HAYONG, Bernardus Subang (2007) The Necessity To Surpass Human Natural Order To Attain To Religious Promise In L’action 1893 Of Maurice Blondel. Masters thesis, PONTIFICAL GREGORIAN UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY.
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Abstract
What is the secret power behind human actions? A mother maybe waves at her son when he is leaving her for a long time. Two friends maybe embrace, hug and kiss after not seeing one another for along time. The student goes to school everyday, a Christian goes to church every Sunday. Working, thinking, asking, reflecting, etc., are actions that have been around as long as human life. Are they spontaneous actions? Are they habitual actions or do they come from natural appetite, biological tendency, desire or willing? Or is there more to them? The notion of freedom, determination, will, idea, condition, decision and action constitute a personal individuality and functional as the root principal in human action and the understanding of life. According to Anthony Kenny, the description of human feeling and of human willing depend on the description of human action . Human action, thus, expresses and explains what a subject has which regard to condition, feeling, willing, favour, purpose etc. We can guess a man’s motivation, his desire, his intention by analysing his actions. Operari sequitur essere. Stephen L.Brock seeks the relation between physical and voluntary action in St. Thomas’ theory of action. He wants to bring out the general principles which govern human actions and to show that both the distinction and the connection between physical and human actions are the essential elements in the understanding of human actions themselves . Whatever a human does, it has a cause and a télos (sufficient reason). The cause and télos affirm that human act do not originated in a vacuum. The agent or doer never starts from nothing. Human télos highlights consciousness to realize a project. Blondel (1861-1949) in L’Action (1893), studies how “ideas function in the laboratory of life. Like a triangular fashion , ideal relevant to human growth and understanding” . He finds that “subjective initiative” is the starting point . It is a guideline by which a man gives a direction to his growing process of life. Blondel underlines that under the capacity of “subjective initiative”, a man gets a quality of life. The “initiative” said L.Pareyson (1981-1991) is a unique foundation of human consciousness and constitutes the value of the human person . It appears like an option that requires, decision and evaluation. Blondel, as I have drown attention to in this research, underlines the reality of human life as the necessity of action and the individual choice (decision) as the phenomenon of action. Both, the necessary and the phenomenal, the mandatory and the contingent come together .Being aware of his condition of human life as the necessity and phenomenon, man cannot deny an internal conflict; volonté voulante (the willing will) and volonté voulue (the willed will). This internal conflict—infinite of the willing will and finite of the willed will—brings us to reflect on the existential question of Maurice Blondel in his primary philosophical work L’Action 1893: Oui ou non, la vie humaine a-t-elle un sens, et l’homme a-t-il une destine? Yes or no, does human life make sense, and does man have a destiny ? Beginning with this question, the Philosopher from Aix, focuses his investigation on action. This is precisely because it is the only way to bring many things into question, to proceed without relying completely on any presuppositions or predeterminations. In Blondel, human will is a datum of human existence. In scientific experience, the term ‘datum’ is something which arises from one’s curiosity or interest for research. In this sense, the data of a human person consists of volonté voulante and volonté voulue. Blondel distinguishes these aspects between autonomy and heteronomy in co-action. The will and the action, therefore, are profound elements which are special characteristics of a human being. It is interesting to note that, from an internal conflict of volonté voulante and volonté voulue and the striving always to go forward, Blondel wants to examine the insufficiency of the phenomenon of human action, and insists on the need to go beyond the human natural order. Blondel admits that the investigation of will is important, it is “inevitably technical” but necessary for “the continuity of our thought” and “useful to offer an approximate equivalent of it” . Philosophy of action in Blondel manifests a human person in a peculiar context of existence. “I act but without even knowing what action is, without having wished to live, without knowing exactly either who I am or even if I am” . For Blondel, this is an “inevitable problem and man resolves it inevitably and this solution, true or false, but voluntary at the same time as necessary, each one bears it in his action”. That is why we must study action , said Blondel. In action the very meaning of the word and the richness of its contents unfold little by little. But, the peculiarity of human existence is manifested also in a person’s decisive option after examining all the natural order. This decisive option animates human action, including his conditional limitation. Action as a project of a human to be oneself (Ganzseinkönnen of Heidegger, salvation in Christian language) demands a principle logic of morality, before making a decision and its continuation in action. In other words, it must be coherent (a non-contradictory principle) between our idea, reasoning and reality (of action). The decisive option will be a peculiar characteristic of the human, and it gives arise to a great consciousness leading into humanness in his activity. Decisive option and action are the processes of the human itinerary till a person reaches the point of “one necessary”. Relating to this itinerary, it is possible and necessary to