphism, Pythagoreanism, etc.) that we owe the quality
of Greek philosophy that transcends logic and dialectic; indeed "at
the origin of this great movement [Platonic philosophy] there was an
impulsion or a shock which was not of a philosophic nature" (208).
Plotinus, who is the culmination of the philosophical movement
begun by Socrates and Plato, was "unquestionably" a mystic. What,
then, is "complete mysticism" and did Hellenic philosophy achieve it?
In our eyes, the ultimate end of mysticism is the establishment of a contact, consequently of a partial coincidence, with the creative effort which life manifests.
This effort is of God, if it is not God himself. The great mystic is...an individual
being, capable of transcending the limitations imposed on the species by its
material nature [!—this sounds like gnostic second-reality language], thus
continuing and extending [l] the divine action. Such is our definition. (209)
Using such an exalted definition, Bergson, unsurprisingly, finds
Plotinus to have flunked the test:
He [Plotinus] went as far as ecstasy, a state in which the soul feels itself...in the
presence of God, being irradiated with His light; he did not...reach the point
where, as contemplation is engulfed in action, the human will becomes one with
the divine will. (210, emphasis added)
What draws the Bergsonian condemnation, it turns out unsurprisingly, is Plotinus' statement (in Enneads
viii, 4) that "action is a
weakening of contemplation." Here "Greek intellectualism" won out
over genuine or complete mysticism (210). Similarly deficiencies are
discovered in non-Western speculation, whether we have in mind Indian, Persian, or Chinese religious thought (210,ff.).
The "Hindu soul" strove to make the "leap" beyond the religion of
nature and the city in two different ways. One was through taking
soma, the drug that produced a "divine rapture, somewhat like that
which the devotees of Dionysos sought in wine," and practicing yoga,
a "set of practices designed to inhibit all sensation, to dull mental activity, in a word to induce states similar to hypnosis" (212). Another
was through speculation, for Hinduism (and Bergson includes
"Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Jainism" under this category) was
"both a philosophy and a religion" (210-211).
Hindu thought led neither to a full-fledged philosophy nor a complete mysticism. It was not a philosophy because it did not lead to
HENRI BERGSON
21
knowledge capable of unlimited development. Knowledge for it was a
means rather than an end, the end being to escape from the unremitting cruelty of life. Deliverance from the cycle of birth and death (and
therefore, suffering) could be won only by a renunciation which
amounted to "absorption in the whole as well as in self." Even Buddhism, which gave a "new turn to Brahmanism,"
did not modify it in essentials. It made it...into something more elaborate. Till
then human experience had shown indeed that life meant suffering; the Buddha
worked back to the cause of this suffering; he found it in desire of every kind, in
the craving for life. Thus the road to deliverance could be more accurately
traced... [In Buddhism] the state toward which...the soul [is guided]...is beyond
joy and pain, beyond consciousness. It is by a sense of stages, and by a whole
system of mystical discipline, that it leads to Nirvana, to the abolition of desire
during life and of Karma after death. We must not forget that the origin of the
Buddha's mission lies in the illumination that came to him in his early youth.
Everything in Buddhism which can be put into words can doubtless be considered as a philosophy; but the essential is the final revelation, transcending
both reason and speech. (213-214; emphasis added)
This "final revelation" which is the "essential" of Buddhism, is
"an experience closely resembling ecstasy"; it is "an effort at oneness
with the creative impetus [PeIan createur]." Thus, we should not
hesitate to see Buddhism as a kind of mysticism (214; Fr. 1166). It is,
however, an incomplete form of mysticism. A complete form would
be "action, creation, love" (214).
While Buddhism did not ignore charity, it lacked "warmth and
glow" [chaleur] in its recommendations and examples. It also—heresy
of heresies—"did not believe in the efficacy of human action."
It had no faith in such action. And faith alone can grow to power to move mountains. A complete mysticism would have reached this point. It is perhaps to be
met with in India, but much later. That enthusiastic charity, that mysticism comparable to the mysticism of Christianity, we find in a Ramakrishna or a
Vivekananda....But Christianity...had come into the world in the interval. Its influence on India...was superficial enough, but to the soul that is predisposed a
mere hint, the slightest token is enough. But let us suppose even that in the direct
action of Christianity, as a dogma, has been practically nil in India. Since it has
i mpregnated the whole of Western civilization, one breathes it, like a perfume, in
everything which this civilization brings in its wake. Industrialism itself...springs
indirectly from it. (214-215, emphasis added.)
In this remarkable blending of mysticism, Christianity, and industrialism, Bergson finds the explanation for the unleashing of the
burning, active complete mysticism of Ramakrishna and Vivekanan-
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da. "This burning, active mysticism could never have been kindled
when the Hindu felt he was crushed by nature as when no human intervention was of any avail." It was this "pessimism" this
"helplessness" in the face of famine and other forms of disaster,
which "prevented India from carrying her mysticism to its full conclusion, since complete mysticism is action" (215).
