WHY WE NEED MAURICE BLONDEL - Oliva Blanchette
WHY WE NEED MAURICE BLONDEL - Oliva Blanchette
WHY WE NEED MAURICE BLONDEL - Oliva Blanchette
WHY WE NEED
MAURICE BLONDEL
Oliva Blanchette
1
There were three such articles, all reproduced in Dialogues avec les philosophes:
Descartes, Spinoza, Malebranche, Pascal, St. Augustin (Paris: Aubier, 1966): (1) On the
original unity and the permanent life of Augustines philosophical doctrine,
originally published in the Revue de Mtaphysique et Morale 37 (1930); (2) On the
ever renewed fecundity of Augustinian thought, originally published in Cahiers de
la Nouvelle Journe 17 (1930); and (3) on The Latent Resources of St. Augustines
Thought, trans. Fr. Lonard, originally published in A Monument to Augustine:
Essays on His Age, Life and Thought (London: Sheed & Ward, 1930), the only piece
of writing by Blondel published in English in his lifetime, an abridged version of
which also appeared in French in Revue No-scolastique de Philosophie 32 (1930).
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The two priests were Jean Wehrl, who had been Blondels classmate at the
cole Normale before entering the seminary, and Fernand Mourret, who was
rector of Saint Sulpice Seminary in Paris, both Catholic intellectuals who were
themselves troubled by the modernist crisis within Catholic France. At the time
they were advising him, the crisis between Loisy and Church authorities was at its
height, and they saw themselves and many other Catholic intellectuals being pulled
in both directions, that of Loisy and that of dogmatic authorities. By this time, in
1904, Blondel had long since stopped publishing anything on issues of Christian
apologetics because of the bad press he kept getting from opponents within the
Church, after his famous, or infamous, Letter, not so much on apologetics, as on the
Philosophical Method in the Study of the Religious Problem in1896, depending on where
you stood in this looming crisis. Wehrl and Mourret were urging Blondel to
enter the fray again, at the risk of incurring more bad press, for the sake of sincere
Catholic intellectuals who were looking for guidance on how and where to take
a stand as Catholics in the midst of this maelstrom of invective from opposite
extremes. Out of this turmoil came his article on History and Dogma, published
in 1904 in La Quinzaine, a journal for Catholic intellectuals. The article has been
reprinted in Les Premiers crits de Maurice Blondel (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1956), 149228, and translated by Alexander Dru in Maurice Blondel: The
Letter on Apologetics & History and Dogma (London: Harvill Press; Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1994), 22087. The article probably did more good for
resolving the crisis positively in Catholic theology as well as philosophy than any
Motu Proprio or encyclical from Rome at the time. The ironic thing about it is
that it came well ahead any of those edicts from officialdom. For more on this
episode of reconciliation in Blondels ardent Catholic life, cf. Oliva Blanchette,
Maurice Blondel: A Philosophical Life (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans
Publishing Co., 2010), 190209.
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This Lettre was reprinted in Les Premiers crits de Maurice Blondel (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1956), 595, and has been translated by Illtyd Trethowan
in Maurice Blondel: The Letter on Apologetics & History and Dogma (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1994), 125208.
with religion, which in the France of his day meant primarily the
Catholic religion.
What Blondel did see, however, was that philosophy had to
do with the life of spirit, his own as well as that of other rational
beings, even when that life and that spirit included strong doses of
religion such as he had learned early in his life at home and at his
parish church, and in his own reading in the Catholic tradition and
Scriptures. While others with a similar religious upbringing downplayed religion as they went deeper into philosophy or the modern
scientific way of thinking, in order to deal only with matters within
the power of reason to investigate, Blondel took a broader view that
included what remained an integral part of his life and spirit, part of
what he had to think of as a philosopher in reflecting on his life. For
him the life of faith and the life of reason could not be conceived as
two separate lives. Both had to do with a single destiny for every
human being as well as for himself, so that neither could do without
the other. This was the source of his lifelong study of philosophy as
philosophy of Catholic or supernatural religion.
Maurice Blondel came from a long line of jurists, lawyers
and notaries going back to the Dukes of Burgundy in the thirteenth
century (not nobility, but professionals closely associated with the
exercise of power), down to the French Republic after the Revolution. His father was a lawyer as was his uncle, who for a time was
judge under the Republic until he was deposed for ruling against the
Republic in a case having to do with religious freedom. The family
was staunchly Catholic, bent not only on holding their own as
Catholics against a Republic they referred to as la gueuse, the
reprobate, but also on leading a profoundly religious life, in keeping
with the rich Catholic traditions they had inherited from their
forbears in France, the eldest daughter of the Church. They thought
of the state and its school system as hostile, rather than neutral, to
their way of thinking.
