One doesn\u2019t have to read much Blondel to realize that he uses \u2018action\u2019 in a broader way than is philosophically usual. Thus he does not oppose it to theory or contemplation. It includes the latter. Action in Blondel\u2019s sense is a "synthesis of willing, knowing, and being . . . it is the precise point where the world of thought, the moral world, and the world of science converge." (Action<\/strong>, 40) Thus action is not the same as will when the latter is contrasted with intellect: action is at the root of both intellect and will. Action, we could say, is man\u2019s Being, as long as we do not oppose Being to willing or knowing. (I write \u2018Being\u2019 rather than \u2018being\u2019 to mark what Heidegger calls the ontological difference between das Sein<\/em> und das Seiende<\/em> \u2013 but I can\u2019t explain that now.) <\/p>\n So action, for Blondel, is man\u2019s Being. As such, it is close to what Heidegger calls Existenz<\/em>. Existenz<\/em> is the Being of Dasein<\/em>, where Dasein<\/em> denotes the beings that we are. It is important to realize that Heidegger uses both Existenz<\/em> and Dasein<\/em> in philosophically idiosyncratic ways. Existenz<\/em> is not to be confused with the scholastic existentia<\/em>; the latter Heidegger refers to as Vorhandenheit<\/em> (presence-at-hand). Existenz<\/em> names a mode of Being that belongs to Dasein<\/em> alone. As for Dasein<\/em>, in ordinary philosophical German it just means existence, and contrasts with Sosein<\/em>, whatness. Anything that exists, that is at hand, has Dasein<\/em> as this term is ordinarily used. But for Heidegger, only we are cases of Dasein<\/em>. Thus we don\u2019t have the Being of tools (Zuhandenheit<\/em>) nor the Being of naturally occurrent items like rocks (Vorhandenheit<\/em>): we have a unique mode of Being that cannot be understood in terms of these other modes of Being. Thus, human beings cannot be adequately understood in Aristotelean terms as rational animals, for, on such a scheme, man is apperceived as a thing at hand in the world possessing a fixed essence.<\/font><\/p>\n The commentator Jean Lacroix quotes Blondel as saying, "The substance of man is action; he is what he he makes himself." (Maurice Blondel: The Man and His Philosophy<\/strong>, Sheed and Ward, 1968, p. 33) The substance of a thing is its essential being. So Blondel is saying that man\u2019s essential being is action. Thus humans are not static entities with a fixed nature, but dynamic in their Being. In existentialist jargon, man is a project, a being who is essentially futural. The paradox should not be missed: man\u2019s \u2018essence\u2019 is to lack a fixed essence.<\/font><\/p>\n That should remind you of Jean-Paul Sarte\u2019s dictum that, in the case of human beings, existence precedes essence. In an artifact, something made for a purpose by an artificer, essence precedes existence: both logically and temporally the essence comes first, and then the realization of the essence. In man, however, existence comes first. But long before Sartre popularized this idea in the \u2018forties, Heidegger wrote: Das \u2018Wesen\u2019 des Daseins liegt in seiner Existenz.<\/em> (SZ 42) "The \u2018essence\u2019 of Dasein lies in its existence."<\/font><\/p>\n The scare quotes indicate that \u2018essence\u2019 is not being used in its traditional sense. Thus, Heidegger is not charitably interpreted as saying that human beings have an essence but that said essence is existence \u2013 which borders on a contradiction \u2013 but that humans beings lack an essence in the traditional sense.<\/font><\/p>\n Would Blondel go as far as this? I don\u2019t know. Let\u2019s not forget that Blondel is a traditional theist. For him, man is a creature. How is man\u2019s creaturely status consistent \u2013 if it is consistent \u2013 with action (in Blondel\u2019s broad sense) being man\u2019s substance? If man "is what he makes himself," as Lacroix quotes Blondel as saying, then how can man be a creature in any traditional understanding of creaturehood? But to expound this problem requires a separate post. To be explored would be the question whether Blondel's theism is in tension with his 'existentialist' theory of action.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Commentators on Maurice Blondel have often noted the similarity of his thought to existentialism. Blondel\u2019s 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\u2019s L\u2019Action (1893) with Existenz in Heidegger\u2019s Sein und … Continue reading “Action and Existenz<\/i>: Blondel and Heidegger”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[550,410,283],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blondel","category-existentialism","category-heidegger"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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