John McNeill Spiritual Transformation
In my three areas of expertise; spirituality, psychotherapy and theology, I am aware of a desperate need for spiritual transformation in the culture, the nation, and the Church. I will do my best to make a contribution to that need from my perspective as an older man with many years of involved experience.
Introduction
This Christmas eve i wont to post this blog because I feel it iis the one most revelant to a theological understanding of the importance of the Incarnation for all humanity.
Blondel believed that he could discover all the a priori aspirations implicit in the human will by means of his dialectic. Most fundamental is the drive out of isolation and alienation into unity with ourselves, the world, our fellow man and God. This is the central message of Christian revelation concerning human destiny: “May they be one, Father, even as you and I are one.” Accepting this word not merely as revealed but as revealing, Blondel traces the stages in the dialectical process by which man searches for that oneness.
The appearance of human self-consciousness in the evolutionary process marks man and woman's awareness of moral consciousness as a thrust toward unity: humans are morally obliged from within to act as if humanity were one. Unlike Kant who was tempted to see moral truth as an end-in-itself and the other person as a means to that end. Blondel maintains that, like all truth, moral truth does not exist for its own sake. It is only by acting in accordance with the principles and values of moral truth that humans can achieve the unity of humanity in a human community.
Beyond the felt unity with other humans in the concept of humanity and the moral unity in the order of intention, the will strives for a unity with all humanity on the level of existence itself. The will as willing cannot be one with the will as willed until this existential unity is a reality. For Blondel, the ideal of existential unity among all humankind is the primary example of the category of human commitments that remain simultaneously necessary and impossible. In so far as these commitments are necessary, they represent a possible immanent dimension of the human’s existential reality: in so far as they are impossible for humans to achieve by their unaided freedom, they indicate the presence within humans of a power that transcends them. This is the key experience that leads humans to form an idea of God as the immanent transcendent. Having its genetic origin in the experience of the necessary and the impossible, it is a “projecting out of the unused and unusable potentialities of the human will” In order to find the perfect identity of themselves with themselves in their voluntary action, humans must look within theimselves until they reache the point where that which is of themselves ceases, yet something remains.
What humans can know of God is precisely “that surplus of interior life which demands its employment.” Blondel is well aware that the possibility of existential unity among humankind, to which all humans necessarily aspires, would remain forever an abstraction unless humans could realize an existential unity with God, A human’s knowledge of God consists fundamentally in an immanent awareness that “at the root of his or her ego there is an ego which is no longer his or hers.” Yet it is only in the act of freely consenting to such an intimate presence that the actual consciousness of it as an immanent dimension of human’s existential reality is achieved: Only by free consent does that presence pass from abstract possibility into experienced actuality. According to Blondel, this transformation is the ultimate meaning of human freedom and the ultimate dimension of our moral life; it is grounded in the power to make God exist or not exist in our lives by reason of our own freely chosen existence.
Although the idea of union with God is a necessary idea, it is seldom brought to the degree of clarity and precision that it achieves at the end of a dialectical presentation. No matter under what form it is presented in consciousness, the thought of God as absolute is produced in us by a determinism which imposes that idea from within as a necessary result of the dynamism of our interior life. In turn, it produces a necessary influence on the organization of our conduct.
What emerges necessarily in consciousness and is inevitably efficacious in practice is not the concept of a speculative truth to be defined, but the perhaps vague yet certain. and imperious conviction of a destiny and ulterior end to be attained. The vital source of this sense of destiny is the presence within us of the absolute person. No matter under what form this presence reveals itself to consciousness, be it clear or confused, accepted or hidden, admitted or unnamed, the living truth of that presence has an inevitable efficacy. For this reason Blondel calls human action a sort of théergie: We cannot posit a free human action without cooperating with the absolute subject within us thereby causing him to cooperate with us. To inset the character of transcendence into our lives it is not necessary to perceive its presence or directly recognize the action of the absolute in us and on us. Indeed, even our denial of its presence and action displaces only the object of affirmation; the reality of human action is not affected by this superficial play of words.
Since the idea of the absolute is necessarily projected as our destiny, it is equally necessary to sense the need actually to achieve it through the combined forces of our thought and action. Human action has the inevitable ambition to realize in itself the idea of perfection: “We cannot know God without willing in some way to become God." Just as the idea of God represents a paradoxical reality, at once immanent in us and yet transcendent, so too the choice and the action which necessarily follow upon this idea exhibit their paradoxical nature. Our ground for affirming God as absolute subject is the fact that He is conceived as that which we can neither be by ourselves nor accomplish solely by the force of our free action. Yet we have neither being, will nor action except on condition of freely willing and somehow becoming one with the divine who is the source and being of our own will and action. Hence, the only way to become one with ourselves is to admit another being within us by substituting another will for our own: “May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
It is impossible to enter really into contact with another being, in fact, it is impossible to enter into contact with oneself without passing through the Uniquely Necessary who must become our unique will.
