Immanence

IMMANENCE. - It is said of that which in its operation does not go out from itself or outside itself, but remains within itself.

I. ONTOLOGICAL IMMANENCE IN CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY

In its absolute metaphysical meaning, immanence is the very property of the divinity insofar as God is esse subsistens by essence and therefore the fullness of his life, perfect act and first principle, as Aristotle already glimpsed (Met., XII, 6, 1072 a 4: ὅτι δ'ἐνέργεια πρότερον). Aristotle conceived the first Principle as pure thought (ἀρχὴ γὰρ ἡ νόησις: loc. cit., 7, 1072 a 30), unmoved mover and "separated" from the world, who lives the fullness of his wondrous life, an activity of pure intelligence that has in knowing its supreme perfection and in knowing expresses the eternal life of God: φαμὴν δὴ τὸν θεὸν εἶναι ζῷον ἄλθον ἄριστον, ὥστε ζωὴ καὶ αἰὼν συνεχὴς καὶ ἄλθος ὑπάρχει τῷ θεῷ τοῦτο γὰρ ὁ θεός (loc. cit., 1072 b 28-30).

In this absolute segregation of the divine νοῦς, the Greek and Arab Aristotelian tradition and, in the Middle Ages, Averroism saw implicit the negation of all knowledge and providence on the part of God concerning individual sensible things, abandoned to the influence of secondary causes. But Aristotle retains the merit of having vindicated for the divinity the perfect immanence of spirit. The Presocratics, by contrast, thought of a physical immanence of the divinity in the world: for Thales the whole world was "ensouled and full of divinities" (ἐμφύχων καὶ δαιμόνων πλήρς; H. Diels-W. Kranz, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, I, 5th ed., Berlin 1934, p. 68, 28; A, 1); Parmenides, gazing at the sky, called it God, according to the testimony of Aristotle (Met., I, 5, 986 b, 29; H. Diels-W. Kranz, op. cit., I, p. 121, 18); famous is the saying of Heraclitus, likewise reported by Aristotle (De part. anim., I, 5, 645 a, 17), with which he welcomed the guests who were afraid to enter the room where he was warming himself at the fire, "crying out that they should take courage and enter," because gods existed there too (εἶναι γὰρ ἐνταῦθα θεούς; H. Diels-W. Kranz, op. cit., I, p. 146, 5; A, 9).

Similar thoughts circulate in all the Presocratics and return among the Stoics; God is the logos-fire-spirit, united ab aeterno with matter, the craftsman who forms and distributes the seminal reasons according to the various natures to which he remains immanent and everywhere diffused: "Deus per materiam tamquam mel per favos transit" according to Zeno; and for Seneca God is "divinus spiritus per omnia maxima ac minima aequali intentione diffusus" (Adv. Helv., 8, 3). This was a chief stumbling block for the Christians, observes rightly M. Pohlenz, who collects these texts in: Die Stoa, Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung (II, Göttingen 1948, p. 54; cf. I, p. 95). The Stoic conception had its summit in Posidonius, according to whom everything in the physical world and in the stars of the sky is penetrated by the divinity down to the minutest particulars, and so too the soul of mortals: all that lives participates in the life of this measureless organism whose soul is God, and everything therefore lives and exists in him (cf. M. Pohlenz, op. cit., I, p. 233; II, p. 118 ff. On p. 119 are reported texts that attribute the knowledge of God even to animals, and of primitive men it is said that "they are not to be sought far off or outside the divinity, but born in its midst or rather connatural to it": ὅτε γὰρ οὐ μακρὰν οὐδ' ἔξω τοῦ θεῶν διψιδόμενοι κατὰ τοὺς ἀλλ' ἐν αὐτῷ μέσῳ περικότες, μᾶλλον δὲ συμπεφκότες ἐκείνῳ. The text immediately suggests a comparison with the quotation of the poet Aratus, made by St. Paul in his speech to the assembly of the Areopagus (Acts 17, 22 ff.), composed of Epicureans and Stoics: here too God "is not far from each one of us" (οὐ μακρὰν ἀπὸ ἑνὸς ἑκάστου ἡμῶν ὑπάρχοντα). In him indeed we live and move and have our being, as also some of our poets have said: "For we are indeed his offspring" (τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος ἐσμέν). Neoplatonic intellectualism watered down the robust Stoic metaphysics with the theory of intermediaries that were to parcel out this immanence of the divine in the cosmos according to the diversity of formalities and their degree of actualization: but it remains always essential to the Greek conception of the divinity that it exists for the world, insofar as it is the act, the moving and final principle of the world, which in its movements and phenomena unfolds the reality of God: "Qua Dorylaeus scripsit esse mundum organum dei" (Censorinus, De die natali, ed. O. Jahn, Berlin 1845, ch. 13, p. 32, 20).

