Abstract
Go to experience, gather the facts, and let your theorizing never go beyond the data. This was Bergson’s method. In Time and Free Will and Matter and Memory he had considered certain psychological data. Creative Evolution was an interpretation of biological data. What does experience tell us now about morality? It tells us that there are two distinct forces at work in the moral life of man: (I) a pressure or constraint exerted by society upon its members, and (2) an appeal or attraction exercised by certain privileged souls upon the rest of mankind. Reflection upon these facts reveals that there are two distinct and irreducible moralities, the closed and the open.
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References
Jacques Chevalier, Entretiens avec Bergson, pp. 75, 154–55. 159. This point is brought out again and again in the conversations between Bergson and A. D. Sertillanges collected in the latter’s little book, Avec Bergson (Paris: Librairie Gallimard, 1941), pp. 13 ff., especially p. 2O. See also “Lettre à Floris Delattre, 2 décembre, 1935” Écrits et Paroles, III, pp. 604–05.
Ibid., p. 6 (O. 985–86).
Ibid., p. 2 (O. 982): “The pressure of it, compared to that of other habits, is such that the difference in degree amounts to a difference in kind.” Bergson supports this way of classifying habits by an appeal to mathematics - “When a certain magnitude is so much greater than another that the latter is negligible in comparison, mathematicians say that it belongs to another order.” Ibid.
Frederick C. Copleston has distinguished five different senses in which Bergson uses the term obligation without seeming to be aware of it. See “Bergson on Morality,” Proceedings of the British Academy, XLI (1955), pp. 152–53 ).
The Two Sources, pp. 3–6, 74, 255–56 (O. 983–86, 1045, 1201–02).
Ibid., p. 11 (O. 99o). See also pp. 6–12 (O. 986–91). Bergson does not distinguish between a moral rule and a social convention, and in his theory of obligation there is no principle by which such a distinction could be made. See Copleston, “Bergson on Morality,” pp. 256–57.
Ibid., pp. 10–14 (O. 989–92). W. Stark questions Bergson’s claim that the individual’s compliance with obligation is for the most part automatic. Is there not rather a constant tug-of-war between individual and society, he asks? See W. Stark, “Henri Bergson: A Guide for Sociologists.” Revue Internationale de Philosophie, no. io (October, 1949 ), p. 421.
Ibid., P. 47 (O. 1021–22). See also pp. 188–89 (O. 1144–45), where Bergson in discussing the origin and function of static religion accounts for the variety of religions by showing that since religion too was intended by nature to serve a special function, godhead in general is necessary, yet the individual gods are invented by society and are, therefore, contingent.
See ibid., pp. 97–101, 106–09 (O. 1066–69, 1074–76), where Bergson discusses still another virtual instinct, the myth-making function of the intelligence which serves the same general purpose as the “totality of obligation.”
Ralph Barton Perry maintains that Bergson gives an erroneous account of the determinist position. See Present Philosophical Tendencies ( New York: Longman’s Green and Co., 1912 ). pp. 255–65.
Bergson rejects the arguments of the Determinists and the Indeterminists alike and gives an elaborate critique of both these doctrines in Time and Free Will (New York: Macmillan, 1910), pp. 140–240 (O.93–156).
The Possible and the Real, The Creative Mind, p. 123 (O. 1343).
Introduction (Part I). The Creative Mind, p. 19 (O. 1260).
Time and Free Will, pp. 125, 129, 169 (O. 83, 85, 112).
Ibid., pp. 251–52, 262–64 (O. 708–09, 717–19). See also “Life and Consciousness,” Mind-Energy, pp. 13–15 (O. 821–23).
Time and Free Will, p. 170 (O. 112).
Creative Evolution, p. 48 (O. 535).
The most remarkable thing about human freedom, according to Bergson, is its creative character; it enables man to create himself. On this topic see André Brémond, “Réflexions sur l’homme dans la philosophie de Bergson,” Archives de Philosophie, XVII, cahier I (1947). pp. 122–48, special issue entitled “Bergson et Bergsonisme.”
See Ben-Ami Sharfstein, Roots of Bergson’s Philosophy, Chapter VI, in which the author shows some marked similarities between Bergson’s conception of social morality and that of Durkheim. See also the study by J. Vialatoux, De Durkheim à Bergson (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1939), in which the difference between Bergson’s moral philosophy and that of the sociologists s treated at length.
The Two Sources, p. 91 (O. 1060–61): “society therefore is not self-explanatory; so we must search below the social accretions, get down to Life, of which human societies, as indeed the human species altogether, are but manifestations.”
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Gallagher, I.J. (1970). The Biological Origin of Moral Obligation. In: Morality in Evolution. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7573-7_5
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