In the home there was not only his mother who fostered this
religious spirit, but also his aunt, a former cloistered nun, who took
special care to introduce all the children to the traditional religious
practices, especially the Eucharist, and to the works of mercy that
were still part of the daily life of Catholic families in mid-nineteenth
century France. Maurice was well disposed subjectively to fall in
with the movement of this Christian spirit that shaped his consciousness and his conscience as a child and as a young man.
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it that would close the circuit of the willed will as the equal of the
willing will. If such a willed object or resolution could have been
found in the phenomenon as equal to the infinite power of willing,
then there would be no reason for looking further or deeper. But
the criticism of superstitious action at the end of this exploration
shows two things in this regard: (1) that it remains necessary for us to
go beyond or deeper than the phenomenon, and yet (2) that it is
impracticable for us to do so on our own, as every failed effort of
superstitious self-sufficiency in action clearly shows. Hence the
question of something further and deeper than the phenomenon
remains, along with the question of whether anything can resolve
this problem of a gap still found in our voluntary action between our
willed will and our willing will, the question that eventually leads to
the question of God as active in our voluntary action, and the
question of whether and how God can or wills to bridge this gap for
the sake of bringing our action to a perfect coincidence of our
willed will with our willing will.
That is how the question of religion arises necessarily at the
end of a philosophy of action for Blondel, as an exigency for
something more, something both transcendent and supernatural,
when philosophy has gone as far as it can go on its own. Blondel
first deals with the question as an issue of coming up against the One
Thing Necessary, lunique ncessaire, as somehow the willed object
that would be the equal of our infinite power of willingnot an
idol, which can only be a finite object, but truly God as truly
infinite and ever mysterious. Only God can fill the abyss between a
finite willed action and the infinite power of willing we have found
running through the entire phenomenon of action, so that we have
to say that what we will ultimately, in everything we will in the
immanent order of the universe, is to be God, the One Thing
Necessary, who wills the very being of our willing and of all that is
contained in the phenomenon of action.
This is how the idea of God presents itself at the very peak
of our action as rational beings. This is how and why we have to
think of God in all our action, now conceived as theandric, at once
human and divine, rather than just as self-enclosed in a willed will
that wants to be self-sufficient and ends up as merely superstitious in
any form it takes.
From this perspective of a human action now conceived in
philosophy or in the Science of Practice as properly religious,
however, we do not just have to think of the true God, or have God
properly in mind, so to speak, rather than some idol of our own
choosing. We also have to choose or adopt either one of two
alternative attitudes toward God as the necessary principle of our
being and of our willing, an attitude for him or an attitude against
him. Blondel dramatically states the practical alternative we have to
face at the highest point of our willing: Man, by himself, cannot be
what he already is in spite of himself, what he claims to become
voluntarily. Yes or no, will he will to live, even to the point of
dying, so to speak, by consenting to be supplanted by God? Or else,
will he pretend to be self-sufficient without God, profit by His
necessary presence without making it voluntary, borrow from Him
the strength to get along without Him, and will infinitely without
willing the Infinite?8
Philosophy still has much to say about the consequences of
going with either one of these alternatives, in terms of either the life
of action or the death of action, but in speaking of the life of action,
as still entailing only substitutes and preparations for perfect action,
where willed will and willing will would coincide perfectly, the
Science of Practice comes up with one final question, one final
hypothesis: does God grant the necessary aid to bring human action
to the perfection it strives for?
This is the point of culmination where philosophy touches
on the mystery of supernatural religion in human action. Blondel has
shown that philosophy needs religion to answer the ultimate
question or questions it is left with in the end of its course. He does
not try to answer the question directly in his philosophy of action,
nor does he say he could as a philosopher, but he does try to treat
the question as a necessary hypothesis that has to occur at this summit
of the Science of Practice. Hence the brief philosophy of religion
that follows, not just as natural but also as supernatural, with which
he ends his philosophy of action in the dissertation of 1893.
This philosophy of the supernatural presupposes the idea of
nature and freedom as already given by the Creator, the gift that has
already been explored at great length in the philosophy of action up
to this point. But insofar as this first gift still leaves us short of closing
8
Maurice Blondel, Action (1893): Essay on a Critique of Life and a Science of Practice,
trans. Oliva Blanchette (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984),
327.