II. THEOLOGICAL IMMANENCE IN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT

Christianity took up this aspiration of classical civilization toward an affinity of nature with God and the affirmation of God's i. in the world, but in a certain sense it overturned the metaphysical situation in order to safeguard both the very dignity of God and also the consistency (in its own order) of the world and of man. God is the fundamental principle of all essences and the first cause of all the movements and operations of creatures: through creation they have come forth from God, and through their own operations they return to him. It is not, therefore, that creatures constitute (through eternal matter...) the absolutely "other" than God, nor that God must of necessity unfold his activity in the world: hence — if a formula may be permitted — it is no longer so much a question of God's i. in the world as rather of the world's i. in God, because it is God who, as first principle, creator, conserver and mover, precedes, embraces and contains the world and every created thing. This overturning of ontological i. on the part of Christianity was possible insofar as God enjoys his perfect life in himself and for himself (Trinity), before and without the creature (free creation in time), so that the distinction between the two lives, the divine and the human, between infinite and finite perfection, is not quantitative, one of degree (the one universal — of time and space — the other particular in a limited sector), but involves an absolute difference of quality (time-eternity, being by participation — being by essence).

St. Thomas devotes an entire question to the "praesentia Dei in rebus" (Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 8): the term "presence" instead of that of i. expresses the progress of the Christian conception, which is founded on God's absolute transcendence and freedom. God's omnipresence is a consequence of his universal causality; God is the cause of being as such, and as the agent, in order to act, must be present to the effect ("Quamdiu igitur res habet esse, tamdiu oportet quod Deus adit ei secundum modum quo esse habet": ibid., a. 1), with an integral presence according to the bold formula of the holy Doctor: "Sicut anima est tota in qualibet parte corporis, ita Deus totus est in omnibus et singulis entibus" (ibid., a. 2, ad 3). There are three ways in which God's ontological i. in creatures can be affirmed within the natural order... per potentiam in quantum eius potestati subduntur, per praesentiam in quantum omnia sunt nuda et aperta oculis eius, per essentiam in quantum adest omnibus ut prima causa essendi" (ibid., a. 3). It is well known how this doctrine nourished the mystical life of St. Teresa, who learned it from "a most learned religious of the Order of St. Dominic" (cf. Vita, ch. 18, 15; in Opere, Italian trans., I, Milan 1931, p. 186. Also Castello interiore, 5th mansion, ch. 1, 10; II, p. 384). Through this natural i. God is present as the first Principle, creator, conserver and mover of creation (Sum. Theol. 1a, qq. 44, 104, 105); in rational creatures there can be an intentional presence of God, insofar as they can know and love him in the mirror of creation, but this always remains within the sphere of natural i.; a new i., underivable from any natural principle, occurs when the creature is admitted to participate in the intimate life of God through Grace: "Et ideo sola Gratia facit singularem modum essendi Dei in rebus" (Sum. Theol., 1a, q. 8, a. 3 ad 4; cf. In Ep. ad Coloss., ch. 2, lect. 2). In the mystical life God's presence is "experienced" by the soul through particular illuminations of the mind and movements in the affective sphere: the perfect i. of the soul in God belongs to the future life of the blessed in glory.

