The Two Sources: Freedom from Intelligence and Instinct

Our hermeneutical effort has been to identify the way freedom functions in Bergson’s work overall, while at the same time arguing that it can be defined as the creation of the new within the flow of duration, exemplified in the free act. This has required traversing three of the major texts of Bergson up until this point. Before bringing the argument to a conclusion, we will still need to explore whether this can be demonstrated in Bergson’s last major work The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, with its own freedom problematic. The problematic in this text revolves around closed and open forms of morality and religion. Despite the potential benefits afforded by the “closed” options, they do have the negative function of often closing off freedom, both at an individual and societal level. To embrace freedom again, Bergson suggests that we need to return to duration. As I have contended throughout, for Bergson, the creation of the new takes place within the flow of duration. There is a danger that a discussion of freedom in The Two Sources risks equating metaphysical questions in relation to freedom with those in the political and social sphere. This difficulty cannot be completely ameliorated, as Bergson sees them as in some way connected. This is because there is a form of encounter with the flow of duration by certain individuals that thereby enable them to perceive the nature of political and social realities differently. They bring a different moral and political outlook to the issues under consideration. Rather than a social or political programme that is put forward, Bergson offers a way of engaging in politics and social action that is informed by love. This love is related to the experience of duration. This view is controversial and will need to be unpacked in some detail later in this chapter. As we shall see though, the metaphysics of understanding reality as durational flow is still primary in The Two Sources.