ACTION, PHILOSOPHY of. — Under the name of the philosophy of action, various and sometimes divergent orientations and systems are included (pragmatism, certain forms of voluntarism). Here we are referring to the philosophy of Maurice Blondel, known as the “philosopher of action,” although his thought might more aptly be described as a “philosophy of integral realism.” The historical antecedents of the Blondelian method and philosophy are both remote and immediate: St Augustine and Pascal among the former; Maine de Biran, Newman, Deschamps, and Gratry among the latter; and, more directly, Ollé-Laprune, whose pupil Blondel was (as well as Boutroux’s).
M. Blondel (born in Dijon on 2 November 1861) taught at the University of Aix-en-Provence from 1897 to 1926, when he retired from teaching because of a serious eye ailment. His activity, however, continued indefatigable and fruitful. His influence on contemporary philosophy, and also on theological and religious thought, especially in France, has been profound and extensive. He is one of the leading Catholic thinkers of our century.
He made his début with the volume L’Action (Paris 1893), a celebrated doctoral thesis that aroused conflicting interests and judgments already during its discussion at the Sorbonne; and subsequently provoked passionate controversies, made more heated by the modernist controversy. Blondel clarified and defended his thought (the writings were translated into Italian under the title Storia e Dogma, Florence 1924) both against the criticisms of Catholic writers and against the intemperate distortions and gratuitous appropriations of the modernists (for example, Laberthonnière). More than fifty years of intense meditation were needed before Blondel could unfold his thought in its entirety, clarify certain suspect statements, and demonstrate that his is a philosophy and not a simple apologetic. The intermediate stages are marked by the following writings: Le procès de l’intelligence (Paris 1921), Qu’est ce que la mystique? (ibid. 1925), Le problème de la philos. catholique (ibid. 1932), L. Ollé-Laprune (ibid. 1932), as well as by the volume Une énigme historique « Le vinculum substantiale », d’après Leibniz (reissued in 1930); while the complete and definitive systematization is provided by the trilogy: La Pensée (2 vols., Paris 1934), L’Être et les êtres (ibid. 1935), L’Action (2 vols., ibid. 1936–37), the first of which is entirely new and the second a reworking of the Action of 1893. The trilogy is crowned by the 3 vols. of La philosophie et l’esprit chrétien, of which only two have so far been published (Paris 1944 and 1946). Among his numerous other writings, we should also recall Lutte pour la civilisation et la philosophie de la paix (Paris 1939; 2nd ed. ibid. 1947).
The first Action reacted against a specific and widespread philosophical and cultural milieu, namely Renan’s subjectivist dilettantism and Taine’s positivism, as well as against a neo-Christianity that was the progenitor of the modernist crisis. It was in that milieu that the problem of action matured. Merely theoretical, or “notional,” speculation appeared to Blondel inadequate to the essential content of life and to the immense content of what action can accomplish. L’Action is one of the essential episodes in the critique—which Blondel subsequently continued—of scientific determinism, positivism, so-called positivist idealism, and idealism. Blondel’s entire effort was directed toward deepening the integral dynamism of the spirit, urged and stimulated from within to transcend itself, not toward just anything, but toward a fullness of spiritual reality that is intimate to it and transcends it, and is therefore not something outside it, but the life of its spiritual life and yet transcendent.
Every rational being, Blondel says, aspires to constitute a certain inner unity. Spiritual unity is “dynamic” and not static, “concrete” and not abstract; it is not a given but an end. Philosophy proceeds from a presentiment of this unity, but its path is arduous. The task is to realize it while preserving the differentiations of experience: to ground diversity in unity, coherence in heterogeneity. This is the total problem of total philosophy, insofar as it concerns external experience, the order of the universe, and intellectual, moral, and religious life. Can the solution to the problem be found in the realm of pure logicality? Blondel says no: the spirit encounters resistances within itself, latent, real, and tenacious contradictions that no purely logical mediation can reconcile and that are therefore irreducible to any dialectical artifice. This task belongs to action, which directs the infinite power of freedom along a precise course and subjects the will to “the strict simplicity of a single outcome.” The passage from intention to execution requires an effort to overcome difficulties and deeply engages intention itself. The dynamism of action resolves, if only temporarily, the antagonism of tendencies in a synthesis that integrates the most diverse elements, reconciles incompatibles, and recasts energies in order to harmonize them differently. Action “is a systematic concentration of the life diffused within us” (L’Action, II, p. 226). It is therefore constructive and creative; it is something new: it kneads and shapes divergences and antitheses. By contrast, “formal logic excludes, retaining nothing of it, whatever contradicts it” (ibid., p. 478). Thus the dynamism of action builds the structure of the self, organizes the synthesis of the living energies of its complex life, and directs divergent forces toward the same outcome.