The Gospel According to Bergson:
Christianity as "Activist Mysticism"
It is at this point that the quite literal meaning of "dynamic" in the
characteristics of Christianity as a, or rather the, dynamic religion
becomes clear in Bergson's teaching. The formula he employs is as
follows: Christianity = "activist mysticism" = industrialism = the
global or "open" society. That he never seriously questioned this
equation either as a whole or in its parts is remarkable. Bergson's interpretation of Christianity completely ignores its whole contemplative dimension, the emphasis of Eastern theology, and
numerous other problems such as the Reformation and the rise of
capitalism, just as his characterization of industrialism fails even to
consider the morally ambiguous side-effects of the industrialization
process on both human institutions and the natural environment.
The transition from mysticism to mechanism is accomplished with
breathtaking ease. It was pessimism, he remarked, which "prevented
India from carrying her mysticism to its full conclusion, since complete mysticism is action."
But then, with the advent of machines which increased the yield of the land, and
above all moved the products from place to place, with the advent also of the
political and social organizations which proved experimentally that the mass of
the people was not doomed...to a life of grinding labor and bitter poverty,
deliverance became possible in an entirely new sense; the mystical impulse...was
no longer going to be stopped short by the impossibility of acting; it was no
longer to be driven back into doctrines of renunciation or the systematic practice
of ecstasy; instead of turning inwards and closing, the soul could open wide its
gates to a universal love. (215, emphasis added)
In the above quotation, openness is no longer conceived as inwardseeing of divine Being with the eye of the mind; such inward-seeing instead is viewed as a hindrance, as a form of closure. Bergson's emphasis on activism, on external action on the world is so powerful here
that we might conclude that he is denying the contemplative moment
altogether did we not know that his idea of complete mysticism in-
HENRI BERGSON
23
cludes both a turning away from the world and its priorities—the
priorities of "closed" or "static" religion—and a turning back to the
world again to act out of universal compassion and love. Incomplete
mysticism is a half-turn from the world, whereas complete or activist
mysticism is thought of as a full-turn back to the world again. Because
of his extreme emphasis on activism and industrialism, however, he
has scarcely guarded against the danger of the cooptation by a worldly
attitude of the original mystical impulse and of an eclipse of openness
as an experience of world-transcendent Being in favor of a worldimmanent reality of Becoming.
That mysticism and Christianity are both in danger of being
coopted by an essentially secular activism—however much against
Bergson's intentions is not fully clear from the passages—is apparent
from the passages that follow those we have just cited. The "inventions" and "organizations" which make possible the liquidation of
age-old famine in India and elsewhere
are essentially Western; it is they who [sic] in this case [i.e., in India] have
enabled mysticism to develop to its fullest extent and reach its goal. We may
therefore conclude that neither in Greece nor in ancient India was there complete
mysticism, in the one case [Greece] because the impetus was not strong enough,
in the other case [India] because it was thwarted by material conditions or by too
narrow an intellectual frame. It was its [i.e., complete mysticism's] appearance
at a given moment that enables us to follow in retrospect its preparatory phases,
just as the volcano, bursting into activity, explains a long series of earthquakes in
the past. (215-216)
The "volcano" of activist mysticism, of course, turns out to be
Christianity. Bergson's conception of "Christianity" is vague. On the
one hand, it appears to be synonymous with complete mysticism in
which case non-mystical "Christians" would be imposters; on the
other hand, Christianity seems to have been a religion of which
mysticism is a part—the leaven or spark as it were—and which in its
entirety as a sociological phenomenon is a "mixture" of mysticism
and static religion (ecclesiastical organization, dogma, etc.).
In any event, it is the "great Christian mystics" alone who represent
complete mysticism. It is true that "most of them passed through
states" similar to those of the incomplete mystics of ancient Greece
and India.
But they merely passed through them: bracing themselves...for an entirely new
effort, they burst a dam; they were then swept back into a vast current of life;
from their increased vitality there radiated an extraordinary energy, daring,
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power of conception and realization. Just think of what was accomplished in the
field of action by a St. Paul, a St. Teresa, a St. Catherine of Siena, a St. Francis,
a Joan of Arc, and how many others besides! (216)
Astonishingly, Bergson throws out this eclectic list as if it were selfevident why each and all of them should be considered mystics. To be
fair to Bergson, however, he does refer to several books on mysticism
in a footnote which he claims either support or were influenced by his
own treatment of mysticism; the books, by Henri Delacroix and
Evelyn Underhill are cited because they "call attention to the essentially active element of the great mystics" (212, no. 2).
It is surprising that Bergson ignores the later editions of Underhill's
now classic work on Mysticism where she made very clear the primarily contemplative emphasis of mysticism. In the 1926 edition, for example, Underhill declared mysticism to be "wholly transcendent and
spiritual" rather than aiming at "rearranging or improving anything
in the visible universe.'"
