Modern French Philosophy: a Study of the Development Since ComteGunn, John Alexander
Philosophy
Modern French Philosophy: a Study of the Development Since Comte
Gunn, John Alexander
Philosophy, French; Philosophy, Modern
Owing to this inequality between the power and the wish, we are obliged
to complete our actions or our activity in general by a belief in a
Reality beyond. It is, however, “a beyond that is within,” a Divine
power immanent in man. This view, Blondel claims, unites the idea of
God “transcendent” with the idea of God as “immanent.” Man’s action
partakes of both, for in so far as it results from his own will it is
immanent; transcendence is, however, implied in the fact that the end
of man’s action as a whole is not “given.” Blondel leads us to a
conception of a religious idealism in which every act of our ordinary
existence leads ultimately to a religious faith. Every action is
sacramental. Blondel and his follower Laberthonnière, who has taken up
this idea from his master in his volume of _Essais de Philosophie
réligieuse_ (1901), go beyond a purely pragmatist or voluntarist
position by finding the supreme value of all action, and of the
universe, not in will but in love. For Blondel this word is no mere
sentiment or transient feeling, but a concrete reality which is the
perfection of will and of intellect alike, of action and of knowledge.
The “Philosophy of Action,” asserts Blondel, includes the “Philosophy
of the Idea.” In the fact of love, he claims, is found the perfect
unity between the self and the non-self, the ground of personality and
its relation to the totality of persons, producing a unity in which
each is seen as an end to others as well as to himself. “Love,” says
Laberthonnière, “is the first and last word of all. It is the
principle, the means and the end. It is in loving that one gets away
from self and raises oneself above one’s temporal individuality. It is
in loving that one finds God and other beings, and that one finds
oneself.” It is, in short, these idealists claim, the _Summum Bonum_;
in it is found the Absolute which philosophers and religious mystics of
all ages have ever sought.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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