III. GNOSEOLOGICAL-PRAGMATIC IMMANENCE IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY

Immanence, in its dynamic aspect, is the property of living beings; every nature has within itself the principles of its own operations (cf. the definition of φύσις: Aristotle, Phys., II, 1, 192 b 20-21). But while in the inorganic world both the term and the effect of the action remain extrinsic to the agent, in the realm of life both the principle and the effect remain intrinsic, so that the agent, in acting, perfects itself: "Opera vitae dicuntur, quorum principia sunt in operante" (Sum. Theol., 1°, q. 17, a. 2, ad 2). Different, therefore, is physical action "quae manet in agente, ut intelligere, sentire et velle. Quorum haec est differentia: quia prima actio non est perfectio agentis quod movet sed ipsius moti; secunda autem actio est perfectio agentis" (ibid., a. 3, ad 1): the highest degree of immanence is represented by the life of the intelligence and of the higher functions. This is physical immanence.

Modern thought elaborated a new concept of immanence, which claims to be a synthesis and a surpassing of both the classical and the Christian conception: the stumbling block that caused the irreparable break with tradition was the gnoseological difficulty of explaining the action of the external world upon consciousness and the impossibility of sense to guarantee a criterion of truth, and the metaphysical difficulty of attributing to finite reality a consistency of its own distinct from the divinity. The principle of modern immanence affirms that being exists only as an object of consciousness. The first explicit formula of modern immanence is Descartes's cogito, ergo sum. It affirms in fact: a) the priority of thought over being; b) the autonomy of thought with respect to being; c) the immanence of being to thought or to consciousness. In the development of modern thought three conceptions of immanence can be distinguished: phenomenalist, normative, and metaphysical or constitutive. In the modern concept of immanence, this is presented in the form of "self-consciousness": "In this new period — writes Hegel — the universal principle that governs everything in the world is thought that moves itself" (Geschichte der Philosophie, Ital. trans., II, 11, Florence 1944, p. 66), and Hegel considers this principle as the essence of Christianity, which asserted itself in its genuine meaning, as a principle of absolute interiority (sola fide) in Protestantism, and had its full development in his objective idealism.

a) Subjectivist immanence had its first development in English empiricism: knowing depends entirely on "experience," which is essentially a "modification" of subjectivity by unknown causes, which is then variously reflected upon and elaborated. The principle of empiricist immanence appropriates with Locke the reality of sensible qualities, with Berkeley penetrates into the metaphysical reality of substance, and with Hume embraces the last bulwark of the relation of causality: it is reduced to an "impression of reflection" understood as a conviction or habit (belief, custom) that consciousness draws from itself and experiences in itself (cf. D. Hume, Treatise of human nature, appendix: ed. Selby-Bigge, Oxford 1928, p. 627). The immanence affirmed by Hume is, from the strictly theoretical point of view, no less radical than that of absolute idealism, and in itself admits no possibility of development, inasmuch as it affirms not only the subjectivity of knowing in itself, but introduces the "persuasion" of causality as an active principle, which becomes constitutive of the reality of objects as such. The formula of phenomenalist immanence is that of Berkeley: "esse est percipi," which for Hume should be expressed as: "percipere est sentire proprium sensum" (belief, feeling). Under the converging influence of positivism and Kantianism, there developed at the end of the 19th century a numerous philosophical school called Immanenzphilosophie, of frankly phenomenalist inspiration and which falls back into probabilism and methodological skepticism according to Schuppe's formula: "Human knowledge can have only the character of probability — or of a relative truth... The recognized impossibility that the human race attain the possession of absolute truth cannot, however, remove the value and indispensability of this concept" (W. Schuppe, Grundriss der Erkenntnistheorie und Logik, Berlin 1894, § 156, p. 173 ff.).

