Category: Blondel
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God Doesn’t Philosophize
He doesn't need to. We need to. But our neediness goes together with our inability to make any progress at it. A double defect: need and inability. The truth we need we cannot acquire by our own efforts. It is this fact that motivates some philosophers to consider the possibility of divine revelation. Can they…
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Somerville/Blondel on Education
Once widely understood, now forgotten: It is not expedient that all truths be indiscriminately communicated to every student regardless of age or temperament. Premature truths can do more harm than good; for just as it is criminal to anticipate the age of puberty with indiscrete revelations, similarly, intellectual irresponsibility on the part of the teacher…
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Bierce, Blondel, and Nirvana
This from The Devil's Dictionary: Nirvana, n. In the Buddhist religion, a state of pleasurable annihilation awarded to the wise, particularly to those wise enough to understand it. (Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, c. 1911) Although intended sardonically, there is a serious point here to which Maurice Blondel alludes in the following quotation: …
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Action and Existenz: Blondel and Heidegger
Commentators on Maurice Blondel have often noted the similarity of his thought to existentialism. Blondel’s concept of action, for example, is remarkably similar to the concept of existence that we find in Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, Sartre and other existentialists. Herewith, a brief comparison of action in Blondel’s L’Action (1893) with Existenz in Heidegger’s Sein und…