Rejection of the absolute by a human is nothing more than an attempt at avaricious self-possession which isolates us in a false subjectivity and inferiority. This results in a world of solitude and hostility, of rejection and discontinuity, without meeting or true presence, namely the modern world. Release from the prison of selfhood comes by communicating with the transcendent who as immanent in oneself is bridge to the other. “One cannot be for oneself or for another without being for Him first of all.” One cannot communicate with anyone unless it be with and by God.
Blondel sees in the act whereby humans achieves living communication with God an active dialectical resolution of the metaphysical problem of the one and many. It is love’s death to self and sacrifice of self that resolves this problem existentially: “Sacrifice is the solution to the metaphysical problem by an experimental method.” The act by which humans chooses to supplant their will by the Will of God is a negation both of ego and of the false appearances of being in it: “... it is the destruction of that self-will that holds me in isolation from all the rest.” Implicit in this “death” to self, which is the most perfect act of sacrifice, is the most perfect revelation of being, for one no longer sets the absolute source of being from without, but begins to possess it within oneself.
At the very root of being, in the common practice of life in the secret logic of consciousness, without God there is no fellow man for man. In order to be one, in order to exist, it is necessary that I do not rest alone; I have need of all the others. What is necessary, then, is to capture within myself the source of all unity (the divine will) and transmit the truth of its intimate action.
It is important to understand that a metaphysical priority of communion with absolute being does not imply a temporal or psychological priority of divine love over human love. Blondel repeatedly insists that the true nature of the option need not be explicit, but is necessarily implicit in the living reality of every free human action. Hence, to live “metaphysically” is not contingent upon the prior conceptual resolution of any metaphysical problem. To resolve the problem of unity by love in any one of its three possible aspects: love of God, of self, or of neighbor, involves a vital solution of that problem for all three.
Yet, the problem and its resolution are ordinarily posed within the context of love of neighbor. “Without that love which is active within the members of humanity there is no God for man; he who does not love his neighbor has no life in him.” Therefore, in any human encounter where a genuine interpersonal bond of mutual love is factually established, there is necessarily an implicit resolution of the option in favor of the divine will: “If any man loves he knows God, because God is love.” Without an implicit commitment to God there is merely a semblance of true love, which will prove to be ultimately unfounded and deceiving. A true act of love involves death to self, which in fact is a positive opening of the spirit to the action of the absolute. It thus goes well beyond an attitude of strict justice, which considers only the impersonal character of the other in his abstract dignity as a member of human society. An act of love, in order to be truly such, must be directed to the other as unique and as end in him or herself. “Charity is always universal and always attached to what is unique.”
Conclusion
In Blondel’s dialectic of life, existence and truth continually draw closer together without ever becoming entirely the same. The dialectic in life of the singular existence and universal truth is thus posited as a constant movement towards realizing in the human the immanent and necessary connection between essence and existence, nature and liberty, constructive project and transcendent end. Yet throughout the course of their dialectical development, existence always remains to some extent inward and solitary, while truth remains to some extent abstract and exterior.
In the Hegelian dialectic the mediation of singular existence and universal truth could take place only in the abstract dimension of absolute spirit. It occurs independently of the existential freedom and moral commitment of man as a person. The individual is merely a means that reason uses to obtain its objectives. In contrast, it is Blondel’s conviction that such a mediation of existence with truth can be only the result of man’s free moral commitment and that its ultimate condition of possibility may depend on union with one man, Christ, who is “the way, the truth and the life.”
jjmcneill@aol.com
Friday, December 24, 2010
The Genesis of the idea of God understood as our Human Destiny
John McNeill Spiritual Transformation
In my three areas of expertise; spirituality, psychotherapy and theology, I am aware of a desperate need for spiritual transformation in the culture, the nation, and the Church. I will do my best to make a contribution to that need from my perspective as an older man with many years of involved experience.
I though it appropriate to repeat this blog which I feel is most appropriate to our understand of the Mystery of the Incarnation on Christmas day.