It is strange that in his (quite short) list of authorities on mysticism,
he did not cite William James' great chapter on mysticism in The
Varieties of Religious Experience (London: Longmans, Green and
Co., 1908). This is all the more strange because in the Two Sources
itself (p. 143), Bergson had quoted extensively from another work of
James, whose work he admired and whom he declared to be "a master
of psychological science." Perhaps his reticence may be explained in
part by the fact that James had listed "passivity" along with "ineffability," "noetic quality," and "transiency," as a key characteristic
of mysticism. Far from feeling called upon to act in the world (as a
result of the mystical experience per se), the mystic, says James,
testifies to a suspension of his or her own will, "as if he or she were
grasped or held by a superior power," during the experience itself
(James, op. cit., p. 382).
Bergson scornfully rejects the classification of the great mystics as
mentally deranged. Instead, he discovers "an exceptional, deeprooted mental healthiness, which...is expressed in the bent for action,
the faculty of adapting and re-adapting to circumstances" and other
qualities making for "supreme good sense" in the ordinary meaning
of the term as understood by a man of action (217). Delusions of
grandeur and hallucinations are parodies of mysticism. The great
mystics have regarded their own "ecstasies, visions, raptures" as of
7. Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism (New York, Dutton, 1926; Meridian Book, 1960), p.
81.
HENRI BERGSON
25
"secondary importance, as wayside incidents; they had to go beyond
them...to reach the goal, which was identification of the human will
with the divine will" (218, emphasis added). (It is in such language as
this that Bergson comes close to representing the gnostic "godded
man"; in general, he seems quite ignorant of gnosticism as a current
of thought and of the need to distinguish mysticism from gnosticism.)
Having established that our mystics are in robust phychic health,
Bergson proceeds to give a clinical account of what happens to the
mystic psyche at the level proper to its genius:
Shaken to its depths, by the current which is about to sweep it forward
[presumably, 1 9 elan vital], the soul ceases to revolve round itself and escapes for
a moment from the law which demands that the species and the individual should
condition one another. It stops, as though to listen to a voice calling. Then it lets
itself go, straight onward. It does not directly perceive the force that moves it,
but it feels an indefinable presence or divines it through a symbolic vision. Then
comes a boundless joy, an all-absorbing ecstasy or an enthralling rapture: God is
there, and the soul is in God. Mystery is no more. Problems vanish, darkness is
dispelled; everything is flooded with light. (219)
Bergson's account of the mystic visio Dei, although in a sense moving, is strangely abstract. No specific examples are given from the rich
literature available; neither the Cloud of Unknowing by the
anonymous Fourteenth Century English author nor the work of St.
John of the Cross is cited. Nonetheless, Bergson does proceed to an
account of what John had called the "dark night of the soul."
Though the soul becomes "in thought and feeling, absorbed in God,
something of it remains outside; that something is the will," from
which the soul's "action" would proceed.
Its life, then is not yet divine. The soul is aware of this, and hence its vague disquietude, hence the agitation in repose of what we call complete mysticism: it
means that the impetus [I 'elan] has acquired the momentum to go further...that
there is, besides [seeing and feeling, both affected by the ecstasy], the will, which
itself has to find its way back to God. When this agitation has grown [and]...the
ecstasy has died out, the soul finds itself alone again...Accustomed for a time to
a dazzling light, it is now left blindly groping in the gloom. It does not realize the
profound metamorphosis which is going on obscurely within it. It feels it has lost
much; it does not yet know that this was in order to gain all. Such is the "darkest
night" of which the great mystics have spoken, and which is...the most significant thing...in Christian mysticism. (219-220)
At this point, significantly, Bergson resorts to a technological
analogy. The soul of the mystic is compared to an instrument of
tempered steel. The final phase of the experience of a great mystic is
described as follows:
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Let us confine ourselves to suggesting that a machine of wonderfully tempered
steel...[had become] conscious of itself as it was being put together. Its parts being one by one subjected to the severest tests...it would have a feeling of...pain
all over...The mystic soul yearns to become that instrument. It throws off
anything in its substance that is not pure enough, not flexible and strong enough,
to be turned to some use by God. Although it had sensed the presence of
God,...had thought it beheld God in a symbolic vision,...had even been united to
Him in its ecstasy...none of this rapture was lasting, because it was mere contemplation; action [at first] threw the soul back upon itself and thus divorced it
from God. Now it is God who is acting through the soul, in the soul; the union is
total, therefore final. (220) (Emphasis added(
From this point on, for the soul of the great mystic, now wedded to
activism in the service of God, there is a "superabundance of life.
There is a boundless impetus. There is an irresistible impulse which
hurls it into vast enterprises." Merely contemplative visions are "left
far behind: the divinity could not manifest itself from without to a
soul henceforth replete with its essence" (221). In "divine humility,"
the mystic experiences himself as the prototype of a new humanity. He
is now the "agent" of God to proclaim a newly perceived reality,
God's love for all men.