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9
Cf. Blondels letter to Abb Denis preceding the longer one that was to be
published as Lettre sur les exigences de la pense contemporaine en matire
dapologtique et sur la mthode de la philosophie dans ltude du problme
religieux, as reproduced in Les premiers crits de Maurice Blondel (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1956), 4.
10
11
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14
15
Ibid., 35.
Ibid., 36.
16
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Ibid., 37.
Ibid., 38.
18
and of human destiny as a whole that had been posed at the end of
Action (1893). For it was only in addressing the problem of human
destiny as a whole that one could come to a clear definition of the
difficulty that exists in bringing natural philosophy and supernatural
religion together in ones outlook on life, and thus come to a clear
resolution of the difficulty that would be true to critical philosophy
as well as to Catholic dogma.
What made the difficulty so acute from the standpoint of
modern critical thought was the very notion of immanence that
made it exclusive of the very motion of transcendence and of any
supernatural gift conceived as gratuitous from the immanent
standpoint of nature and reason, and yet as necessary or obligatory
for coming to the completion of action in human nature and reason.
The difficulty could not be resolved from the side of the supposed
supernatural gift, for that would have meant watering down the
notion of transcendence and of the exigency of a supernatural gift as
such, relative to human nature and reason. It could only be resolved
from the side of immanence, where the affirmation of transcendence
takes place and where the hypothesis of a supernatural gift has to be
conceived as necessary for the completion of human nature and
reason. Hence the necessity of a method of immanence from the
side of philosophy to get, not just to the necessity of affirming God
as transcendent in that method, but also to the necessity of raising
the question of a supernatural gift that would be necessary for
bringing human action to completion in the relation to the transcendent.
Blondel had elaborated at great length on this method of
immanence in his dissertation in what he referred to as the phenomenon of action, where he showed that most of what we have to will
necessarily in our action, such as physical effort and social interaction, is in keeping with the exigencies of our immanent free will,
much as modern critical philosophy had done for the immanent
order of the universe as we find it in our consciousness. In the end,
however, he also showed how much of this critical thinking tends
to close in on itself and its universe, in much the same way as
superstition does, even in its critique of superstition. It finds
satisfaction in itself, as superstition finds satisfaction in a finite object,
as if there were nothing more to be sought in order for it to achieve
its perfection. It becomes self-sufficient and exclusive, when in fact
or in principle there is infinitely more to be desired or willed for
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from him the strength to get along without him, and will infinitely
without willing the Infinite? To will and not to be able, to be able
and not to will, that is the very option that presents itself to
freedom: to love oneself to the contempt of God, to love God to
the contempt of self.19
Not every one sees this tragic opposition at the core of
human action as clearly as this, but it is the opposition that the
Science of Practice leaves us with in the end, an option toward a
higher life for action or an option for what can only be characterized
as the death of action in total frustration and self-contradiction.
When the terms of the opposition are presented in such a radical
way, the question we are left with is: what would it take for us to be
able to will the Infinite infinitely if we are not able to will it on our
own in a finite willed will? This is where philosophy is once again
reunited with some form of supernatural religion in the Catholic
sense.
4. The call for a philosophy of the supernatural in the Catholic sense
In the original dissertation on Action of 1893 Blondel wrote
of the supernatural strictly in philosophical terms, without any
explicit reference to any Christian dogmas that might have led his
examiners to think he was not doing philosophy in speaking of a
solution to the problem of religion in human subjectivity. In his
critique of Christian apologetics he chided fellow Catholics for
starting from religion and faith rather than from an autonomous and
free rational philosophy. In order to do philosophy without ceasing
to be Christian or to be a Christian without ceasing to be a philosopher, one no longer has the right to start secretly from ones faith in
order to make believe one arrives at it and one no longer has the
power to put ones belief discretely to the side of ones thinking.20
One has to proceed in the study of Christian religion in the same
way as one would in the study of any other religion, as Blondel had
begun to do in the philosophy of action with regard to the supernatural, without naming it Christian or Catholic, and without presup-
19
20
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posing faith in any Christian mystery, not even faith that there is
some mystery to be contemplated. What would follow from such a
study of the supernatural in the explicit Christian sense would be a
religious progress of philosophical thought in its entirety and a
human progress of religiousness or of the very intelligence of
Christianity,21 a Christian philosophy constituted from the
Christian idea hidden from sight in modern philosophy to be made
explicit in a philosophical contemplation of the Christian mysteries
as they relate to human experience in the world.