Does this perhaps mean abolishing the “logic of concepts”? No; it simply means that there is a more comprehensive logic, the logic of moral life. The logic of exclusion is a functional moment of the logic of integration. On the purely logical or abstract plane, the relations between possibilities are either relations of compatibility or of mutual exclusion; on the plane of action, which takes account of the logical opposition of contraries, possibilities that exclude one another as concepts are integrated more profoundly into the synthesis that action realizes through its constructive and transformative efficacy.
It follows from this that knowledge is not the whole of man: “to act is something more than merely to think” (ibid., I, p. 106). To believe that pure knowledge reveals the whole of man is the idealist illusion, and the illusion of that rationalism which confines the whole of the spirit within the abstract concentration of a formula. Man, on the other hand, according to Blondel, truly knows himself in action, because only in it does he discover himself. Does action therefore abolish thought? No; it includes thought within a higher perspective and, as it were, enhances II. Knowledge too has an essential dynamism, and thinking is already acting. The point here is not to deny the value of knowledge, but to grasp the spirit in all its dynamism, in its real fruitfulness as initiative and efficacy.
What does our integral dynamism tend toward, and where does it lead? Toward “the universal principle of every good,” in an expression of St Thomas, the only one capable of satisfying the demands and appeals of our dynamism, the supreme end “against which it will come up.”
Our life and the personal destiny of each one will be decided” (ibid., II, p. 178). Even when it is not distinctly known, this aspiration is present. Action externalizes itself, realizes itself, individualizes itself, becomes person, family, society, homeland, humanity; but in every particular realization its need to know itself and its moral vocation are driven by a deeper, underlying need: the religious vocation, its transcendent destiny. And it is this dynamism that brings forth the “person” within the “individual.” The person is constituted only by assigning itself an extrapersonal end, indeed many extrapersonal ends, but all of them aroused by the one truly supreme end, toward which they converge and which transcends them all, whether they be the family, society, homeland, or humanity. The absolute end that constitutes the person is God: without Him, the person and the ends it realizes are lost. To philosophize is to follow the integral dynamism of action: it is to foster our innate aptitude for seeking God, to discover our essential desire for God, to embody it freely in our life, to recognize and obey Him. Rather than examining what is sensory and psychological in our experience—the task of a naturalistic and not yet Christian philosophy—philosophy is called to fulfill a higher task, to analyze the integral dynamism of the spirit, the moral and religious elements of human experience. The principle of inner dynamism is rooted in being, in every being, which, living inwardly through it, perceives in the norm that constitutes it its process of realization, through the stages of notional knowledge, real knowledge, and action, until it is fulfilled in God. The spirit, or primordial being, is the implicite enveloppement that always transcends the products of its analysis.
The spirit is constituted by an original dimension that guarantees its freedom, that is, its free choice: the incommensurability of the infinite with the finite. But it could not perceive this incommensurability without the idea of the infinite, which no external experience, combination of concepts, or process of abstraction can ever give it, because the infinite of which we speak is not the naturalistic or formal infinite. The presence of this idea enables the spirit not to identify its destiny with that of things, and to measure everything while always finding it infinitely short of the incommensurable measure. Then it can choose; then freedom emerges from partial determinisms and option becomes possible. The living idea of the infinite liberates action and animates thought. To set it aside is to say no to the constitutive principle of the integral dynamism of our spirit; it is to betray our intimation of the higher reality, of God.
