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humans to be ‘conscious of [their] own organisation’ is a revolution. This
capacity should not be understood in purely rational terms: the limitations of
human ‘rational’ thought, which in Bergsonian terms is action on ‘solid’ bodies,
are demonstrated by its procession from the very evolutionary process that it is
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trying to assess. In fact, spirituality and love are criteria just as important.
Human society – the spiritual noosphere – is moving towards an ‘Omega
point’, a telos or spiritual realisation of the universe. Omega is not, however,
simply a final point in time, but an ultimate point outside of time, that works
within time and is able to transcend the death of the organism: ‘By death in the
animal, the radial is reabsorbed into the tangential, while in man it escapes and
is liberated from it’. 16
The progress towards Omega is based on an increasing expression of
love – natural processes of evolution therefore have a positive moral
assessment. Against militant dictatorships (eg. that of Hitler) that might seem
destined to win the battle over weaker societies, Teilhard tells us that ‘the
egocentric ideal of a future reserved for those who have managed to attain
egoistically the extremity of “everyone for himself” is false and against
nature’. On the contrary love as conceived by Teilhard in the noosphere
17
emphasises the importance of the individual in its evolution – the
personalisation of ‘All’ in ‘Omega’ necessarily includes ‘the personalisation of
the elements’ reaching their maximum. 18
Although Teilhard does recognise the ability of humankind to annihilate
19
itself, the world is seen as progressing inexorably towards a final (positive)
spiritual revelation. Evil is relegated to a short discussion at the end of The
Phenomenon of Man. There Teilhard writes that there are four kinds of evil: the
first of these is characterised as the evil of disorder and failure – ‘Statistically, at
every degree of evolution, we find evil always and everywhere, forming and
reforming implacably in us and around us… This is relentlessly imposed by the
play of large numbers at the heart of a multitude undergoing organisation’.
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The other three forms of evil are decomposition, anxiety (psychological evil)

14 Teilhard, The Phenomenon of Man, p165
15 Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution, p7. [Henry Holt and Company. New York. 1911] – available
reprinted at http://www.amazon.co.uk
16 Teilhard, The Phenomenon of Man, p272
17 Teilhard, The Phenomenon of Man, p244
18 Teilhard, The Phenomenon of Man, p262
19 Teilhard, The Phenomenon of Man, p213
20 Teilhard, The Phenomenon of Man, p312

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