The Genesis of the Idea of God as Human Destiny
Blondel believed that he could discover all the a priori aspirations implicit in the human will by means of his dialectic. Most fundamental is the drive out of isolation and alienation into unity with ourselves, the world, our fellow man and God. This is the central message of Christian revelation concerning human destiny: “May they be one, Father, even as you and I are one.” Accepting this word not merely as revealed but as revealing, Blondel traces the stages in the dialectical process by which man searches for that oneness.
The appearance of human self-consciousness in the evolutionary process marks man and woman's awareness of moral consciousness as a thrust toward unity: humans are morally obliged from within to act as if humanity were one. Unlike Kant who was tempted to see moral truth as an end-in-itself and the other person as a means to that end. Blondel maintains that, like all truth, moral truth does not exist for its own sake. It is only by acting in accordance with the principles and values of moral truth that humans can achieve the unity of humanity in a human community.
Beyond the felt unity with other humans in the concept of humanity and the moral unity in the order of intention, the will strives for a unity with all humanity on the level of existence itself. The will as willing cannot be one with the will as willed until this existential unity is a reality. For Blondel, the ideal of existential unity among all humankind is the primary example of the category of human commitments that remain simultaneously necessary and impossible. In so far as these commitments are necessary, they represent a possible immanent dimension of the human’s existential reality: in so far as they are impossible for humans to achieve by their unaided freedom, they indicate the presence within humans of a power that transcends them. This is the key experience that leads humans to form an idea of God as the immanent transcendent. Having its genetic origin in the experience of the necessary and the impossible, it is a “projecting out of the unused and unusable potentialities of the human will” In order to find the perfect identity of themselves with themselves in their voluntary action, humans must look within theimselves until they reache the point where that which is of themselves ceases, yet something remains.
What humans can know of God is precisely “that surplus of interior life which demands its employment.” Blondel is well aware that the possibility of existential unity among humankind, to which all humans necessarily aspires, would remain forever an abstraction unless humans could realize an existential unity with God, A human’s knowledge of God consists fundamentally in an immanent awareness that “at the root of his or her ego there is an ego which is no longer his or hers.” Yet it is only in the act of freely consenting to such an intimate presence that the actual consciousness of it as an immanent dimension of human’s existential reality is achieved: Only by free consent does that presence pass from abstract possibility into experienced actuality. According to Blondel, this transformation is the ultimate meaning of human freedom and the ultimate dimension of our moral life; it is grounded in the power to make God exist or not exist in our lives by reason of our own freely chosen existence.
Although the idea of union with God is a necessary idea, it is seldom brought to the degree of clarity and precision that it achieves at the end of a dialectical presentation. No matter under what form it is presented in consciousness, the thought of God as absolute is produced in us by a determinism which imposes that idea from within as a necessary result of the dynamism of our interior life. In turn, it produces a necessary influence on the organization of our conduct.
What emerges necessarily in consciousness and is inevitably efficacious in practice is not the concept of a speculative truth to be defined, but the perhaps vague yet certain. and imperious conviction of a destiny and ulterior end to be attained. The vital source of this sense of destiny is the presence within us of the absolute person. No matter under what form this presence reveals itself to consciousness, he it clear or confused, accepted or hidden, admitted or unnamed, the living truth of that presence has an inevitable efficacy. For this reason Blondel calls human action a sort of théergie: We cannot posit a free human action without cooperating with the absolute subject within us thereby causing him to cooperate with us. To inset the character of transcendence into our lives it is not necessary to perceive its
presence or directly recognize the action of the absolute in us and on us. Indeed, even our denial of its presence and action displaces only the object of affirmation; the reality of human action is not affected by this superficial play of words.
Since the idea of the absolute is necessarily projected as our destiny, it is equally necessary to sense the need actually to achieve it through the combined forces of our thought and action. Human action has the inevitable ambition to realize in itself the idea of perfection: “We cannot know God without willing in some way to become God." Just as the idea of God represents a paradoxical reality, at once immanent in us and yet transcendent, so too the choice and the action which necessarily follow upon this idea exhibit their paradoxical nature. Our ground for affirming God as absolute subject is the fact that He is conceived as that which we can neither be by ourselves nor accomplish solely by the force of our free action. Yet we have neither being, will nor action except on condition of freely willing and somehow becoming one with the divine who is the source and being of our own will and action. Hence, the only way to become one with ourselves is to admit another being within us by substituting another will for our own: “May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
It is impossible to enter really into contact with another being, in fact, it is impossible to enter into contact with oneself without passing through the Uniquely Necessary who must become our unique will.
