Maurice Blondel 1861 – 1949

Maurice Blondel was a French Catholic philosopher and the principal architect of the philosophy of action. Long-time professor at Aix-en-Provence, he produced his foundational dissertation L'Action in 1893 and continued to develop and defend its central insight in a long series of works including the late trilogy Thought, Being, and Action. He argued that the dynamism of human willing, fully thought through, opens onto questions that finite resources cannot resolve and so points to the need for the supernatural without compromising the autonomy of philosophical inquiry. His thought shaped the nouvelle theologie and prepared the way for Vatican II.