Bergson’s Creation and Values, or: What Use does God Have for Us?

Abstract

Khaled Al Bahri argues that interest in the relationship between Creation and Values is justified by attempts to couch the Bergsonian approach to values and creation within the wider philosophical picture that examines values, morality, religion and mysticism – an attempt to make Universalist ethics into a philosophical maxim. It is the present-day expansion of this interest in Bergsonian philosophy and the opening up of values to unlimited influences that push us to understand the Bergsonian moment at a time that represents, in the author’s view, a critical juncture in the philosophical understanding of the creation of values, akin to the Kantian project in metaphysics, to Durkheim’s academic studies and to Nietzschean relativism. The question that comes to mind is then: How did Bergson live with this relationship between Creation and values? What are the features of Creation as expressed in his own sense of morality and religion? In this regard, the turning point in Bergson’s thinking came with his belief that the vital push, the strive for life, would only regain its majesty, if and only if, it relied on the “innovators of ethics” to continue along the path of creation. They will, at that point, go beyond the voice of reason and respond to the call of instincts, one which will strive for creative permanence moving towards the principle of life, brimming with love as it is filled with a spiritual energy and creation, being as it is united with the Divine.