Rejection of the absolute by a human is nothing more than an attempt at avaricious self-possession which isolates us in a false subjectivity and inferiority. This results in a world of solitude and hostility, of rejection and discontinuity, without meeting or true presence, namely the modern world. Release from the prison of selfhood comes by communicating with the transcendent who as immanent in oneself is bridge to the other. “One cannot be for oneself or for another without being for Him first of all.” One cannot communicate with anyone unless it be with and by God.
Blondel sees in the act whereby humans achieves living communication with God an active dialectical resolution of the metaphysical problem of the one and many. It is love’s death to self and sacrifice of self that resolves this problem existentially: “Sacrifice is the solution to the metaphysical problem by an experimental method.” The act by which humans chooses to supplant their will by the Will of God is a negation both of ego and of the false appearances of being in it: “... it is the destruction of that self-will that holds me in isolation from all the rest.” Implicit in this “death” to self, which is the most perfect act of sacrifice, is the most perfect revelation of being, for one no longer sets the absolute source of being from without, but begins to possess it within oneself.
At the very root of being, in the common practice of life in the secret logic of consciousness, without God there is no fellow man for man. In order to be one, in order to exist, it is necessary that I do not rest alone; I have need of all the others. What is necessary, then, is to capture within myself the source of all unity (the divine will) and transmit the truth of its intimate action.
It is important to understand that a metaphysical priority of communion with absolute being does not imply a temporal or psychological priority of divine love over human love. Blondel repeatedly insists that the true nature of the option need not be explicit, but is necessarily implicit in the living reality of every free human action. Hence, to live “metaphysically” is not contingent upon the prior conceptual resolution of any metaphysical problem. To resolve the problem of unity by love in any one of its three possible aspects: love of God, of self, or of neighbor, involves a vital solution of that problem for all three.
Yet, the problem and its resolution are ordinarily posed within the context of love of neighbor. “Without that love which is active within the members of humanity there is no God for man; he who does not love his neighbor has no life in him.” Therefore, in any human encounter where a genuine interpersonal bond of mutual love is factually established, there is necessarily an implicit resolution of the option in favor of the divine will: “If any man loves he knows God, because God is love.” Without an implicit commitment to God there is merely a semblance of true love, which will prove to be ultimately unfounded and deceiving. A true act of love involves death to self, which in fact is a positive opening of the spirit to the action of the absolute. It thus goes well beyond an attitude of strict justice, which considers only the impersonal character of the other in his abstract dignity as a member of human society. An act of love, in order to be truly such, must be directed to the other as unique and as end in him or herself. “Charity is always universal and always attached to what is unique.”
Conclusion
In Blondel’s dialectic of life, existence and truth continually draw closer together without ever becoming entirely the same. The dialectic in life of the singular existence and universal truth is thus posited as a constant movement towards realizing in man the immanent and necessary connection between essence and existence, nature and liberty, constructive project and transcendent end. Yet throughout the course of their dialectical development, existence always remains to some extent inward and solitary, while truth remains to some extent abstract and exterior.
In the Hegelian dialectic the mediation of singular existence and universal truth could take place only in the abstract dimension of absolute spirit. It occurs independently of the existential freedom and moral commitment of man as a person. The individual is merely a means that reason uses to obtain its objectives. In contrast, it is Blondel’s conviction that such a mediation of existence with truth can be only the result of man’s free moral commitment and that its ultimate condition of possibility may depend on union with one man, Christ, who is “the way, the truth and the life
John J McNeill
jjmcneill@aol.com
In my three areas of expertise; spirituality, psychotherapy and theology, I am aware of a desperate need for spiritual transformation in the culture, the nation, and the Church. I will do my best to make a contribution to that need from my perspective as an older man with many years of involved experience.
I though it appropriate to repeat this blog which I feel is most appropriate to our understand of the Mystery of the Incarnation on Christmas day.
The Genesis of the Idea of God as Human Destiny
Blondel believed that he could discover all the a priori aspirations implicit in the human will by means of his dialectic. Most fundamental is the drive out of isolation and alienation into unity with ourselves, the world, our fellow man and God. This is the central message of Christian revelation concerning human destiny: “May they be one, Father, even as you and I are one.” Accepting this word not merely as revealed but as revealing, Blondel traces the stages in the dialectical process by which man searches for that oneness.
The appearance of human self-consciousness in the evolutionary process marks man and woman's awareness of moral consciousness as a thrust toward unity: humans are morally obliged from within to act as if humanity were one. Unlike Kant who was tempted to see moral truth as an end-in-itself and the other person as a means to that end. Blondel maintains that, like all truth, moral truth does not exist for its own sake. It is only by acting in accordance with the principles and values of moral truth that humans can achieve the unity of humanity in a human community.
