Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review“Philosophical Exigencies is a key work in Blondel’s oeuvre, describing in accessible terms for a general readership his mature understanding of the ineluctable interdependence of philosophy and theology as well as the nature-grace relationship. Blondel is always careful to write as a philosopher and never to trespass on theological turf. Yet he writes as a believer, in such a way that he has much to say about what theology is and what it is not, or what it cannot be.” —Cathal Doherty, S.J., author of Maurice Blondel on the Supernatural in Human Action
"Blondel’s rich account of human action and its ability to overcome the institutionalized opposition between the natural and supernatural in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Catholic theology, his original approach to philosophy’s relationship to theology in modernity, and his account of the vital role tradition plays in Christian self-understanding have exerted a decisive influence over modern and contemporary Catholicism." —The Review of Metaphysics
Table of ContentsTranslator's Introduction
Part 1. The Christian Sense
Foreword
Introduction
1. The Historical Aspect: What is Specific About It in Christian Religion
2. The Intellectual Aspect: And the Permanent Unity of the Christian Spirit
3. The Internal Proofs and the Spiritually Vivifying Aspect of Christian Religion
4. Is it Possible to Define the Christian Spirit by Resolving It Back to a Principle of Essential Unity?
5. On the Enabling Method for Acceding to the Domain Where Lives the Indissoluble Unity of the Christian Spirit
6. The Catholic Unity
7. The Inventions of Charity and the Supernatural
8. The Destiny Offered and Imposed on Man
9. Synthetic Exploration and Progressive March Starting from the Generative Idea of Christian Religion
10. Unity of the Work of Creation for the External Glory of God through Supernatural Elevation
11. The Conditions for Realizing the Divine Plan for Surmounting the Difficulty of Uniting Two Incommensurables, the Creator and the Creature: on the one hand, the Invention of Divine Charity to Cross the Abyss through the “Verbum Caro Factum” [the Word Made Flesh] and the Hypostatic Union; on the other hand, the Testing Imposed on Man by the Transformative Union.
12. The Doctrine of the Supernatural Considered under its Triple Metaphysical, Ascetic and Mystical Aspect
13. How the Order of Grace Completes the Natural Order and Forms with it in Us a Life and a Personality that is Truly One
14. The Union of Nature and Supernature in the Practical Order Itself
15. The Philosophical Problem of Sanctity
16. The Proof of Christian Religion through the Idea and the Word itself: of Catholicism
17. The Character of Apostolicity in Catholicism
Conclusion
Part 2. On Assimilation as Fulfillment and Transposition of the Theory of Analogy
Foreword
1. Twofold Traditional Sense of the Word “Assimilation”
2. Getting Beyond the Metaphors That Risk Masking the True Problem
3. Is the Issue One of a Simple Ideal Participation or Do We Have to Conceive of a Truly Vital Participation?
4. Irreplaceable Role of a Laborious Trial of Parturition for the “New Birth”
5. Paradox of the Tribulations of the Just and Scandal of the Sufferings Judged According to Our Human Views
6. Supreme Objection: The Problem of Evil in Its Most Universal Form
7. The Only Appeasing Solution of an Assimilative Theogony by Way of Renunciation and Even Death
8. Exigencies of Divine Charity
Part 3. Reconsideration and Global View: Circumincession of the Problems and Unity of Perspectives
1. Twofold Inspiration of Our Inquiries
2. Objections and Contradictions through Which the Enlightened and Enlightening Way Is Opened
3. How Philosophical Thought Can Resolve the Enigma of Our Indeclinable Destiny
Part 4. Appendix: Clarifications and Admonitions
1. Remarks on Our Method of Implication against the Abuses of Abstractive and Constructive Methods
2. Some Precisions on Terminology
3. On the Relation between the Philosophical Trilogy and the Study on Philosophy and the Christian Spirit
4. Appeasing Clarities for Reason Projected by Revelation
