BROGLIE, AUGUSTE-THÉODORE-PAUL de. – French apologist and philosopher, born in Auteuil on 18 June 1834, assassinated in Paris on 11 May 1895. Having lost his mother at the age of four, he was entrusted to the care of his aunt, Baroness Augusta de Staël, who, although Protestant, gave her nephew an education inspired by the most orthodox Catholicism. In 1867 he abandoned his military career in order to follow his vocation to the priesthood. Ordained a priest on 18 October 1870, he devoted his first apostolate to the suburbs of Paris, beginning at the same time those courses in apologetics, for the middle and student classes, which attracted the attention of Msgr. d'Hulst, who in 1879 appointed him to the chair of apologetics at the Catholic Institute of Paris. He held this position until the day of his tragic death at the hands of a mentally deranged woman whom he had frequently assisted. De B.’s extensive work embraces a large part of the problems of apologetics and related fields (philosophy, the history of religions, biblical studies), and developed in accordance with the intense rhythm of his academic courses, lectures, and oratorical activity. His apologetic was directed against scientific positivism, which held the entire culture of the second half of the nineteenth century in its grip: philosophical, ethnological, and historical positivism. To philosophical positivism is devoted the penetrating analysis of epistemological problems that occupies the two volumes of Le Positivisme et la science expérimentale (1880–81). This work initiated his activity as a writer and laid the foundations of his apologetic work.
Attacking the principles directly, de B. challenged point by point, without bitterness but with gentlemanly firmness, the metaphysical agnosticism professed by the positivists with regard to substances and causes; he exposed its gratuitous assumptions and methodological deficiencies, while also bringing to light the sound and usable aspects it presented, even within traditional philosophy. Taking his inspiration from Helmholtz himself, he was not afraid to defend the immediate perception of substances and causes, both in inner experience and, albeit with certain reservations, in external experience. Such perception, immediate as an act, presents itself in its actual development as a process of interpretation, as an immediate translation of certain sensible “signs” that we feel in our organs. Perception therefore has three moments: 1) perception of the sensible “signs” in the impression produced by the stimulus upon the sense organ; 2) interpretation of the sensible “signs,” or perception of bodies, through which there is “seeing” and “touching”; 3) decomposition of the crude notion obtained from the senses, the distinction of qualities and phenomena—that is, the description of the object “seen” and “touched.” These are distinct moments, but they follow one another with
the utmost rapidity (I, 167–169). The inner process of perceptual organization is attributed by de B. to “unconscious induction,” which consists in connecting a “sign” with that object which, in previous experiences, has shown itself to be associated with it, so that, when the “sign” appears, the mind, through a spontaneous movement, thinks of and apprehends the object. “Unconscious induction” must be carefully distinguished from scientific induction: whereas the latter tends toward the formulation of general laws, the former precedes it by clarifying in consciousness the first notions and first principles, without which thought of any kind, including scientific thought, can take no step forward. It is therefore in science’s own interest to safeguard the first convictions of reason, unless positivism wishes to condemn itself to voluntary suicide.
Inadequate in its theoretical claims, positivism is no less so on the level of lived experience: such is the thesis of the mature work La réaction contre le positivisme (1894), in which the emptiness of E. Renan’s so-called aesthetic “neo-Christianity” is also denounced.
Science, after so many social experiences, must now be acknowledged to be incapable of providing man with the principles necessary for governing himself. It leaves both the individual and society abandoned and unguided, at the mercy of the caprice of others’ wills and the tyranny of the passions. Yet there is in souls a profound suffering, a painful anguish, a dull restlessness that persists despite all the efforts made to shake it off, and which demands an outlet in a return toward forgotten ideals, toward a faith, or rather the acceptance of a higher principle that cannot be reduced to science. The itinerary for regaining lost values proceeds in two stages: 1) affirmation of philosophical theism, which reason can demonstrate by conclusive arguments; 2) passage to the revealed Christian religion, an obligatory passage, both in order to secure the notion of the true God and of ultimate destinies, so difficult for the mass of men, and also because the existence of the Catholic Church poses to every person the problem of entering that Church which preserves evangelical doctrine in its original integrity: every person is therefore obliged to raise the question of the truth of the evangelical facts and to draw from it the immediate and logical consequences (p. 227). This is what de B. called the “transcendence of Christianity.”
De B. had undertaken a first positive demonstration of the transcendence of Christianity in Problèmes et conclusions de l'histoire des religions (1885), where, while serenely and fairly acknowledging the merits of other religions and the partial similarities each presents with Christianity, he places the superiority of the latter beyond dispute because of the solidity of its rational and historical foundations, the loftiness of its doctrines, and the purity of its morality. De B. found a second demonstration in the biblical sciences. In L'idée de Dieu dans l'ancien et dans le Nouveau Testament (1892), he examined several of the most important events in the history of Israel (the exodus from Egypt under the leadership of Moses, the promulgation of the law affirming the dogmatic principle of monotheism...) and undertook to demonstrate these facts solely on the basis of the unfailing tradition of the Jewish people. Once this foundation had been established, it would then have been easy to recognize de iure the Mosaic authenticity of the Pentateuch and, with it, to demonstrate the existence of revelation and its progressive realization up to the appearance of Jesus Christ, who fulfills it and transmits it perfected to his Church.
De B.’s work, outside a restricted circle of faithful friends, did not receive the resonance it deserved, perhaps also because of the subsequent decline of positivism; this was not the case, however, among the opposing and secular circles, which appreciated him so highly as to place him alongside Gibbons and Newman. The defects inevitable in an abundant production and in a life maintained at the highest degree of tension are amply compensated by his frequent intuitions, rich in suggestions, by the breadth of his culture, by a style that is always elevated yet unencumbered by technicalities, and above all by the serene certainty of possessing the truth, which this faithful laborer of the Church knew how to communicate to the reader.