Beyond the felt unity with other humans in the concept of humanity and the moral unity in the order of intention, the will strives for a unity with all humanity on the level of existence itself. The will as willing cannot be one with the will as willed until this existential unity is a reality. For Blondel, the ideal of existential unity among all humankind is the primary example of the category of human commitments that remain simultaneously necessary and impossible. In so far as these commitments are necessary, they represent a possible immanent dimension of the human’s existential reality: in so far as they are impossible for humans to achieve by their unaided freedom, they indicate the presence within humans of a power that transcends them. This is the key experience that leads humans to form an idea of God as the immanent transcendent. Having its genetic origin in the experience of the necessary and the impossible, it is a “projecting out of the unused and unusable potentialities of the human will” In order to find the perfect identity of themselves with themselves in their voluntary action, humans must look within theimselves until they reache the point where that which is of themselves ceases, yet something remains.
What humans can know of God is precisely “that surplus of interior life which demands its employment.” Blondel is well aware that the possibility of existential unity among humankind, to which all humans necessarily aspires, would remain forever an abstraction unless humans could realize an existential unity with God, A human’s knowledge of God consists fundamentally in an immanent awareness that “at the root of his or her ego there is an ego which is no longer his or hers.” Yet it is only in the act of freely consenting to such an intimate presence that the actual consciousness of it as an immanent dimension of human’s existential reality is achieved: Only by free consent does that presence pass from abstract possibility into experienced actuality. According to Blondel, this transformation is the ultimate meaning of human freedom and the ultimate dimension of our moral life; it is grounded in the power to make God exist or not exist in our lives by reason of our own freely chosen existence.
Although the idea of union with God is a necessary idea, it is seldom brought to the degree of clarity and precision that it achieves at the end of a dialectical presentation. No matter under what form it is presented in consciousness, the thought of God as absolute is produced in us by a determinism which imposes that idea from within as a necessary result of the dynamism of our interior life. In turn, it produces a necessary influence on the organization of our conduct.
What emerges necessarily in consciousness and is inevitably efficacious in practice is not the concept of a speculative truth to be defined, but the perhaps vague yet certain. and imperious conviction of a destiny and ulterior end to be attained. The vital source of this sense of destiny is the presence within us of the absolute person. No matter under what form this presence reveals itself to consciousness, he it clear or confused, accepted or hidden, admitted or unnamed, the living truth of that presence has an inevitable efficacy. For this reason Blondel calls human action a sort of théergie: We cannot posit a free human action without cooperating with the absolute subject within us thereby causing him to cooperate with us. To inset the character of transcendence into our lives it is not necessary to perceive its
presence or directly recognize the action of the absolute in us and on us. Indeed, even our denial of its presence and action displaces only the object of affirmation; the reality of human action is not affected by this superficial play of words.
Since the idea of the absolute is necessarily projected as our destiny, it is equally necessary to sense the need actually to achieve it through the combined forces of our thought and action. Human action has the inevitable ambition to realize in itself the idea of perfection: “We cannot know God without willing in some way to become God." Just as the idea of God represents a paradoxical reality, at once immanent in us and yet transcendent, so too the choice and the action which necessarily follow upon this idea exhibit their paradoxical nature. Our ground for affirming God as absolute subject is the fact that He is conceived as that which we can neither be by ourselves nor accomplish solely by the force of our free action. Yet we have neither being, will nor action except on condition of freely willing and somehow becoming one with the divine who is the source and being of our own will and action. Hence, the only way to become one with ourselves is to admit another being within us by substituting another will for our own: “May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
It is impossible to enter really into contact with another being, in fact, it is impossible to enter into contact with oneself without passing through the Uniquely Necessary who must become our unique will.
Rejection of the absolute by a human is nothing more than an attempt at avaricious self-possession which isolates us in a false subjectivity and inferiority. This results in a world of solitude and hostility, of rejection and discontinuity, without meeting or true presence, namely the modern world. Release from the prison of selfhood comes by communicating with the transcendent who as immanent in oneself is bridge to the other. “One cannot be for oneself or for another without being for Him first of all.” One cannot communicate with anyone unless it be with and by God.