Thought, action, being: the whole spirit, the whole of reality, not static but dynamic, with a dynamism oriented by the presence of a transcendent Reality, which is its cause and its end. No being has the power to destroy this presence. It urges, stimulates, and presses upon it; it presses upon the will and constantly compels it to surpass itself, not to halt, to overcome resistances, and to carry out its unceasing rhythm with their cooperation. But the “willing will,” or profound will, always remains a thirst for fullness, because it can never by itself be what it wills to be, in the act of consenting to the real perfection that is present to it and yet transcends II. It presses upon thought as “cosmic thought,” as “psychic thought,” as “thinking thought,” in search of that “total coherence” and “universal unity” which all unified objects fail to achieve; and therefore it is always thought endowed with a “congenital deficiency” and at the same time restless for a “beatifying fullness.” It presses upon beings, upon every being, insofar as existence is their external aspect, but not their internal aspect, their consistency, which does not reside in what they in fact are at a given moment, but in an internal norm that transcends them and constitutes their “living and secret armor” in search of their “true and complete realization.” The person realizes itself by surpassing itself: its “consistency” lies in the living relation of its entire self with God.
Blondel’s philosophy has an extremely suggestive apologetic aspect: it seeks to establish, hypothetically, the appropriateness that exists between the natural order and the supernatural order. It is philosophy’s task to establish whether or not this possible harmony exists. This by no means signifies that Blondel proposes to demonstrate that philosophy must be reunited with religion, in the sense of a necessary continuity between the natural process of reason and the supernatural, but simply that philosophy can find its fulfillment in the supernatural while remaining philosophy. In other words: does the process of reason contain within itself its absolute fulfillment, as pure immanentism claims? If so, philosophy is no longer distinct but is “separated” from religion, and Revelation is superfluous, since reason has nothing to seek or find, because, in seeking, it has found everything within itself. This is the thesis of self-sufficient rationalism. According to Blondel, however, precisely the most developed and critical philosophy never closes in upon itself in a perfect circle, because its process is never complete, because the inner dynamism of the spirit always drives it to surpass every partial satisfaction, which cannot be anything but partial. It is precisely the sens de l'immanence that “peut et doit nous conduire jusqu'à l'aveu d'une transcendance dont nous ne pouvons ni nous passer ni nous emparer comme s'il ne dépendait que de nous” (Le problème de la philos., p. 16). Thus, a “philosophy separated” from religion is not theoretically possible, insofar as philosophy itself is open ab intrinseco to completion. Does this perhaps mean that such completion must necessarily be given? Not at all: the necessity lies on the part of philosophy, not on the part of the supernatural. The fact that philosophy recognizes its need for fulfillment means only that, having become conscious of its non-self-sufficient sufficiency, and while remaining faithful to what it is, it finds it “appropriate” that another order should exist and “opens itself” to the supernatural. The latter, for its part, remains absolutely gratuitous; philosophy cannot demand its necessary intervention, even though it sees in it its fulfillment, as its own spontaneous movement has indicated to II. In conclusion, the analysis of the nature not only of action but also of thought and being in their “solidarity” shows that the supernatural is neither superfluous nor impossible nor opposed to nature, and that it is therefore “theoretically” conceivable in its absolute gratuity.