b) Normative immanence is proper to Kantian idealism. The original spontaneity that Hume had attributed to causality was generalized by Kant to all the categories of thought, which therefore have meaning and value solely in thought. If only Kant had not presented the principal objects of metaphysics (the world, the soul, the existence of God, freedom, immortality, happiness) as transcendental "ideas" with which reason properly deals, reason which obtains a certainty in this field as "practical reason," insofar as it must "postulate" the foundations of the moral life. The metaphysical world, which seemed closed to pure theoretical reason, thus opens to practical reason, and Kant called this "constitutive moment" of metaphysical consciousness by the term "rational faith" (Vernunftglaube) as the highest and most positive form of immanence (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, I, 2, 2, v, ed. Cassirer, V, p. 137). The Kantian Glaube was developed in various directions by the post-Kantians and the neo-Kantians; it is considered as "the organ of reality" or the positive and constructive moment of consciousness, and it was the principle that, more or less directly, also inspired certain Catholic currents, which aroused greater apprehension in the last half-century (modernism, fideism, philosophy of action), as will be said.

c) But the most complete form of immanence is the idealist conception, insofar as it did justice to the "thing in itself" and identified reality with thought: "It — declares Hegel — must be considered as the highest thing, not when it turns to other things, but only when, occupied solely with itself, with the object among all the most noble, it seeks and finds itself" (Geschichte der Philosophie, Ital. trans., I, Florence 1930, p. 13). The new point of view of idealist immanence, Hegel writes further, is that of conceiving and expressing the true not as "substance" but as "subject," not however as a subject that relates to something else, but as a subject that, resting in itself, moves itself, expresses, expands, actualizes itself (cf. Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. Jo. Hoffmeister, Leipzig 1937, p. 19 ff.). In the metaphysical immanence of Hegelian idealism the principle of self-consciousness is fulfilled, along with the reality and unity of subjectivity and objectivity in the "becoming" of absolute Spirit: thus immanence returns to the metaphysical plane, but no longer in the cosmological-naturalistic sense of classical pantheism and naturalism (Bruno and Spinoza included), but in the anthropological sense of the unfolding of human civilization. Revealed religion itself, Jewish and Christian, represents nothing but a "moment" of this development whose meaning can be deciphered only by philosophy. Contemporary thought has undertaken a radical revision of the principle of immanence, vindicating the reality of the concrete: with existentialism, the consistency of individual consciousnesses and of freedom; with Marxism, the direct and constitutive (and not merely apparent) relation that man has with nature; but the outcome of the polemic hangs on the presuppositions of these two orientations. In any case, the systematic exaggerations of the supporters of the principle of immanence must not lead us to reject the demand for interiority that it sought to affirm, but must recall us to an adequate understanding of that structure of consciousness which presents itself not merely as a "receptivity" of the world and of nature, but also and above all as a capacity and principle of development of itself in the twofold relation to the world and to transcendence.

IV. THE METHOD OF IMMANENCE AND CATHOLIC DOCTRINE

To this task, aroused by modern thought, the proponents of the method of i. in apologetics and in contemporary Catholic theology directed their research. It aims to find and develop the truths of religion and the very mysteries of the revealed faith, starting from consciousness, from its needs, from its aspirations, from its presentiments, which surface in individual experience. This method becomes expressly heterodox when it subordinates the meaning of religious and revealed truths to the interpretation and formulation of individual subjects, implicitly affirming the relativity of dogmas, the merely heuristic and approximate value of dogmatic formulas, the symbolic meaning of miracles, the equivalence even of the various religions. As in the 13th century the entry of Aristotle into the West gave rise to the forms of naturalistic and pampsychistic i. (Alexandrianism and Averroism), so the new principle of i. of modern thought shook not a few who were not satisfied with the thought and the formulas of the Church's doctrinal tradition.

