Moral Invention: Innovation, Imitation, and the Intellect in Bergson’s Two Sources of Morality and Religion
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Leon-Carlyle, Rawb
- Graduate Program:
- Philosophy
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- July 27, 2022
- Committee Members:
- Sarah Miller, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Ted Toadvine, Major Field Member
Nicolas De Warren, Major Field Member
Leonard Lawlor, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Leonard Lawlor, Program Head/Chair
Claire Colebrook, Outside Unit & Field Member - Keywords:
- Bergson
duration
ethics
imitation
instinct
intellect
intelligence
invention
morality
personality
precariousness
sociality
vulnerability
Bergson
duration
ethics
imitation
instinct
intellect
intelligence
invention
morality
personality
precariousness
sociality
vulnerability - Abstract:
- This project foregrounds the role of invention and the intellect in Bergson’s chief work concerning morality, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (1932). Bergson’s thought is frequently characterized as anti-intellectualist: In “Introduction to Metaphysics,” (1903) he prioritizes his method of intuition over intellection; intuition returns throughout Bergson’s later works, including Creative Evolution (1907) and The Two Sources. However, even as The Two Sources denies the intellect as the origin of morality, it simultaneously places the intellect at the center of both morality and religion as the faculty of invention. Bergson characterizes the progressive development of moral concepts as a series of moral inventions and refers to invention as the work of the intellect when it resolves infra- and supra-intellectual experiences into images, words, and concepts. To clarify the nature of moral invention and the inventive intellect, I contextualize three key themes in The Two Sources in relation to Bergson’s earlier writings: innovation and imitation, the personal and impersonal, and the finitude of the intellect as expressed by the laws of dichotomy and double frenzy. By turning to the concepts of vulnerability and precariousness as found in the ethics of care, I illustrate how the inventive intellect can motivate an ongoing evolution of moral concepts reflective of embodied need. As I show in this project, Bergson’s use of invention in The Two Sources is not a novel development but instead echoes his appeals to invention within his writings on the intellect ranging from 1895 to 1902. As such, I argue that this inventive intellect is a resumption of an underexplored theme in his corpus that has always existed alongside his method of intuition. Since morality is characterized by action, I argue that invention, rather than intuition, offers a better understanding of processes of moral deliberation and the growth of moral knowledge.