40 Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Blondel’s Rehabilitation of Particularity &

Response to Kantian Formalism

1 Introduction

The Enlightenment critique of the Christian religion, the preoccupation with

‘superstition’ and Kant’s specific accusation of superstition against sacra-
ments, in particular, all formed part of the intellectual heritage of the young
Maurice Blondel, and it is clear that one of his primary motivations in writing
Action (1893) was the properly philosophical rehabilitation of religious “literal
practice” (“pratique littérale”) and the other aspects of the ‘scandal’ of particu-
larity so roundly rejected by modern rationalists. In a letter to the doyen of
the Sorbonne dated March 22, 1887, Blondel makes this goal explicit in the
proposed subtitle to his dissertation (which he was subsequently forced to
change): L’Action: étude sur la nature de l’opération ad extra et sur la valeur de
la pratique littérale.1 Clearly, the stimulus for his philosophical project was in
great part rooted in his lived experience of the Catholic sacraments, leading to
the philosophical synthesis which endured throughout his career, according
to which real human action in concrete actuality is the starting point for all
philosophical reflexion. In his philosophical oeuvre, Blondel set out to answer
the Enlightenment critique of the Christian religion; in our terms, to resolve
the ‘scandal’ of particularity inherent in Christian revelation on a properly
philosophical basis. For Blondel, the ‘scandal’ of particularity is a philosophical
problem, demanding a properly philosophical answer. Accordingly, one of the
major tasks of his philosophy is to rehabilitate the concrete and the particular.
As regards the supernatural and the ‘religious question’, among his con-
temporaries, Blondel found a dominant opposition to any philosophical
examination of the Christian religion whatsoever, as if philosophy were dis-
qualified a priori from considering any doctrine which supposedly arrogated
to itself in the name of particular historical facts the right to be imposed on
human intelligence and the will.2 For the strict rationalist, the only precepts

1 Maurice Blondel, Lettres philosophiques de Maurice Blondel: lettres à E. Boutroux, V. Delbos,

L. Brunsvig, J. Wehrlé, Henri Bremond, Ed. Le Roy, (Paris: Aubier, 1961), 11.
2 Maurice Blondel, Le problème de la philosophie catholique, (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1932), 11–12: “Le
trait dominant chez beaucoup de jeunes esprits que préoccupaient cependant les problèmes
de la vie intérieure, c’était, pour ainsi dire a priori, une fin de non-recevoir opposé à l’examen

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2017 | doi 10.1163/9789004342446_004

Blondel’s Rehabilitation of Particularity 41

which can be imposed universally are those derived from human reason alone.
Nothing should be imposed from without, as from a Revelation. As Blondel
quips towards the end of the dialectic of human action in Action (1893): “Action
is not completed in the natural order. But is not the very name of the supernat-
ural the scandal of reason?”3 Stultitia et scandalum (stupidity and scandal).4
The question of anything like a supernatural order was excluded from philo-
sophical discourse in his day and one of Blondel’s major goals in Action (1893),
therefore, was to demonstrate that philosophy cannot rationally exclude from
its purview, the necessity of considering the supernatural, at least as hypoth-
esis in line with the aspirations of our rational appetite.
In Blondel’s view, the philosophical enterprise excludes the religious ques-
tion only in a contrived manner, to the point that such a ‘separated’ philosophy
is deformed and shortsighted. One of his foundational philosophical doctrines,
therefore, is that philosophy is insufficient unto itself and cannot enclose the
circle of human existence within the capacity of the rational appetite to will.
The deepest truth of the natural order entails a call for a super-natural comple-
ment, and the highest task of philosophy is to demonstrate the necessity of
such a hypothesis at the highest point of human action.
To this end, Blondel’s dialectical approach to voluntary human action in
Action (1893) brings to light a drive in human willing towards satiety, a fulfill-
ment equal to the power of willing, as well as a congenital inability to reach
such fulfillment: i.e. the impetus of human willing always exceeds what human
beings can will of themselves. Only a hypothetically-necessary ‘supernatural’
auxiliary from without the natural order and yet immanent within it is able to
bring human action to a completion equal to the power of human willing. The
supernatural remains ‘hypothetical’ because philosophical reasoning cannot
show that such a gift has ever been granted in history. In contrast with Kant,
therefore, the transcendent and the immanent do not exclude each other.
While heterogeneous to each other, the transcendent and the immanent

même du christianisme, comme si la philosophie se fût disqualifiée en prenant la peine de

considérer une doctrine qui censément s’arroge, au nom des faits, le droit d’imposer comme
un devoir l’assentiment de l’intelligence et la soumission de la volonté à un ordre venu tout
entier du dehors.”; “The characteristic feature of many young minds who were preoccupied
with the problems of the interior life was, as it were, a priori, (assuming) a final outcome of
rejection opposed even to the examination of Christianity, as if philosophy had disqualified
itself from bothering with a doctrine that allegedly arrogates to itself, in the name of facts, the
right to impose as a duty the assent of the intellect and the submission of the will to an order
coming entirely from without.”
3 Maurice Blondel, Action (1893), 358.
4 Maurice Blondel, Action (1893), 359.