At this point, Bergson introduces the practical question: can
mysticism succeed in transforming humanity, in resuming the creative
effort of life with the end of creating a "divine humanity" animated
with the love of God for mankind? "If possible at all," he writes, "it
can only be by using simultaneously or successively two very different
methods," viz., "mechanics" and mysticism itself.
The "mechanical" method—discusses at greater length in the final
chapter
would consist...in intensifying the...work [of instrumental intelligence] to such
an extent...that the simple tool would give place to a vast system of machinery
such as might set human activity at liberty, this liberation being, moreover,
stabilized by a political and social organization which would ensure the application of the mechanism to its true object. (224, emphasis added)
One only wishes that Bergson had expressed himself more definitely
about the obscure "political and social organization" that would insure the application of this "vast system of machinery" to its "true
object." Presumably, (for we know that Bergson was an enthusiast
for the League of Nations) he is referring to some form of world
government. True, Bergson concedes, such a solution would open a
Pandora's box of troubles; there is the ultimate danger that
HENRI BERGSON
27
"mechanism...might turn against mysticism." This, however, is a risk
that should be taken. There is in nature some kind of law of
recompense, apparently, by which an "activity of a superior kind"
(i.e., mysticism) will at first have to call forth one of a lower order
(mechanics) even at the cost of having the lower activity try to
monopolize the room. The superior activity "will profit by this, provided it has been able to survive; its turn will come again, and it will
then benefit by everything which has been done without its aid, which
has been energetically developed in strict opposition to it" (225).
In the meantime, while mechanics is pursuing its anti-mystical
coure, the "mystic impetus" would be kept alive in a
tiny handful of privileged souls which together would form a spiritual society;
societies of this kind might multiply; each one...would give birth to one or
several others; thus the impetus would be preserved and continued until such
time as a profound change in the material conditions imposed on humanity by
nature should permit, in spiritual matters, of a radical transformation. (225, emphasis added)
As suggested in the chapter on "Dynamic Religion," Bergson insists that there is a vital link between the "mysticism of the West" and
the West's "industrial civilization." At least at its moment of origin,
industrialization was a moment of openness, of progress, of mobility,
as compared to the closed static society. For a long time indeed, it was
thought that modern industry would bring happiness (bonheur) to
mankind. (280, Fr. 1223) Today, on the other hand, all the ills from
which we suffer are attributed to technology. "An irresistible force"
seems to draw humanity more and more violently "towards the
satisfaction of its basest desires." Let us, however, return to the "impulsion" or impetus at its origin. A "slight deviation" at the beginning [of industrialization] may have been enough to produce a "wider
and wider divergence between the point aimed at and the object
reached." If that be so, "we should not concern ourselves so much
with the divergence" as with the impetus. Indeed, perhaps humanity
has "already prepared the means of rectifying its course, and may be
"nearer the goal than its units." (280-281) With these remarks,
Bergson proceeds to examine "more closely" the charges levelled
against industrialism or mechanism—or what today, following Jacques Ellul, we would call the "technological society."
There are certain tendencies toward a dichotomy in contemporary
industrial societies wherever the parliamentary regime prevails. The
parliamentary regime, with its loyal opposition, encourages the alternation of parties, encourages dissent against the prevailing policies,
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and guarantees dissatisfaction with the government in power.
However, such as oscillation of parties and forces is the "result of certain very simple contrivances set up by society"; it is "not the effect of
a paramount necessity...towering above the particular causes of alternation and dominating human events in general" (282).
Does such a towering "necessity" exist? Bergson's answer is ambiguous:
We do not believe in the fatality of history. There is no obstacle that cannot be
broken down by wills sufficiently keyed up, if they deal with it in time. There is
thus no inescapable historic law. But there are biological laws; and the human
societies, in so far as they are partly willed by nature, pertain to biology on this
particular point...[It is] the essence of a vital tendency to develop fan-wise,
creating, by the mere fact of its growth, divergent directions, each of which will
receive a certain portion of the impetus. (282-283) (Emphasis added)
After a lengthy excursus in which, building on his earlier book,
Creative Evolution, Bergson proclaims his two "laws" or evolutionary tendencies of "dichotomy" and "double frenzy," he turns to
the case of materialism and asceticism to show how the two laws apply. Today we see the "race for comfort" proceeding at a "faster and
faster" pace until it is now a "stampede." We might be tempted to
project an indefinite progression of this very tendency:
But should not this very frenzy open our eyes? Was there'not some other frenzy
to which it has succeeded, and which developed in the opposite direction, an activity of which the present frenzy is the complement? (287)
To document his law of "frenzy" Bergson cites the "asceticism" of
the Middle Ages and the modern movement opposed to it for an improvement of material conditions beginning in the fifteenth century.
From this ever-increasing complexity of modern life, we should now
expect a "return to simplicity." The return is not a certainty; the
"future of humanity" remains indeterminate since it is "on humanity
that it depends" (288). Without this apparently irrational oscillation
of two tendencies, there would not have been true progress, the
possibility of the "maximum of creation, both in quality and quantity. It is necessary to keep on to the bitter end in one direction, to find
out what it will yield; when we can go no further, we turn back, with
all we have acquired, to set off in the direction from which we had
turned aside" (286, emphasis added).