Blondel sees in the act whereby humans achieves living communication with God an active dialectical resolution of the metaphysical problem of the one and many. It is love’s death to self and sacrifice of self that resolves this problem existentially: “Sacrifice is the solution to the metaphysical problem by an experimental method.” The act by which humans chooses to supplant their will by the Will of God is a negation both of ego and of the false appearances of being in it: “... it is the destruction of that self-will that holds me in isolation from all the rest.” Implicit in this “death” to self, which is the most perfect act of sacrifice, is the most perfect revelation of being, for one no longer sets the absolute source of being from without, but begins to possess it within oneself.
At the very root of being, in the common practice of life in the secret logic of consciousness, without God there is no fellow man for man. In order to be one, in order to exist, it is necessary that I do not rest alone; I have need of all the others. What is necessary, then, is to capture within myself the source of all unity (the divine will) and transmit the truth of its intimate action.
It is important to understand that a metaphysical priority of communion with absolute being does not imply a temporal or psychological priority of divine love over human love. Blondel repeatedly insists that the true nature of the option need not be explicit, but is necessarily implicit in the living reality of every free human action. Hence, to live “metaphysically” is not contingent upon the prior conceptual resolution of any metaphysical problem. To resolve the problem of unity by love in any one of its three possible aspects: love of God, of self, or of neighbor, involves a vital solution of that problem for all three.
Yet, the problem and its resolution are ordinarily posed within the context of love of neighbor. “Without that love which is active within the members of humanity there is no God for man; he who does not love his neighbor has no life in him.” Therefore, in any human encounter where a genuine interpersonal bond of mutual love is factually established, there is necessarily an implicit resolution of the option in favor of the divine will: “If any man loves he knows God, because God is love.” Without an implicit commitment to God there is merely a semblance of true love, which will prove to be ultimately unfounded and deceiving. A true act of love involves death to self, which in fact is a positive opening of the spirit to the action of the absolute. It thus goes well beyond an attitude of strict justice, which considers only the impersonal character of the other in his abstract dignity as a member of human society. An act of love, in order to be truly such, must be directed to the other as unique and as end in him or herself. “Charity is always universal and always attached to what is unique.”
Conclusion
In Blondel’s dialectic of life, existence and truth continually draw closer together without ever becoming entirely the same. The dialectic in life of the singular existence and universal truth is thus posited as a constant movement towards realizing in man the immanent and necessary connection between essence and existence, nature and liberty, constructive project and transcendent end. Yet throughout the course of their dialectical development, existence always remains to some extent inward and solitary, while truth remains to some extent abstract and exterior.
In the Hegelian dialectic the mediation of singular existence and universal truth could take place only in the abstract dimension of absolute spirit. It occurs independently of the existential freedom and moral commitment of man as a person. The individual is merely a means that reason uses to obtain its objectives. In contrast, it is Blondel’s conviction that such a mediation of existence with truth can be only the result of man’s free moral commitment and that its ultimate condition of possibility may depend on union with one man, Christ, who is “the way, the truth and the life
John J McNeill
jjmcneill@aol.com
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Mature Spirituality
An Understanding of Adult Spiritual Growth Based on the Insights of Maurice Blondel
Introduction
I will never forget the joy and excitement I felt the first time I read the philosophical thought of Maurice Blondel, the brilliant French existentialist philosopher who wrote at the turn of the 20ieth century. His most famous work was called L’Action, his doctorate thesis at the Sorbonne presented in 1893 and subtitled; Essai d’une Critique de la Vie d’une Science de la Pratique. I was a student of theology at Woodstock College, the Jesuit school of theology in Maryland. I hungered for a philosophical framework which I could use to integrate my religious faith with the deep insights into the human person coming from the human sciences, especially psychology. At the same time, I was deeply aware of the inadequacies of traditional Thomistic philosophy and the scholastic school of objective realism to provide that framework and convey the truth of Christian revelation to today’s believers. I found in Blondel a kindred spirit whose philosophical thought remains an original and profound response to the problems and the needs of Christian believers in our times.
A devoutly religious man, Blondel sought out in prayer what God’s will was for him. He considered entering the priesthood, but his religious counselor advised him to remain a lay person because only as a lay person would he have the freedom to rethink the philosophical basis of Christian belief. This advice proved prophetic.
Blondel defined philosophy as “life itself insofar it attempts to achieve a clear reflexive consciousness of itself and gives direction to its action”. I appreciate the holistic tone of that definition; philosophy has as its object the whole of human life and not just language or thought in abstraction from life. Blondel discovered the central insight of his philosophy while reflecting on this line in scripture: “He or she who does the truth comes into the light! “.
