Maurice Blondel's Solution
3. These pages were already written before the appearance of Mr. Maurice Blondel's book, Le Probleme de la Philosophie Catholique, in which he devotes a few chapters to Cardinal Dechamp's apologetical work.{6} Let me say at once that to the extent that Mr. Blondel affirms the value of Dechamp's apologetics he readily gains my assent.{7} The basic theme of this apologetics is, in my view, quite true, and I believe that it accounts for some primary realities, as well as for the common experience of souls. It can be fully squared, it seems to me, with the theological analyses of Fathers Gardeil{8} and Garrigou-Lagrange,{9} which are of such crucial importance, particularly so far as the essentially supernatural character of the formal motive of faith and the nature of apologetics itself{10} are concerned. Apologetics, released from a particular academic rationalism, is thus genuinely restored, and at the same time enriched by an invaluable broadening of its speculative horizons and its practical methods. At most we might observe in regard to Dechamp's work (which, with good reason, remained more apostolic than systematic) that if the "method of Providence" actually excels the "method of the Schools," it is precisely on condition that it is allowed its full play. In my eye -- a pessimistic eye -- this method would be more endangered perhaps if it were taught in the Schools than if it were ignored by them. . . .
How could we fail to applaud Mr. Blondel's endeavors against the separated philosophy? Rightly he states that this conception of a separated philosophy is completely contrary to the spirit of Thomism. And truth to tell, the temptation which he denounced from his earliest works all too often finds free access to men's minds. (By this temptation -- which Christians themselves breathe in with the atmosphere of the times -- I understand that inclination to cut off reason in its own proper activities from higher sources of light, and, on the pretext that his object is purely natural, to look upon the philosopher himself as dwelling in a condition of pure nature; and again, on the pretext that his form of wisdom has no other inner criterion than reason alone, to see him as identified with Reason in itself, and as self-exempt from all need of natural or supernatural aids in the successful pursuit of his undertaking.)
In this light Mr. Blondel's philosophy assumes the proportions of a serious warning. It is with a certain melancholy that we find that truths which have been misunderstood and neglected in practice by so many have in the end wreaked their revenge by becoming embodied in a system in which the absence of keys to certain indispensable truths is all too keenly sensed. For in fine, no matter how many pains Mr. Blondel takes to clarify and refine his thought, one cannot forget that in his system of thought an insistence on our obligation not to separate or disconnect things from each other at times jeopardizes our corresponding obligation to make necessary distinctions between them. Despite the most conscientious attempts to discriminate, to reconcile differences, and to polish concepts he is still at great pains to transfer to the heart of a philosophy what holds true of an apologetics. (To achieve its purpose, apologetics, by its own nature and essence presupposes the solicitations of grace and the operations of the heart and will on the part of the one who hears, and the light of faith already possessed on the part of the one who speaks;{11} whereas philosophy by its nature and essence exacts neither faith as in the one nor the movements of grace and the heart as in the other, but only reason in the one who searches.)
There is, after all, a considerable difference between affirming the insufficiency of philosophy and constructing a philosophy of insufficiency. Mr. Blondel is convinced that if philosophy is to take cognizance of its limitations it must become cognizant also of the in adequacy of concepts and of "notional knowledge" for reaching reality. This amounts either to defining notional knowledge as using notions in a way that does violence to their nature, or else to disparaging the normal use of the proper instruments of intellectual cognition. Is it not highly remarkable, moreover, that in his last book Blondel should manifest so strong an aversion (in this he is almost at one with Mr. Bréhier) toward those who regard the inclusion of new, objective notions springing from the Judaeo-Christian revelation as one of the marks of Christian philosophy? This recognition of objective notions hitherto unknown or obscured by doubt, of truths which unaided reason is "physically" capable but "morally" incapable of grasping, and gathering together, in the purity of their meaning is not the only nor the chief attribute of Christian philosophy; but it is the most obvious and merits first consideration. And as true as it is that Christian concepts become lifeless forms wherever a Christian inspiration is lacking, they do not cease even as such to stay on as dead witnesses to a gift once received from above.
As a matter of fact, Mr. Blondel has misconstrued Mr. Gilson's{12} position on a number of points. His preference for dwelling on differences has prevented him from seeing that this position (which also is Mr. Jolivet's{13} and my own{14}) bids fair to do justice to an important part of his claims; I would say (and no doubt it is small comfort to be vindicated by a justification of this sort), to all that is valid in them. On the other hand, he doubtless had hardly counted on the surprising shift on the part of those rationalists{15} who greeted, if not with definite favor at least with some sympathy, the conception of a philosophy which would be "catholic" (in its positive development and especially in its awareness of its own incompleteness) in so spontaneous a fashion that it would in no wise be beholden to revelation for "notional" data. Frankly, I find this conception chimerical from a historical standpoint, and for reasons expounded throughout this study doctrinally inadmissible.
{6} In these chapters Mr. Blondel avails himself of his friend Canon Mallet's studies on Dechamp, and cites lengthy passages therefrom.
{7} This apologetics, as we know, lays stress on the inter-relation between these two facts: our fallen but virtually redeemed nature's vocation to a revelation of which it is unaware, and the presence of the Church which propounds this revelation, tanquam potestatem habens, and which, according to Bossuet's expression, is itself a "continuous miracle."
{8} La Crédibilité et l'Apologetique.
{9} De Revelatione.
{11} Cf. R. Garrigou-Lagrange, De Revelatione, Prolegomena, Cap. 2 and 3.
{12} This position, we must bear in mind, differs appreciably from that which Mr. Gilson adopted in some of his earliest works.
{13} Cf. Régis Jolivet, Essai sur les rapports entre la pensée grecque et la pensée chrtétienne, Paris, Vrin, 1931.
{14} Cf. De la Sagesse Augustinienne (Revue de Philosophie, JulyDecember 1930; reproduced in Les Degrés du Savoir); Discours pour l'inauguration du monument au Cardinal Mercier, a Louvain (Inauguration du monument érigé au Cardinal Mercier, pp. 44-52. Louvain, 1931); The Dream of Descartes, New York Philosophical Library; Les Degrés du Savoir, Paris, Desclée De Brouwer, 1932.
{15} Cf. Ramon Fernandez, Religion et Philosophie, Nouvelle Revue Française, May 1, 1932.