The most serious episode of this tendency passes under the name of modernism (v.), which was called not a heresy but the "collection of all heresies" and condemned in 1907 by Pius X with the encyclical Pascendi (v.), which makes a vast and accurate analysis of both the philosophical and the theological aspect of the principle of i. (Acta Sanctae Sedis, 40 [1907], p. 593 ff.; Denz-U, 2071-2109) in the extreme sense proposed by the modernists.

The method of i. remains in the direct wake of the Glaube of Kant, Fries, Jacobi, Schleiermacher and claims to link itself to Augustinian interiority, to the Christianity of Pascal's paradox, and thus to form a bridge between Catholic doctrine and modern religious spiritualism, whether in the Protestant camp (A. Sabatier, W. James, Balfour) or the Catholic one (Maine de Biran, Gratry, L. Ollé-Laprunne, Brunetière). The Protestant proponents of i. fell into absolute subjectivity, which led to modernism: the existence of revealed truths and their meaning is solely a function of each person's personal experience: « Un seul critère (de la Révélation authentique de Dieu) est infallible et suffisant: toute révélation divine, toute expérience religieuse vraiment bonne pour nourrir et sustenter votre âme, doit pouvoir se répéter et se continuer comme révélation actuelle et expérience individuelle dans votre propre conscience... La révélation divine qui ne se réalise pas en nous et n'y devient pas immédiate n'existe point pour nous » (A. Sabatier, Esquisse d'une philosophie de la religion, 3rd ed., Paris n.d., p. 58 f.). Thus disappears, as Sabatier immediately acknowledges, the distinction between natural and supernatural revelation, between immediate and mediated revelation, and among the revelations of the various religions. As for the miracle, the criticism of Spinoza (Tract. theol. politicus, part 6, De miraculis) is accepted as definitive, according to which it can no longer be an object of objective verification but only of the heart: « Percevoir Dieu et l'action de Dieu dans l'âme humaine et dans le cours des choses, c'est l'affaire du coeur pieux » (op. cit., p. 86). Similarly, religious inspiration is no different from poetic inspiration, and prophetic inspiration differs from that accessible to all only by the degree of intensity, inasmuch as it is an inspiration "to the second power" (ibid., p. 100). The essence of Christianity lies in the feeling of a "filial relationship" that man feels toward God and of the divine fatherhood toward him: this is the attitude that every Christian, following the example of Jesus Christ, must have toward God, integrated by the feeling of brotherhood toward men (op. cit., p. 184 f.). As for dogmas, one must distinguish between the "form" and the "substance," between the assimilable religious experience that it represents and the contingent and imperfect experience that the ancient doctors may have given it: the religious soul assimilates its vital sap, abandoning the arid husk, that is, the elements of a fallen and superseded science (p. 283). And this is the only concept of religion to which the Protestant principle of the subjectivity of faith leads: and with this conclusion of extreme sincerity on Sabatier's part, the Catholic theologian too agrees, because the Protestant principle must end by unhinging the foundations of Christianity as a revealed and transcendent religion. Along Sabatier's line, N. Söderblom, Tyrrell, and in the philosophical sphere W. James with the essay The variety of religious experience (London 1907) expounded their own theory of religion. The organ of the movement in France was the Annales de philosophie chrétienne, which ceased publication with the condemnation of modernism: it was in this journal that M. Blondel, a disciple of Ollé-Laprunne, attempted his original interpretation of the principle of i. under the formula of Philosophie de l'action. In its first formulation it contained a severe condemnation of the traditional method, accused of abstract rationalism (cf. L'action, Essai d'une critique de la vie et d'une science de la pratique, Paris 1893, pp. XXI ff.; 97 ff., 476 and passim), which in the subsequent reworking (L'action, 2 vols., Paris 1936-37) was considerably mitigated: in his last years Blondel received the most authoritative assurance of the orthodoxy of the content of his doctrine in a letter from the Secretariat of State (Dec. 2, 1944; cf. Documentation catholique, 42 [1945], cols. 418-19), which however makes an exception for certain expressions of B., which theological rigor would have wished more precise.

