HENRI BERGSON, PIETRO UBALDI AND THE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE OF GOD’S LOVE

Abstract

For the french philosopher, Henri Bergson, the mystical experience is na experience intensified by the presence of the élan vital that, ultimately, is defined as being “the love of God, if it is not God himself”. In his evolutionary theory, Bergson postulates the concept of élan vital, widely discussed in the work Creative Evolution and taken up again in the work The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Mysticism is an experience in which the human being deeply feels the elan of life: an energy that coincides with the love that emanates from God himself. Similarly, the italian philosopher, Pietro Ubaldi, who is also an evolutionist, considers Mystical Asceticism (the title of one of Ubaldi's works) as a path that leads us to God and makes us intimately perceive His presence because, as stated by the author: “God is in the depths of the human heart, as a presentiment of all ascents”. Thus, the aim of this article is to establish a comparative analysis between the two philosophers, analyzing the mystical phenomenon as a direct experience of God's love. As a methodology, we adopted the bibliographic research.