Without once mentioning Hegel in the book—indeed in all of
Bergson's collected works there is only one fleeting mention of Hegel
HENRI BERGSON
29
(Fr. 1290)—Bergson proceeds here, in his so-called law of double frenzy to give a replica (or parody?) of the Hegelian dialectic. The victorious party, society, or movement does not simply route the
defeated opponent, but preserved and suspended (aufgehoben) in its
victory, is what was positive in that which was overcome. There is thus
"oscillation and progress, progress by oscillation." Nothing is lost or
wasted in any one particular "frenzy"; the "asceticism" of the future
will be at a higher level in quantity and quality, thanks to having
superseded and negated the materialism of modernity. Thus, there are
"two opposing manifestations of one primordial tendency" which
"contrived to evolve from itself, in quantity and quality, everything
that it was capable of, even more than it had to give, proceeding along
each of the two roads, one after the other, getting back into one direc-
tion with everything that had been picked up by the way of the other."
(288, emphasis added) The latter sentence expressed Bergson's view
that progress occurs "by the law of double frenzy": there is one direction of progress, emanating from a single "primordial tendency" but
making its way along "each of two roads, one after the other," getting back into one direction with everything that had been gained via
the other.
At this point, the reader may be inclined to ask, "what happened to
openness in history?" Bergson's version of the dialectic may be less
iron-like than Hegel's, but it certainly is not a model of spontaneity or
receptivity to the unexpected. Indeed, are openness and historical
"laws," however much disguised as "tendencies," compatible? What
about the possibility that some parties, principles, movements are
dead losses, or monuments to nonsense? How could Nazism have fitted into the "law of double frenzy" where each antithesis profits from
the other? What would the victims of the Holocaust say about such
speculation?
Especially in our own time, after the appearance of agonizing
criticisms of the "technological society" and its seemingly irreversible
tendencies (Jacques Ellul), Bergson seems much too urbane and cheerful about the resolution of the modern imbalance in man's spiritual
condition. There is, he informs us blithely, "nothing improbable in
the return to a simpler life. Science itself might show us the way."
Physiology and medical science may proceed to uncomplicate things
at a rate equal to that which physics and chemistry encouraged us to
"multiply our needs." (289) Perhaps we shall all become vegetarians,
for example, if science shows that we are slowly poisoning ourselves
by eating meat. Similarly, our whole civilization is said to be organ-
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ized around the arousal of sexual passion: Toute notre civilisation est
aphrodisiaque, he pungently concludes. (Fr. 1232) Whereas "nature"
is sparing in what she requires of sex (for procreation), modern
civilization constantly arouses the senses so that at present "humanity" takes the "violent, but paltry sensation" of sex as fundamental.
Science can have something to say on this subject too: "there will no
longer be pleasure in so much love of pleasure." Woman will come into her own instead of being treated as a sexual object to be pampered.
In general, with the asceticism, "luxury, pleasures and comfort" will
sharply recede in importance. There will be "less waste, and less enviousness" (291).
Why is Bergson so confident that the present (1930) emphasis on
sexuality and creature comforts will be reversed? Because of the "law
of the double frenzy":
We know that one frenzy brings on the counter-frenzy (292).
However, it is not evident from Bergson's discussion what gain there
will have been for the new asceticism by virtue of the extreme development of libertinism and gluttony. Rather, he emerges here sounding
simply like a fussy Victorian moralist and a Scrooge-like enemy of
sensuality.
Now nearing the end of the volume, Bergson approaches what he
calls the "essential point of our discussion: i.e., whether mechanical
invention (the technological explosion of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries) is not irreversible, and whether in that event there will be
any end to the satisfaction of old needs and the creation of new ones.
Science, after all, cannot stop. The new mysticism-asceticism must be
new precisely in this sense: it will not mark a return to the illiteracy
and technological poverty of the Middle Ages. How then, can it be
ascetic at all? How can it be limited?
His answer is that the "spirit of invention" must come to act
creatively on its own instead of in the service of "artificial"—i.e.,
surplus—needs (293). The truth is that "man has always invented
machines" and that mechanical invention is a "natural gift." In fact,
antiquity had "remarkable" machines and "many a clever mechanical
device was thought of long before the development of modern science,
and at a later stage, independently of it: even today a mere workman,
without scientific culture, will hit on improvements which have never
occurred to skilled engineers" (293).
The difference which modern science has made is this:
HENRI BERGSON
31
[The effects of mechanical invention] were limited so long as it was confined to
utilizing actual, and as it were visible, forces: muscular effort, wind or waterpower. The machine developed its full efficiency only from the day when it
became possible to place at its service, by a simple process of releasing, the
potential energies stored up for millions of years, borrowed from the sun,
deposited in coal, oil, etc. But that was the day the steam-engine was invented.