Blondel saw human life as a continual dialectic between thought and action. He liked to compare the human intellect to the headlights of a car moving down the highway. Those headlights can illuminate our way only as far as the next curve in the road. The car must move forward to that curve before the headlights can illuminate what lies around that curve. In a similar way, each of us must act according to our present understanding in order to arrive at the fullness of light or wisdom. There is a kind of subjective experiential knowing that comes from human choice and action and cannot be achieved in any other way.
There is a dynamic in the human spirit, Blondel believed, a striving for fulfillment. That fulfillment can be achieved not by thought alone but also by action. Ultimate truth is not just a question of the conformity of our intellect with what lies outside ourselves. Ultimate truth involves the conformity of our actions with the full potential inside us. That potential is for an identity of our human will with the divine will. We are made in the image and likeness of God. Humans are created capax Dei. As long as we have not achieved that identity there is a felt privation. a longing, a hunger and thirst, to become one with God. ‘Our God”, Blondel wrote, “dwells within us and the only way to become one with that God is to become one with our authentic self”.
This insight lies at the heart of every effort at human liberation. For example, women derive a unique kind of knowledge of themselves from their subjective experience of themselves in action as women. Lesbians and gays have a subjective source of knowledge of what it means to be gay or lesbian that comes from their immediate experience of themselves in their lives and actions and which is not attainable in any other way. The only way we who do not share that subjective experience can obtain that knowledge is to listen carefully and respectfully to those who o have that subjective experience and can articulate its meaning. That is why dialogue is at the heart of all true growth in knowledge.
The central question Blondel posed in L’Action is: What is the ultimate meaning of human life. Blondel makes the observation that humans cannot choose to cease being; we are here, like it or not, for eternity.
Yes or no, has life a meaning and do humans have a destiny….This appearance of being that is at work in me, these actions fleeting as a shadow, I understand that they carry within them the weight of an eternal responsibility, and even at the cost of blood I cannot purchase nothingness; because for me it can no longer be. I find myself condemned to life, condemned to death, condemned to eternity. Why and by what right, since I have neither known nor willed it?
Having posed the question of human destiny, Blondel makes the point that freedom is the very essence of the human subject and the essential condition for the possibility of existence. Here can be no human destiny, unless that destiny can be achieved through human freedom. Blondel makes the passionate assertion that each of us must be able to choose life, choose death, choose eternity, otherwise the very existence of the human is an illusion. “There is no being where there is only constraint. If I am not that which I will to be, I am not. At the very core of my being there is a will and a love of being, or there is nothing. If human freedom is real, it is necessary that one have at present or at least in the future a knowledge and a will sufficient never to suffer any tyranny whatsoever,”
Blonel’s understanding of human freedom differs radically from the classical understanding of objective realism. The scholastics believed that humans were substantially determined by their essence and only free on the superficial level of actions. Blondel believed that for a human to be is to act, and in acting, to freely mold his or her reality. Humans are not totally or authentically human unless in the depths of their being and action they seize themselves as free source, action itself, a constant self positing.
Human freedom is understood as a radical self-positing of our own reality. We must exist at every moment as a consequence of our freedom. If in the depths of our own subjective being we meet with any determinism whatsoever --- biological, psychological, social, or even a determinism springing from the divine will, a determinism which lies radically outside the sphere of our free ability to determine ourselves --then we would be forced to accept the conclusion that the existence of the individual human person as such is an illusion.
This insight into the radical nature of human freedom led Blondel to accept the principle of immanence as the fundamental methodological principle governing his philosophy of action. He formulated that principle in these words: “Nothing can impose itself on a human; nothing can demand the assent of her or his intellect or the consent of her or his will which does not find its source from within ourselves.”
jjmcneill@aol.com
Introduction
I will never forget the joy and excitement I felt the first time I read the philosophical thought of Maurice Blondel, the brilliant French existentialist philosopher who wrote at the turn of the 20ieth century. His most famous work was called L’Action, his doctorate thesis at the Sorbonne presented in 1893 and subtitled; Essai d’une Critique de la Vie d’une Science de la Pratique. I was a student of theology at Woodstock College, the Jesuit school of theology in Maryland. I hungered for a philosophical framework which I could use to integrate my religious faith with the deep insights into the human person coming from the human sciences, especially psychology. At the same time, I was deeply aware of the inadequacies of traditional Thomistic philosophy and the scholastic school of objective realism to provide that framework and convey the truth of Christian revelation to today’s believers. I found in Blondel a kindred spirit whose philosophical thought remains an original and profound response to the problems and the needs of Christian believers in our times.
