The Idealist Illusion and Other Essays: Translation and Introduction by Fiachra Long, Annotations by Fiachra Long and Claude Troisfontaines

by Maurice Blondel, Fiachra Long (Translator)

I was very happy when in 1997 Fiachra Long came to spend part of his sabbatical leave at the Archives Maurice Blondel at Louvain-Ia-Neuve. This allowed him to bring together and complete his translation of three important articles from Maurice Blondel, known as the philosopher of Aix-en-Province. These three articles fonn a they make explicit certain aspects of the method used in the great thesis of 1893, Action. This thesis, it is well known, aroused many polemic debates after its appearance. Thomist theologians accused Blondel of turning back towards Kantian idealism whereas the philosophers of the Revue de metaphysique et de morale accused him on the contrary of falling back on a pre-critical realism. The three articles translated here, each in its own way, attempt to pass beyond these two opposite charges. The Idealist Illusion (1898) underlines the fact that the content of consciousness should be unfurled as it appears, by withdrawing from any idealist or realist prejudice, before judging the consistency of its content as a whole. In this way Blondel supports the "phenomenological" method used in his thesis. The Elementary Principle of a Logic of the Moral Life (1903) is a very well-worked text which shows that "the logic of possession and privation" is broader than "the logic of amnnation and negation. " Using these words, Blondel develops certain striking laws of action such as that of the "parallelogram of contrary forces.

Genres: Philosophy

171 pages, Hardcover

First published September 30, 2000

About the author

Maurice Blondel was a French philosopher, whose most influential works, notably L'Action, aimed at establishing the correct relationship between autonomous philosophical reasoning and Christianity.

Blondel was born in Dijon in 1861. He came from a family who were traditionally connected to the legal profession, but chose early in life to follow a career in philosophy. In 1881, he gained admission to 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. He was at this time refused a teaching post (as would have been his due) because his philosophical conclusions were deemed to be too 'Christian' and, therefore, "compromising" of philosophical reason. In 1895, however, with the help of his former teacher Emile Boutroux, he became a Maître de Conférences at Lille, then shortly after at Aix-en-Provence, where he became a professor in 1897. He would remain in Aix-en-Provence for the rest of his career.

In L'Action, 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."

His subsequent works, the Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma, were also connected to the philosophical problem of religion. They unleashed an enormous controversy at the time of publication. Pope Pius X's 1907 encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis, which targeted the 'Modernist' threat to Catholic thought, targeted Blondel to some degree, and for many years his thought remained associated (perhaps tenuously) with the Modernists. He did, however, have great influence on later Catholic thought, especially through ressourcement theologians such as Henri de Lubac.

His wife died in 1919 and in 1927 he retired for health reasons. Between 1934 and 1937 he published a trilogy dedicated to thought, being and 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).

Blondel died in Aix-en-Provence in 1949.