[It is true that]...the progress made...assumed giant proportions as soon as
science took a hand. [Nonetheless]...the spirit of mechanical invention, which
runs between narrow banks so long as it is left to itself, but expands indefinitely
after its conjunction with science, remains distinct from it, and could, if need be,
do without it. (293-294, emphasis added)
Bergson appears to have anticipated the contemporary ecology
movement and "soft energy path" people. He wants again to secure
the "independence" of mechanical invention from science, to reduce
technology to a smaller scale, where it ministers to the real or
"natural" needs of man instead of plying him with "artificial" needs.
To some extend, he reminds one of Herbert Marcuse's attack on contemporary industrial society, although he probably would reject any
Marxist (so say nothing of Freudian) influence. (Marx is never cited
even once in his collected works!) Perhaps his similarity is closest to
"radical" Christian and Jewish communitarian groups.
Bergson on the Impact of Technology and "Mechanization"
Unfortunately, the final few pages of The Two Sources of Morality
and Religion are dominated by what in my review-essay in the 1979
Political Science Reviewer on Karl Popper I called the "insidious
we"—not the editorial "we," not the royal "we," but the monolithic
"we." "Humanity becomes conceived as a massive block akin to
Rousseau's "general will," so that dissent over what is "humanity's"
"central, organizing thought" becomes the equivalent of immorality
and treason. Bergson, who was the first person to use the term "the
open societey," becomes at the end a proponent of something strange:
a cross between Turgot's masse totale and a gnostic divinized
"mankind."
Perhaps the most alarming of the many passages invoking
"humanity" at the end of the book is the following:
Generally speaking, industry has not troubled [itself] enough about the greater
or lesser importance of needs to be satisfied. It simply complied with public
taste, and manufactured with no other thought than that of selling. Here, as
elsewhere, we should like to see a central, organizing intelligence, which would
coordinate industry and agriculture and allot to the machine its proper place, I
mean the place where it can best serve humanity. (295)
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In the French text, the words are actually "une pensee centrale,
organisatrice" (Fr. 1236)—a central, organizing thought." The
political naivete of the French philosopher here is breath-taking: as if
there were a single "thought" or "mind" of "humanity" which could
"allot to the machine its proper place," where it can "best serve
humanity." Who is to say, without question or debate, what is
technology's "proper place" in the world, conceived of as a global
society? Also, who is to say, infallibly, what are the "real" as opposed
to the "surplus" or "artificial" needs of human beings? Bergson
responds that the real need obviously is that human beings must eat,
but who is to say again infallibly, what, on a world scale, are the best
means of fulfilling such an end? Again, Bergson can reply that "the
fact is simply that, production in general not being properly organized," there is no mechanism of exchange on a world-wide bases;
therefore, there is so-called "overproduction" in one part of the
world and starvation in the other (295, n.). Perhaps, although not
necessarily, if there were a single "organized intelligence" or central
world government, such a problem could be more easily solved than
under the conditions of the present state system, but who is to say,
given the ubiquity of incompetence and corruption, that so complicated a problem both from the technical and economic point of
view can be so simplistically solved as Bergson suggests?
Henri Bergson gives short shrift to cultural criticisms of industrialization, as promoting a standardized, levelled "mass mind."
He cites the standard pro-industrialization position, viz., that the
assembly line and the factory system actually give the working man
more leisure time in which to be creative, rather than alienating and
degrading him to the status of a "thing." Doubtless, this view could
be ably defended if it were accompanied by a concern with the
humanizing of the work place, and if it took more seriously the centrality of work in many people's lives as a source of meaning. Aristotle's distinction between "leisure" and "recreation" needs to be
recalled here as another complicating factor. Once again, however,
Bergson resorts to a simplistic analysis of a complicated problem (pp.
295-296). The Americans, he observes, have been criticized for all
"wearing the same hat." "Allow me to furnish the interior of my
head as I please, and I shall put up with a hat like everybody else's,"
he remarks wryly. Unfortunately, Bergson has failed to see that there
may well be a relationship between the "hat" and the "head."
Instead of the above considerations, Bergson's indictment of
"mechanization" is as follows:
HENRI BERGSON
33
We reproach it with having too strongly encouraged artificial [needs]..., with
having fostered luxury, with having favored the towns to the detriment of the
countryside, lastly with having widened the gap and revolutionized the relations
between employer and employed, between capital and labor. These effects...can
all be corrected, and then the machine would be nothing but a great benefactor.
But then, humanity must set about simplifying its existence with as much frenzy
as it devoted to complicating it. The initiative can come from humanity alone,
for it is humanity and not the alleged force of circumstances...which has started
the spirit of invention along a certain track. (296)
Once more, one sees the astonishing naivete and uncritical thinking
of Bergson as he approaches contemporary practical problems. Far
from being "open" to a variety of possibilities, with his "law of double frenzy" he has narrowed the range of options to those which con*
form to a Communist-style Puritanism. Thus, there can be no frills or
"luxuries" in the new "ascetic" civilization, the cities are to be emptied, Cambodia-style, the gap in income and prestige between
employers and employed collapsed. Then, presumably, Mecca would
have been reached: the "bad" effects of industrialism can be
eliminated, and "then the machine would be nothing but a great
benefactor." (Emphasis added) Is any material force or development
"nothing but a great benefactor"? Are there no troublesome side effects, even to the prolongation of life by medical science, for example?
