Blondel and the Philosophy of Life

Abstract

The paper discusses the possibility and the statute of the philosophy of life, analysing the problematic relation between conscience and life. This theme, indirectly approached through the theoretical contribution of Blondel, thus focuses on one of the main theoretical topics of French philosophy, shared by Personalism, Existentialism, and Phenomenology of life. From the considerations contained in Le point de depart de la recherche philosophique about the different kinds of knowledge in relation to the human active dimension (prospection and reflection), Blondel reflects on the moral stake and the epistemological essence of philosophy, by considering the alternative interpretations of the relation between life and thought, questioning the possible adaptation of knowledge to the peculiar dynamism of existence. So, the gnosiological issue debouches into a conception of existential auto-conformation, and it shifts the problem of the relation between conscience and life, essential in the light of a definition of the philosophy of life, to the conditions of a lived adequation to truth, thus justifying the affirmation by Jean Lacroix that all “philosophers of existence” implicitly have been Blondel’s continuers.