Such an explicitly Christian philosophy did not exist in the
historical consciousness of Christians when the modernist crisis
erupted early in his career as a philosopher, but as he had pointed
out in the third part of the Letter on the Philosophical Method in the
Study of the Religious Problem, he had in mind developing such an
explicitly Christian philosophy for the mutual renewal of perspectives in both philosophy and religion. The problem he had to solve
was seen differently from each of the two sides he had to bring
together in this new philosophical venture, that of philosophy itself
and that of Christian religion. From the side of philosophy, there
were those who maintained that it made no sense to speak of a
Christian philosophy, any more than it made sense to speak of
Christian mathematics or Christian physics. From the side of
Christian religion, there were those who saw no way of relating the
incommensurate supernatural order of the Christian mysteries to
anything in the natural order of reason and historical consciousness.
Against the recalcitrant philosophers, Blondel had to argue
for a much broader conception of philosophy as a total human
enterprise than was taken for granted by many in modern rationalism, much as he had argued earlier for a science of subjectivity as
transcending the limits of the positive sciences, and for the necessity
of raising the question of a supernatural religion against the superstition of a self-satisfied reason. Implied in this argument was the idea
of a total incommensurability between the supernatural order of
mystery and the natural order open to the inquiry of reason. Blondel
took this incommensurability between the supernatural and the
natural for granted as a Christian and as a believer, but not entirely
in the way other Christians were doing subsequent to modern
rationalism. Incommensurability meant for them a separation of the
21
Ibid.
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that did not go far enough in satisfying his need for a more explicit
Christian philosophy. The project for a narrowly conceived
apologetics gradually turned into a project for a more broadly
conceived Christian philosophy as he had begun to conceive it in
the third part of the Letter addressed to the Annales de philosophie
chrtienne in 1896. This too led to another accumulation of notes that
went on during his entire teaching career, which, at the end, he
intended to organize, not just as one book, but as a series of books
in a systematic philosophy of Thought, Being and Action, followed by
another series re-examining the enigmas of this philosophy in the
light of the Christian mysteries. The rediscovery of Augustines
philosophy of the Christian religion in 1930, which occasioned the
debate on Christian philosophy that followed, came just at the right
time for revivifying this intent and for Bondel to insist once again on
the need for a Catholic philosophy.
In fact, Blondel thought he had found in Augustine just the
kind of philosophy he was calling for, one that was systematic and
resolutely Catholic at the same time. He wrote on the original unity
and permanent life of this philosophy, on its ever renewed fecundity, and the latent resources in it for a rejuvenated philosophy of
religion. He chided historians of philosophy like Etienne Gilson for
presenting Augustine only as a man of faith, with his deep religious
experience, rather than as a philosopher as well, as if Christian
philosophy had not begun with Augustine in the west, before the
injection of Aristotle into it by Aquinas and later forms of Thomism.
He took issue with Gilson for merely juxtaposing the religious
method of Augustinianism and the philosophical method of
Aristotelianism, as if there were no connection between the two in
what he was willing to call the Christian philosophy of the Middle
Ages. He saw in this a failure to understand how each side was
trying to bring philosophy and religion together in a synthetic way,
not just as theologians, but more precisely as Christian philosophers,
Aquinas with his idea of a natural desire to see God, Augustine with
his idea of divine illumination in reason as well as in faith.
The idea that Aquinas was indeed a philosopher in the
Catholic tradition coming down from Augustine was well entrenched at the time Blondel was writing these articles, even though
Augustines idea of a natural desire for something supernatural like
seeing God was less well known and seldom taken into account in
distinguishing between the two orders as incommensurate and
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22
La Pense, Tome I: La gense de la pense et les paliers des son ascension spontane;
Tome II: La responsabilit de la pense et la possibiit de son achvement (Paris: Alcan,
1934).
23
Ltre et les tres. Essai dontologie concrte et intgrale (Paris, Alcan, 1935).
24
LAction, Tome I: Le problme des causes secondes et le pur agir (Paris: Alcan, 1936);
Tome II: LAction humaine et les conditions de son aboutissement (Paris: Alcan, 1936).
25
La philosophie et lesprit chrtien, Tome I: Autonomie essentielle et connexion
indclinable (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1944); Tome II: Conditions de
la symbiose seule normale et salutaire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1946).
Tome III was left unfinished at Blondels death in 1949.