Maurice Blondel

Maurice Blondel (2 November 1861, Dijon – 4 June 1949, Aix-en-Provence) was a French philosopher.

Blondel developed a "philosophy of action” that integrated classical Neoplatonic thought with modern Pragmatism in the context of a Christian philosophy of religion. He held that action alone could never satisfy the human yearning for the transfinite, which could only be fulfilled by God, whom he described as the "first principle and last term."

In 1881, he joined the École Normale Supérieure of Paris. In 1893 he finished his thesis "L'Action" (Action), a critical essay of life and of a science of the practice. In 1895 he became a Maître de Conférences at Lille, then at Aix-en-Provence and became a professor in 1897.

His wife died in 1919 and in 1927 he retired for health reasons. Between 1934 and 1937 he published a trilogy dedicated to the thought, the being and the action. In 1935, he published an essay of concrete and integrale ontology "L'être et les êtres" (The Being and the Beings) and in 1946 he published "L'esprit chrétien" (The Christian Spirit).

See also

Émile Boutroux

Works

• L'Action – Essai d'une critique de la vie et d'une science de la pratique, PUF, 1950
  • (English) Action (1893): Essay on a Critique of Life and a Science of Practice (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984).
• L'être et les êtres – Essai d'ontologie concrète et intégrale, PUF, 1963
• The letter on apologetics and History and dogma (edited and translated by Alexander Dru & Illtyd Trethowan, Harvill Press, 1964)

On Blondel

• James Somerville, Total Commitment: Blondel’s L’Action (Washington DC: Corpus, 1968).
• Andreas Uwe Mueller, Christlicher Glaube und historische Kritik. Maurice Blondel und Alfred Loisy im Ringen um das Verhaeltnis von Schrift und Tradition (Freiburg, Herder, 2008).
• Peter Henrici. Hegel und Blondel: Eine Untersuchung uber Form und Sinn der Dialektik in der 'Phanomenologie des Geistes' und der ersten 'Action'. Pullach bei Munchen: Berchmanskollege, 1958.