Mercier, Désiré

MERCIER, DÉSIRÉ. - Philosopher, founder of the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Louvain, cardinal and primate of Belgium, b. at Braine l'Alleud, in Walloon Brabant, on 21 Nov. 1851, d. at Malines on 23 Jan. 1926. Ordained priest on 5 Apr. 1874 by the apostolic nuncio Msgr. Cattani, he enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Louvain.

Direct contact with modern philosophical currents and with the sciences, open discussions with the professors and above all the inner travail of personal reflection gradually oriented his thought. He underwent, it seems, the first decisive influence from the teaching of A. Dupont and from the works of Kleutgen (v.) and Tongiorgi (v.). At the end of his university curriculum he had substantially matured his convictions. Having obtained his degree, he moved to the Petit Séminaire as professor of logic and metaphysics. It was the year 1877, two years before the Aeterni Patris, and it is known that M.'s teaching was already in line with the future encyclical. Thus, when Leo XIII asked the Belgian episcopate to establish a Thomistic chair of philosophy at the University of Louvain, Card. Dechamps decided to entrust this task to M., who accepted it. Having first gone to Rome, to Leo XIII, who set out to him his program with regard to the Catholic universities, he declared: "Holy Father, as regards the beginnings of my professional career, I believe I can answer yes; in any case I answer you energetically yes for the present and for the future." His biographers take pleasure in pointing out that M. was the man capable of understanding Leo XIII, and that Leo XIII was the Pope capable of understanding M. From that time on there were established between the two those relations of trust and understanding that gave rise to the "Institut de Philosophie" and to its philosophical, historical and scientific tradition.

At the course begun in the academic year 1882-83 university students flocked in ever greater numbers, and with the university students came the professors themselves. Thus M.'s work stood out from its earliest years as an authentic success. The plan, agreed upon with Leo XIII, was progressively realized. "To form men, in the greatest possible number, who devote themselves to science for its own sake, and who work at first hand...; to create for themselves the resources that this work requires, such is the double aim of those who are concerned for the prestige of the Church in the world" (Relazione sugli studi super. di filos., presented at the Congress of Malines on 9 Sept. 1891). Not content with university contacts, M. opened his Bureau de Rue des Flamands. In those conversations and those meetings a group of most faithful friends and disciples came to form around him. Leo XIII followed and urged further developments. A brief of 7 July 1888 called for an increase in chairs and the founding of an Institute of Philosophy; another brief of 8 Nov. 1889 approved its beginning. Finally the brief of 7 March 1894 determined the juridical position of the Institute within the University and mentioned a pontifical subsidy of 150,000 francs.

In the same year the Revue néoscolastique de philosophie, published by the Société philosophique de Louvain, began publication. The organization of the Institute did not slow down the philosophical production of its president. M. worked assiduously on the Cours de philosophie, systematically inspired by Thomism and open to the philosophical and scientific problems of the time. Of it there appeared the Logique, which took its definitive form in 1897; the Psychologie (1892); the Critériologie générale ou Théorie générale de la certitude (1899); the Métaphysique générale ou Ontologie (1902). Of the Cosmologie there exists a lithographed summary, because this treatise was subsequently entrusted to D. Nys; there also exist lithographs of the Théodicée and of the Philosophie morale et droit naturel. The Critériologie générale (the spéciale was never published) is the most celebrated of M.'s works, also because of the discussions aroused concerning the Mercierian interpretation of the concept of truth, and concerning the initial state and the methodical passage from the ideal to the real. It would be doing an injustice to this great Thomist thinker to wish to see his thought only in these two or three theses: for the principal merit of the Critériologie was to have aroused an effective awakening of critical studies in neo-Scholastic circles, showing how realistic gnoseology is able to hold its own in comparison with the positivist and neo-Kantian currents. Another important work of M. is Les origines de la psychologie contemporaine (1st ed. 1897). All these works have had several editions and translations into many languages.

If M. was unable to bring his Cours de philosophie to completion, it was because from head of a school he was to become the spiritual head of his people. Pius X, who had already previously conveyed to him his approval for the activity of the Institute, the archiepiscopal see of Malines having fallen vacant in 1906, created him cardinal and primate of Belgium. Thus the Pope's choice placed M. in the position to become one of the most eminent ecclesiastical figures of the first half of our century. M. was able above all to see the generation he had formed set out and arrive at the conquest of power. At the time of the war of 1914-18 the figure of the cardinal grew larger. The proud defense of the rights of his people during the time of the German occupation has passed into history, and his biographers have amply documented it. Here it suffices to note that it concluded, on M.'s part, without a trace of rancor and, on the part of his former adversaries, with a loyal acknowledgment.

M. had a profoundly pious soul, as can be seen in the works A mes séminaristes (1908-26) and Retraite pastorale (1910-26) addressed to his clergy (some points of them gave occasion for a controversy, recently concluded by a discourse of the Holy Father, on 8 Dec. 1950, at the end of the Congress for the updating of religious). As a young seminarian M. spent his vacations among Christian workers. He could not therefore fail to accept with enthusiasm the initiative of an "International Union of Social Studies," offered to him in 1921. He gathered in his archiepiscopal palace sociologists from all the principal nations of Europe and supported them with his backing during the compilation of the Code social de Malines, published a year after his death. Another event linked to M.'s name are the Conversations of Malines (begun on 6-8 Dec. 1921) which brought together the Cardinal and Lord Halifax for a private study on the possible union of the Anglicans with the Roman Church. Death overtook M. while a fifth meeting was imminent (v. MALINES, conversations of).

(1939), p. 303 ff.; J. Lenzlinger, El concepto católico de la vida según el card. M., 2nd ed., Madrid 1941; J. J. Harnett, D. M. and the Neocolastic Revival, in The New Scholasticism, 18 (1944), pp. 303-39; J. de Bivort de la Saudée, Anglicane et catholiques, Paris 1949, passim; id., Documents sur le problème de l'union anglo-romaine, ibid. 1949, passim. Further indications in G. A. De Brie, Bibliographia philosophica 1934-45, I, Utrecht 1950, p. 535; Reu. philos. de Louvain, 1951, fasc. 4, dedicated to M.; L. De Raeymaker, Le cardinal M., Louvain 1952.

Francesco Morandini