Blondel's metaphysical thesis is that it falls to action, and not to the rationality of proofs and motives, to give the demonstration of God's transcendence (cf. L'action, p. 350 f.): he nevertheless intended to detach himself not only from intellectualism but also from pragmatism, and thought to bring the principle of i. close to St. Thomas himself when he says: «Nihil potest ordinari ad finem aliquem, nisi praesxistat in ipso quaedam proportio ad finem» (De Veritate, q. 14, a. 2; Lettre sur l'apologétique, Paris 1896, p. 28). Blondel distinguishes between a sense of i. as efference, idealistic and vitalistic, which annuls transcendence, and as afference, which instead grounds transcendence inasmuch as it signifies the double openness to the "intimate gratuitous promptings and to the teachings authorized by the supreme effort of our reason and our sincerity" (in Lalande, Vocab. de la philosophie, 4th ed., I, Paris 1938, p. 345 note). The positive meaning, therefore, of Blondelian i. has been to show that reason alone brings one barely into the atrium of religious life and of faith, and that entry is entrusted to the commitment of the subject's freedom. This finds a counterpart in the Thomist theology of the act of faith, which distinguishes between the "judgment of credibility" (est credendum) within the competence of reason and the "judgment of credence" (credo) which proceeds from freedom moved by Grace. Outside Catholic doctrine remain the developments that L. Laberthonnière and E. Le Roy gave to the principle of i., both condemned by the Holy Office.

The so-called "theology of preaching" (Verkündigungstheologie) can be traced back to the approach of the "method of immanence," championed especially by the collaborators of the Zeitschrift für kath. Theologie in Austria, according to whom the intimate meaning of the truths of Christianity is to be sought not so much in the formulas and conceptual expositions of scholastic theology as in the picturesque symbols and the living preaching of the writers and Fathers of the first centuries; a related approach may be said to be the one associated with the Jesuit Faculty of Theology of Lyon-Fourvière (H. de Lubac, J. Daniélou, H. Bouillard). The encyclical Humani generis (AAS, 42 [1950], pp. 563-70) pointed out the dangers that such approaches can contain and gave the norms for avoiding them. The position of Cardinal Newman's work has no direct filiation with the immanentism of modern philosophy, but arose rather from the study of the Fathers and of the development of Catholic doctrine, and appeals rather to a personalism of an existential type such as that of Kierkegaard (cf.: M. Nédoncelle, Oeuvres philos. de Newman, Introduction, Paris 1945, p. 149).

While the intent of the method of immanence may be praiseworthy — that of bringing the problems of faith directly to human consciousness in its affective and dynamic concreteness — its proponents have not, however, always seen the danger of underestimating the objective and rational criteria of credibility, which in Catholic doctrine must hold the first place, because they are the foundation that can give meaning and guarantee of truth to the subjective procedure of immanence itself. In this matter, decisive for the orientation of human consciousness toward revealed faith, the Vatican Council declared: «Si quis dixerit Revelationem divinam externis signis credibilem fieri non posse, ideoque sola interna cuiusque experientia aut inspiratione privata homines ad fidem moveri debere: anathema sit» (Denz-U, n. 1812). The principal gap in the method of immanence is that it leaves in the shadows the criterion of authority of the Church, which on the contrary is the only one in which the faithful can immediately and with certainty make the resolution of their act of faith.