Finally, one witnesses the invocation of "humanity" as if it were a
personality. Does this mean every living human being will participate
in the new ascetic "frenzy" against materialism? Apparently not.
Well, then, are those who continue to enjoy "luxury" and the
amenities of city life non-human, not a part of "humanity"? All of
this is rather terrifying in its implications. Bergson, however, apparently had not thought through any of them.
Conclusion: "A Machine for the Making of Gods"
It should be recalled that in the chapter on "Dynamic Religion"
Bergson had defined mysticism in an "activist" fashion,' to such an
extent that he denies to a contemplative mystic such as Plotinus the title of a "complete" mystic. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that he
8. "In our eyes, the ultimate end of mysticism is the establishment of a contact, consequently of a partial coincidence, with the creative effort which life itself manifests.
The effort is of God, if it is not God himself. The great mystic is to be conceived as an
individual being, capable of transcending the limitations imposed on the species by its
material nature, thus continuing and extending the divine action." (209)
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THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
finds his own variety of mysticism compatible with a new
"democratic" civilization. Indeed, modern democracy, which
originated in the Renaissance and the Reformation contemporaneously with the modern "spirit of invention" is only superficially antiChristian, insists Bergson. Rather, it reacted "against the form taken
until then by the Christian ideal" (i.e., it reacted against medieval
asceticism). The Christian ideal itself persisted, only we were now able
to see its "other side." True, complete and active mysticism aspires to
reach beyond a chosen few to radiate its love to all men (297). Today,
mankind, no longer necessarily threatened by starvation, can "use
matter to rise above materialism." Today, the "mystical summons up
the mechanical" (298). The "body" having greatly expanded relative
to the soul, must now, having reached its limit, make way for an expansion of soul. From material energy we must move to moral energy.
In fact, today "the body, now larger, calls for a bigger soul," and
"mechanism should mean mysticism" (299).
The origins of the process of mechanization are indeed more mystical than we
might imagine. Machinery will find its true vocation again, and it will render services in proportion to its power, only if mankind which it has bowed still lower to
the earth, can succeed, through it, in standing erect and looking heavenwards.
(299)
Today, the "mystery of the supreme obligation" has been resolved.
Such an obligation is response to the "appeal" or the "call" of the
mystic "genius" or "hero" to resume the forward movement of life
after its arrest by the human species. If a "hero" or "great privileged
soul,'"does not appear however—and perhaps it is "just as well not to
count too much" on his advent—then "some other influences might
divert our attention from the baubles that amuse us, and the vain
shadows for which we fight" (301). These "other influences" have to
do with "psychic science" (hi science psychique, Fr. 1244), mental
telepathy and other concerns of what is today called "parapsychology." These new "scientific" discoveries of a reality
"beyond" the sensory would be sufficient to "turn into a live, acting
reality a belief in the life beyond," so that most men would become
"absolutely sure" of survival (of the soul or consciousness) after
physical death (305-306).
Such results of the new "psychic science" would be sufficient to effect a mass conversion to the new mysticism:
9. Bergson N clear, if not sufficiently emphatic, about the distinction between a
spiritual "hero" or mystic and a pseudo-mystic or imperialistic dictator. True
mysticism is "incompatible with imperialism" or Nietzsche's "will to power." (300)
HENRI BERGSON
35
Our [sensual] pleasures would still remain, but drab and jejune...They would
pale like our electric lamps, before the morning sun. Pleasure would be eclipsed
by joy.
Joy indeed will be that simplicity of life diffused throughout the world by an
ever-spreading mystic intuition; joy, too, that which would automatically follow
a vision of the life beyond Ed 'au-dela] attained through the furtherance of scientific experiment [dans une experience scientifique e'largie—literally, "in an
enlarged scientific experience"]. Failing so thoroughgoing a spiritual reform, we
must be content with shifts and submit to more and more numerous and vexatious regulations, intended to provide a means of circumventing each successive
obstacle that our nature sets up against civilization. (306-Fr. 1245)
In any event, insists Bergson, a crisis is upon us. Humanity cannot
continue as it is, "crushed beneath the weight of its own [material]
progress." It is to mankind that belongs the responsibility of deciding
whether it merely wants to live, or to "make just the extra effort required for fulfilling" even on this "refractory planet the essential
function of the universe, which is a machine for the making of gods
[une machine a faire des dieux]" (306, Fr. 1245).
Thus, Bergson concludes his extraordinary, but flawed, masterpiece
in the position of the gnostic savant, who knows the "essential function of the universe," which is to produce, in effect, the godded man.
