Maurice Blondel was de Lubac's philosophical prophet; he has at least as much right as anyone else to be called the philosopher of the Second Vatican Council, which did so much to bring back a spiritual empiricism into Catholic thinking. - Illtyd Trethowan
Maurice Blondel was a French Catholic philosopher. He was a professor at the universities of Montauban, Lille, and Aix-Marseille during his influential career. Like his contemporary Henri Bergson he was anti-rationalist and scorned science. In his first work, L'Action (1893, rev. ed. 1950), he laid the groundwork for his later thought. Blondel 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 his positive affirmation of God he was close to St. Augustine, Plato, and Leibniz; he later also accorded legitimacy to the rational proofs of God's existence. His other chief works were La Pensée (2 vol., 1934–35) and Le Problème de la philosophie catholique (1932). - Source: The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia
Maurice Blondel effected a new beginning in Catholic thought. In a highly original manner he took up modern philosophy – Descartes, Leibniz, Malebranche, Kant, Hegel, positivism – and developed a philosophy, which appropriated the ‘principle of immanence’ of these thinkers and opened it to a consideration of Transcendence and historical Revelation in Christianity. The reception of his work was hampered by immanent difficulties, personal problems (his blindness would hinder the writing of the later works) and the unfortunate situation of the Church at the time of its wrangling with modernism. - Albert Raffelt, Freiburg im Breisgau
Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma
3 comments:
David, it makes me uncomfortable that we have so many theological/philosophical tastes in common.... :-)
Although I'm still waiting for an entry for St. Thomas. :-)
I just returned home today (with this book, which I had never seen, by an author I have never read) from a used book store which had just put it on the shelf. I checked out my few daily internet sites and found your post. This sort of coincidence has been happening every day.
It was $4.98. They also had just put out de Lubac's At the Service of the Church, which I have, and left for someone else.
It will go on to my expanding read soon stack of books. But right now I am reading Paul Claudel's I Believe in God, so everything else is waiting.
Oops, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Thomas K. I live in Pittsburgh. Thanks very very much for your blogging. I really appreciate what you are doing.
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