La philosophie et l'esprit chrétien is the theological crowning of Blondelian “integral realism.” Philosophy, which is only philosophy, finds itself at the end of its process confronted by enigmas—the “aporias” of Aristotle and the “antinomies” of Kant—that it cannot solve. But a “Christian philosophy” (and such is what Blondel’s seeks to be), precisely because it is Christian, does not con-
relies not on the powers of thought alone, but on other aids. Intellectually, this aid is given in the form of mystery, “revealed truth which the human spirit, left to its own resources, would not have been capable of discovering and precisely defining with certainty; a secret which, even when revealed, remains impenetrable in its depths, although it is not without useful, illuminating, and fruitful significance for us; a speculative and practical teaching which, in the chiaroscuro in which faith and reason must cooperate, enables us to know and fulfill our true and entire destiny” (La philos. et l'esprit chrét., I, p. 14). Now, for Blondel, there is a harmony, a rhythm governing the two notions of enigma and mystery, opposed yet mutually connected (between the natural and the supernatural the relationship is one of symbiosis): “alternating and propulsive rhythm of philosophical enigmas and revealed mysteries” (ibid., p. 30). This is the new formula of Christian dogmatics that Blondel proposes and which (apart from some imprecision) has been recognized as new and orthodox. It acknowledges the essential autonomy of the natural (Philosophy) and the supernatural (Revelation), while at the same time highlighting their collaboration: the analysis of spiritual life leads to “enigmas” which only the “mysteries” of Revelation illuminate, even if only partially. There is in man an original vocation to supernatural life, which in no way diminishes the gratuitousness of the latter. In the cycloidal movement of the spirit toward its supreme destiny, the philosophical “enigma” and the religious “mystery” are always found confronting one another, the two culminating poles of that combat spirituel in which the character of the person is concealed and revealed. Blondel’s precise aim is to highlight the decisive (and only valid) contribution that Christianity makes to philosophy in solving the problem of existence, its meaning and destiny. But only an integral philosophy of a. can provide the indispensable premise for contact with Christian truth: on the one hand, the artificial barriers of rationalistic pride must be demolished, and on the other, theological extrinsicism must be overcome. In vol. I Blondel highlights the symbiosis of the following enigmas and mysteries: the enigma of God and the mystery of the Trinity; the enigma of contingent existence and the mystery of creation; the enigma of human destiny and the mystery of the supernatural vocation; the enigma of the mediating function and the mystery of the Incarnation; the enigma of déchéance and the mystery of the transnatural state; the enigma of the reparation of sins and the mystery of Redemption. Vol. II deals with the mysteries of Glory, the visible Church, the Sacraments, the Beatitudes, and Eternal Life.
Whatever disagreements may exist concerning the manner of conceiving the relations between nature and supernature, or Blondel’s philosophy itself and his method of philosophizing, it seems necessary to recognize in “integral realism” a sincere and valid attempt at a Christian philosophy that takes account of the fundamental requirements of modern thought. An essentially concrete philosophy, of “real knowledge” (and not of “notional knowledge”), open to Revelation and Dogma, yet still a philosophy that recognizes the efficacy of reason and the intellect within a logic of a. that completes and strengthens them. It is therefore a philosophy of the integral human person, which it seems unjust to accuse of fideism, agnosticism, pragmatism, or even outright immanentism.
La religione nella vita dello spirito, Florence 1914; L. Stefanini, L'a., Padua 1915; P. Archambault, L'oeuvre philos. de M. Blondel, Paris 1928; L. Lefèvre, L'itinéraire philos. de M. Blondel, there 1928; A. Poggi, La filos. dell'a., Milan 1932; Grassi, Il platonismo cristiano di M. Blondel, in Riv. di filos., 23 (1932), pp. 26-27; F. Salvo, La logica della vita morale in M. Blondel, Palermo, s. d. [1912]; R. Romeyer, La philos. religieuse de M. Blondel, Paris 1943; M. F. Sciacca, Il problema di Dio e della religione nella filos. attuale, Brescia 1944, 2nd ed. 1947, pp. 180-88 and 295-312, passim; id., La filosofia, oggi, Milan 1945, pp. 44-50; Hommage à M. Blondel (articles by P. Archambault, Bourgarel, A. Forest, R. Romeyer, D. Mercier, G. Berezer, G. Lachiez-Roy, A. Paliard, L. Brunschwig), Paris 1946; P. Archambault, Initiation à la philos. blondélieuse, there 1946; Attualità filosofiche (studies on Blondel by M. F. Sciacca, P. Mullà, R. Lazzarini, G. Bozzetti, U. Padovani, L. Stefanini, U. Redanò, I. Chaix-Ruix, C. Gascon), Padua 1948; H. Dumery, La philos. de l'a., Paris 1948 (bibl. at pp. 175-220). Michele Federico Sciacca