2. Autori scattolici: E. Vacherot, La religion, Parigi 1869 (specialmente cap. 3, pp. 109 sgg.; Méthode psychologique); O. Pfeiderer, Geschichte der Religionsphilosophie von Spinoza bis auf die Gegenwart, Berlino 1893; H. Siebert, Religionsphilosophie, Berlino e Lipsia 1922, p. 104 sgg. e passim; H. Melfing, Philosophie de la religion, Parigi 1908 (specialmente cap. 3, p. 88 sgg.; Le problème psychologique de la philosophie de la religion); J.-J. Gourd, Philosophie de la religion, ivi 1911 (l'i. religiosa come atto di amore che la distacca dalla conoscenza oggettiva delle scienze e resta perciò «incoordinabile» con essa); W. Koep, Einführung in das Studium der Religionspsychologie, Tubings 1920, pp. 13 sgg., 30, 93 sgg.; R. Eucken, Der Kampf um einen geistigen Lebensinhalt, 4ª ed., Berlino 1921, p. 89 sgg.; A. Görland, Religionsphilosophie, Berlino e Lipsia 1922, p. 104 sgg. e passim; P. Hoffmann, Das religiöse Erlebnis (Philosophische Vorträge, 28), Charlottenburg 1925; N. Söderblom, Dieu vivant dans l'histoire, Parigi 1937; E. Frank, Philosophical understanding and religious truth, Oxford 1945, p. 32 sgg. e passim; J. Baillie, Our knowledge of God, Oxford e Londra 1946, p. 228 sgg., § 19; E. C. Brightman, Philosophy of religion, Nuova York 1946, pp. 168 sgg., 412 sgg. e passim.

3. Autori cattolici: F. Klimke, Der Maximum, Friburgo in Br. 1911 (vedi l. IV, cap. 2, pp. 410-82; esposizione dello sviluppo del principio d'i. ancor oggi utile); I. P. Steffes, Religionsphilosophie (Philos. Handbibl., 9), Kempten 1925, p. 32 sgg.; H. Straubinger, Einführung in die Religionsphilosophie, Friburgo in Br. 1929; E. Przywara, Religionsphilosophie katholischer Theologie, Monaco e Berlino 1929; B. Rosenmöller, Religionsphilosophie, 2ª ed., Münster in V. 1930, pp. 37 sgg., 92 sgg., 134 sgg.; Jo. Hessen, Religionsphilosophie, I, Essen 1948 (specialmente pp. 39 sgg., 192 sgg., 287 sgg.; II, specialmente p. 91 sgg.); H. Fries, Die katholische Religionsphilosophie der Gegenwart, Heidelberg 1949, p. 37 sgg. e passim. Questi due autori dipendono, in diversa proporzione, dall'opera di Max Scheler di cui va ricordato, a proposito della i. religiosa, il saggio: Probleme der Religion, in Vom Emigen im Menschen, Lipsia 1923 (I, II, p. 1 sgg.; v. anche l'importante prefazione alla parte 1ª, p. v. sgg.). Sulla posizione del Blondel: J. de Tonquédecq, Immanenz, 4ª ed., Parigi 1933 (critica risolutamente negativa, ma sempre utile per la difesa dei principi). Più concilianti: V. de Montcheuil, Pages religieuses de Maurière Blondel, Parigi 1942 (l'autore sostiene che il Blondel è rimasto sempre fedele alla posizione della Action del 1893); R. Aubert, Le problème de l'acte de foi, Lovanio 1945 (cap. 2, Autour de la méthode d'i., pp. 265-292, con bibl. completa per la letteratura di lingua francese). Sull'aspetto psicologico della i. dell'atto religioso, v.: G. Wunderle, Der religiöser Abt als seelisches Problem, Würzburg 1948. Dal punto di vista della mistica va ricordata l'opera discussa di Fr. von Hügel (cf. per un'esposizione d'insieme, la raccolta ontologica: Religion als Ganzheit, a cura di M. Schlüter Herinkes, Düsseldorf 1948); D. Feuling, Das Leben der Seele, Salisburgo 1940 (cf. p. 479 sgg.); A. Mager, Mynth als seelische Wirklichkeit, ivi 1945.

Cornelio Fabro