A devoutly religious man, Blondel sought out in prayer what God’s will was for him. He considered entering the priesthood, but his religious counselor advised him to remain a lay person because only as a lay person would he have the freedom to rethink the philosophical basis of Christian belief. This advice proved prophetic.
Blondel defined philosophy as “life itself insofar it attempts to achieve a clear reflexive consciousness of itself and gives direction to its action”. I appreciate the holistic tone of that definition; philosophy has as its object the whole of human life and not just language or thought in abstraction from life. Blondel discovered the central insight of his philosophy while reflecting on this line in scripture: “He or she who does the truth comes into the light! “.
Blondel saw human life as a continual dialectic between thought and action. He liked to compare the human intellect to the headlights of a car moving down the highway. Those headlights can illuminate our way only as far as the next curve in the road. The car must move forward to that curve before the headlights can illuminate what lies around that curve. In a similar way, each of us must act according to our present understanding in order to arrive at the fullness of light or wisdom. There is a kind of subjective experiential knowing that comes from human choice and action and cannot be achieved in any other way.
There is a dynamic in the human spirit, Blondel believed, a striving for fulfillment. That fulfillment can be achieved not by thought alone but also by action. Ultimate truth is not just a question of the conformity of our intellect with what lies outside ourselves. Ultimate truth involves the conformity of our actions with the full potential inside us. That potential is for an identity of our human will with the divine will. We are made in the image and likeness of God. Humans are created capax Dei. As long as we have not achieved that identity there is a felt privation. a longing, a hunger and thirst, to become one with God. ‘Our God”, Blondel wrote, “dwells within us and the only way to become one with that God is to become one with our authentic self”.
This insight lies at the heart of every effort at human liberation. For example, women derive a unique kind of knowledge of themselves from their subjective experience of themselves in action as women. Lesbians and gays have a subjective source of knowledge of what it means to be gay or lesbian that comes from their immediate experience of themselves in their lives and actions and which is not attainable in any other way. The only way we who do not share that subjective experience can obtain that knowledge is to listen carefully and respectfully to those who o have that subjective experience and can articulate its meaning. That is why dialogue is at the heart of all true growth in knowledge.
The central question Blondel posed in L’Action is: What is the ultimate meaning of human life. Blondel makes the observation that humans cannot choose to cease being; we are here, like it or not, for eternity.
Yes or no, has life a meaning and do humans have a destiny….This appearance of being that is at work in me, these actions fleeting as a shadow, I understand that they carry within them the weight of an eternal responsibility, and even at the cost of blood I cannot purchase nothingness; because for me it can no longer be. I find myself condemned to life, condemned to death, condemned to eternity. Why and by what right, since I have neither known nor willed it?
Having posed the question of human destiny, Blondel makes the point that freedom is the very essence of the human subject and the essential condition for the possibility of existence. Here can be no human destiny, unless that destiny can be achieved through human freedom. Blondel makes the passionate assertion that each of us must be able to choose life, choose death, choose eternity, otherwise the very existence of the human is an illusion. “There is no being where there is only constraint. If I am not that which I will to be, I am not. At the very core of my being there is a will and a love of being, or there is nothing. If human freedom is real, it is necessary that one have at present or at least in the future a knowledge and a will sufficient never to suffer any tyranny whatsoever,”
Blonel’s understanding of human freedom differs radically from the classical understanding of objective realism. The scholastics believed that humans were substantially determined by their essence and only free on the superficial level of actions. Blondel believed that for a human to be is to act, and in acting, to freely mold his or her reality. Humans are not totally or authentically human unless in the depths of their being and action they seize themselves as free source, action itself, a constant self positing.
Human freedom is understood as a radical self-positing of our own reality. We must exist at every moment as a consequence of our freedom. If in the depths of our own subjective being we meet with any determinism whatsoever --- biological, psychological, social, or even a determinism springing from the divine will, a determinism which lies radically outside the sphere of our free ability to determine ourselves --then we would be forced to accept the conclusion that the existence of the individual human person as such is an illusion.
This insight into the radical nature of human freedom led Blondel to accept the principle of immanence as the fundamental methodological principle governing his philosophy of action. He formulated that principle in these words: “Nothing can impose itself on a human; nothing can demand the assent of her or his intellect or the consent of her or his will which does not find its source from within ourselves.”
jjmcneill@aol.com
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Trailer to my documentary: Taking a Chance on God
At last the website for the trailer to my documentary: Taking a Chance on God is now available at:
http://www.takingachanceongod.com/
Please copy this URL and paste it into your browser.
http://www.takingachanceongod.com/
Please copy this URL and paste it into your browser.
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