What is new with him is his emphasis on the way this result is to come
about through machinery. Indeed, the universe itself is allegedly a
"machine" for the manufacturing of mystics who will be in touch
with or coincide with God.
Final Remarks:
Openness and Closure in Bergson
Bergson's emphasis upon the reality of the non-metric dimension of
experience and on the creative potentiality of human beings open to
that dimension marked a significant contribution to the theory of the
open society, as did, of course, his use, apparently for the first time,
of this very term. However, this contribution wa gravely compromised
by his overemphasis upon the active, as opposed to the contemplative,
mode of relating to reality. It is perhaps significant that in another
work, Creative Evolution, which preceded the Two Sources by some
twenty years, he had suggested man be defined as Homo faber instead
of Homo sapiens.'° While his activism tended to close off the
10. Henri Bergson, L 'Evolution Creatrice in Oeuvres (Paris, P.U.F., 1970), p. 613.
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
36
autonomy of the contemplative, his scientism tended to close off the
autonomy of the non-metric or spiritual realm by drawing it into the
metric, as it were. As Henri Gouhier declared in his Introduction to
the Centenary Edition of Bergson's Collected Works "in Bergson's
eyes, philosophy is a science"; and Bergson himself had declared in
the Two Sources that philosophy, "thanks to its method, can lay
claim to an objectivity as great as that of the positive sciences. ' Thus
we have his overly credulous, indeed naive, belief in the scientific
status of parapsychology, as expressed in the Two Sources, which was
itself but a continuation of his interests in so-called "psychophysics"
in his doctoral dissertation (Essai sur Les Donnees Immediates de la
Conscience) of 1889. 12 In claiming to deny "any place to what was
merely personal opinion" in his "objective philosophy,"" Henri
Bergson ignored the fides or pre-intellectual, personal disposition of
the philosopher who, in Anselm's words, "seeks understanding"
(fides quaerens intellectum).
Although at times he came close to conceptualizing the open society
as universal mankind under God—a "society" which extends from
the first "man" to the last—he often allows his version of the open
society to debauch into a world-immanent project to be achieved at
some (perhaps imminent) future time. In other words, he did not
grasp clearly enough a distinction which was to be elucidated with
satisfactory philosophical thoroughness only in our time by Eric
Voegelin: the distinction between globalism or "ecumenicity" and
"universality." Ecumenicity is the dream of organizing all human beings presently living under one rule: although it claims to be universal,
it is not and cannot be, for there is no way to include under such an
organization the countless generations of mankind who preceded such
an organization—and who are "counted" only to the extent that they
are stepping stones to the present—and those in the unknown future
who may or may not be organized under this single political community or world state, animated by a fictitious "single will." It is, of
course, a grandiose illusion to think that such an organization would
resist disintegration for all future time.
Henri Bergson was eloquent in his symbolization of the non-metric
spiritual dimension of reality; he properly criticized a narrow "intellectualist" epistemology and stressed that the apprehension of
11. Quoted in Gouhier's Introduction to Ibid., ix.
12. in Ibid., pp. 47-49.
13.Ibid., ix.
HENRI BERGSON
37
spiritual reality must occur as the result of a passion of the soul illumined by the noetic or "rational" properties of man. The experience could not be the result of reason alone. His philosophy constitutes a perennially important corrective to a so-called political
"realism" which brackets out or ignores the reality of the spiritual domain. However, Bergson fails sufficiently to stress the force of the
"counterpull" (to use Plato's formulation of human existence as a
field of forces in tension between openness and closure, life and death,
eternity and-time) within the process of reality. The great "spiritual
realism" of Plato or Augustine or Thomas Aquinas, wherein we can
see the intimation of an overcoming of the forces of the counterpull in
a way now shrouded in mystery but beyond time and the world, is forsaken by Bergson for activist mysticism. Bergson has made an unforgettable contribution to the theory of the open society, but his
theory is in need of thoroughgoing revision.
Looked at in terms of the four original modes of openness (myth,
philosophy, revelation, and mysticism), Bergson may be judged to
have been wide of the mark in describing myth as such a force for
closure instead of as a relatively undifferentiated mode of openness to
reality, but a mode of openness nonetheless. He also tended to ignore
relevation altogether, collapsing it into a form of mysticism, so that
we may say that Bergson's theory of openness and the open society
suffers from an imperialism of activist mysticism.
Despite its many faults, Bergson's analysis of the open society has
the great merit of having developed out of the author's philosophical
quest for the ground(s) of moral obligation. By contrast, Karl
Popper's study, which uses a deformed concept of the open society,
was engendered by the author's self-confessed polemical intent of
discovering an "enemies list" of thinkers in the past who allegedly
spawned fascist and communist totalitarianism. For Popper, the open
society was a synonym for a particular, questionable interpretation of
democracy. That Popper's unphilosophical treatment of the "open
society" idea has received wider attention than Bergson's critical and
theoretical treatment is a measure of our time's decadence of the mind
and spirit.
University of Virginia
DANTE GERMINO