speak of a moral act (moral logic) to realize the essential purpose. One of the processes of this itinerary is decisive option in front of the “Unique Necessary” and then for religious practice as noted by Blondel in the fourth and fifth parts of L’Action, 1893. As one of the modern Christian philosophers, Blondel is an authority on Catholic religious practices, ecclesiastic traditions and dogmas. Every religious practice in Blondel’s sight expresses a transcendence, divine will, metaphysical desire, to be more than one’s being, and finally to reaffirm an absolute other, l’Unique Nécessaire. In the light of apologetic philosophy and of his logic of action, I would like to find solutions to the following problems: 1. How can religion as an option (and dogma and its practice) be integrated with volonté voulante and volonté voulue in human life to achieve completeness? Thus to affirm a religious action satisfactorily spanning the distance between the infinite of willing will and the finite of willed will. 2. In what way does religion as an option and its practice help to avoid an impression that it does not have any ethic sentiment, particularly with respect to the transcendent object or divine person. My argument is: when religion is dominated by heredity and is conditioned by history and human surroundings, and if the ethical sentiment becomes less because of man changing moods, will it collapse? 3. According to Blondel, willing action not only fails to produce entirely what it wills but also produces what it does not will, unforeseen consequences. This fact leads man to a point of realization that a human action implies an “inevitable transcendence”, eventually leading the agent towards Unique Nécessarie (One Necessary), God, who we, however, are not able to figure and dominate by concepts or phenomena. In his analysis, Blondel underlines the importance of consciousness in the whole process of human action to prove the existence of this Unique Nécessarie. But the problem is that human consciousness is a conditional faculty. The consciousness is always a consciousness of (something). So, could we argue an existence of an unconditional absolute starting from the conditional thing? How valid is Blondel’s argument that human being straight to go beyond human natural order until he attains the hope of a religious promise? What is the power of consciousness in the human itinerary to admit of l’Unique Nécssaire? What are the peculiarities of Blondel’s argument in speaking about God? All these questions will be systemized under this topic; DECISIVE OPTION: THE NECESSITY TO SURPASS HUMAN NATURAL ORDER TO ATTAIN TO RELIGIOUS PROMISE IN “L’ACTION” (1893) OF MAURICE BLONDEL. The rational argument to organize this theme derived from the following structure: this work is divided into three chapters, apart from the Introduction and Conclusion. Working on a classic and grand author, such as Blondel,it is necessary to have detailed information about the author’s profile, his works, his philosophy back ground, and about his particular philosophy. These data are basic to comprehending and appreciating Blondel, as we find in the first chapter, Blondel, Catholic Philosopher from Aix. It gives information (general exposition) of Blondel’s profile and philosophy. Starting with the study of human action, which is inspired by Bondel’s first masterpiece, (L’Action, 1893), I want to find the metaphysical and ethical-practice aspects of the phenomenon of human action. Since human activity primarily involves human body, we cannot deny the natural aspect of the human being. Liberty, determinism, human will, and consciousness are constitutive elements of the make-up of human action. Following the immanence method of Blondel, which studies the dialectic of these elements to reflect the development of the phenomenon of human action, I proceed in the second chapter, The Natural Order of Human Being and the Necessity to Surpass It, to describe the progression of the human will to act, from individual action until the awareness of the insufficiency of the human natural order and admission of the necessity of the supernatural order. Following the second chapter one finds the concept of action as fact. However, because of the awareness of desire to surpass it, to go beyond the natural order, we will affirm action as a human destiny, that is why it is a necessity. The necessity insists on the decisive option: between “death of action” or “life of action”. For entering into a decisive option which leads man to admit l’Unique Nécessaire, the consciousness must be completed by reflection, the embarrassing of sacrifice, until there is faith that there is a “something”, the “Unique Necessary”, God, the principle and the final completion of human action. All these topics will be found in the third chapter: Decisive Option to Attain to Religious Promise. To conclude this writing there is an affirmation of all the exposition about Blondel’s philosophy of action. To achieve the aim of this writing, a descriptive, analytic, an interpretative research method has been used. To get a better knowledge of Blondel, I, at first, attended courses and seminars on Blondel, and the secondly studied bibliographical works, including Blondel’s works, and comments on Blondel, and other bibliographies. After having researched the relevant literature, I proceeded to describe, analyze, interpret and reflect on the philosophy of Blondel, and noted how Blondel’s philosophy is interpreted by commentators.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | 100 - Filsafat dan Psikologi > 100 Filsafat > 101 Teori filsafat 100 - Filsafat dan Psikologi > 170 Etika dan filsafat moral > 177 Etika hubungan sosial |
| Divisions: | 75201 Ilmu Filsafat |
| Depositing User: | Mr Bernardus S. Hayong |
| Date Deposited: | 02 Nov 2024 02:39 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Nov 2024 02:39 |
| URI: | http://repository.iftkledalero.ac.id/id/eprint/2577 |
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