BLONDEL, MAURICE
French Catholic philosopher; b. Dijon. Nov. 2, 1861;
d. Aix-en-Provence. June 4, 1949. His doctoral thesis,
L'Action (1893), is a masterpiece of the late 19th cen-
tury. Blondel completed his studies at the ficole Nor-
male in 1883, taught for a short time at the University
of Lille, and passed the rest of his life at Aix-en-
Provence, first as professor of philosophy (1896-1927),
and after the onset of blindness, in active retirement
until his death. In spite of his affliction, he dictated 10
major volumes between 1929 and 1949, thus entering on
a second career at the age of 68, a career more mature
but no less brilliant than his earlier one.
L'Action. Blondel uses the term action to character-
ize the dynamism of *life in all its manifestations. It
does not mean simply the deed done, but includes all
the conditions, immanent and transcendent, interior
and superior, that contribute to the gestation, birth, and
expansion of the free act. Therefore, sensation, percep-
tion, consciousness, volition, artistic creation, the moral
response, and even the divine Action are included in
this comprehensive term, itself expressive of the initia-
tive of the *spirit.
Has life a meaning and has man a destiny? By way of
answer Blondel examines the various levels of action to
determine whether the dynamism of the *will in search
of a term equal to its clan can be halted or satisfied with
the life of sensation, dedication to science, social activ-
ity, etc. Having demonstrated against dilettantism and
nihilism that the will must will something, Blondel
shows that the "something" the primordial will (la
volontc voiilcinte) seeks is not to be found among the
objective values the deliberate will (la volonte voultte)
pursues in the order of phenomena. But if the whole
phenomenal order does not suffice, the action of the
deeper will must transcend all the conditions that serve
as means for its expansion. Perhaps there is more in the
will than the will itself; perhaps the imbalance or lack of
adequation between the two phases of the will can be
overcome only by the initiative of a superior Action.
For Blondel, it is no longer a question of proving that
*God (the Unique Necessary Being) exists, but of de-
termining what attitude a man should take regarding
the possibility of a supreme gift that would enable him
to share in an infinite Life and Will in which perfect
adequation of the real and the ideal is attained. It is
not for reason or philosophy to decide whether a super-
natural destiny has been offered in fact. Their role is to
show the impossibility of proving its impossibility and
to indicate the conditions required on the part of man
for its reception, should it be offered. One can either
adopt a deliberately negative attitude or remain open
to the very real possibility by which man's destiny
would be to share in the divine Life. This is Blondel's
famous "option," and before it man must take a stand:
whether to seek God without God or wait in humble
expectancy for an initiative that he cannot provoke but
that must come entirely from God. Reason and the dia-
lectic of action require this much, and in view of the
historic claims of Christianity "and man's inability to
become, by himself, what he deeply wants to be, the
negative option can never be scientifically justified. For
it is not for man to decree what can or cannot be. Rea-
son, then, must be as broad as charity and leave open
the question of man's supernatural destiny. In this way
philosophy, true to its own nature, allows a point of in-
sertion into nature for the supreme vocation.
It is impossible to convey here the dramatic urgency
of Blondel's phenomenology of action as it examines the
series of means for the expansion of the will. Only the
last fifth of L'Action deals with the necessary hypothesis
of the supernatural, and it would involve a loss of per-
spective were one to pass over the first 350 pages with
their penetrating analysis of action and its role in mak-
ing possible science, art, and social life. Moreover,
Blondel's literary career spanned almost 60 years, and
the works that followed the thesis develop the germinal
ideas of this original manifesto, making the testament
of the Philosopher of Aix one of the most imposing leg-
acies of any modern Catholic thinker.
Other Works. In the Trilogy on Thought, Being, and
Action (1934-37), Blondel remains true to his original
method, which was to indicate the functional duality
between two phases of life: the primordial and the elic-
ited. In La Pensee he shows that no created thought can
equal the need for a Thought that is total and infinite,
and in Etre et les etres and the revised L' Action, being
and action receive their full expression only in that Be-
ing who is Pure Act.
Beginning with the Lettre on apologetic method
(1S96), the articles on "Monophorism" (1910), Le
proces dc I'intelligence (1921), and Le probleme de la
philosopltie catholiqiie (1932) and concluding with the
Great Trilogy and the two volumes entitled La philoso-
phic et I'esprit chreticn (1944-46), Blondel continued
to refine his thought and to exercise a growing influence
on theology. Many of the ideas that have become com-
monplace in the new theology and apologetics were al-
ready clearly outlined in the books and innumerable
articles of Blondel written before 1913. When his ortho-
doxy was challenged during the Modernist crisis, he
enjoyed the personal esteem and protection of Leo XIII
and (St.) Pius X. But the great vindication of his life's
work came with the encomium of Pius XII in a letter
from the Vatican secretariat, signed by G. Montini, the
future Paul VI, urging the aged philosopher to continue
his philosophical investigation, which "you have carried
on with a talent equalled only by your faith" [La Doc-
umentation Catholique 42 (1945) 498-499].
Bibliography: H. BOUILLARD, "The Thought of Maurice
Blondel: A Synoptic Vision," International Philosophical Qua-
terly 3 (1963) 392-402; Blondel el Ie Christianisme (Paris 1961).
J. M. SOMERVILLE, "Maurice Blondel, 1861-1949," Thought^
(1961) 371-410; "Action and the Silence of Being," A Modern
Introduction to Metaphysics, ed. D. A. DRENNEN (New York
1962) 420-431. H. DUMERY, La Philosophic de faction (Paris
1948); Raison et religion dans la philosophic de faction (Paris
1963). C. TRESMONTANT, Introduction a la metaphysique dl
Maurice Blondel (Paris 1963).
J. M. Somerville
New Catholic Encyclopedia;
McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York; 1967