Abstract

A central theme which runs throughout the works of Blondel is the tension between the necessity for human persons to be infinite, to become God, to achieve their perfection and the necessity to remain themselves as finite individuals distinct from God. For Blondel, human perfection is necessarily assimilation to God, participation in the life of God. Because it intersects with Christian theology in its interest in beatitude as assimilation to God, Blondel's philosophy represents a valuable resource for the formulation of a Christian anthropology. In essentially the same way that Thomas Aquinas made use of the philosophy of Aristotle, the philosophy of Blondel will be applied to the theological question of ultimate human beatitude, in an attempt to describe the final unity of intelligence, will, and body. ;Chapter one. Misunderstandings of the critique of "intellectualism" in his early works notwithstanding, Blondel's philosophy is not a mindless voluntarism, nor indeed a quiescent rationalism, but an integral intellectualism, in which thinking and acting are interdependent, not in opposition to each other. ;Chapter two. Within this integral intellectualism, matter is not seen as something which exists apart from thought or in opposition to spirit, but as a necessary element of any created being who is not Being. Blondel's insistence on the interdependence of matter and spirit offers at least a partial explanation of the necessity of a bodily resurrection for ultimate human perfection. ;Chapter three. According to Blondel, contemplation is the highest form of action, and the ultimate way in which we possess Being is through an act of the intelligence, which has the capacity to become all things. While the essence of beatitude must be defined as an act of the intelligence, Blondel's conception of intelligence as agnition makes it impossible that the act of the intelligence be separated from the act of the will, for the act of intelligence inevitably has a moral dimension. For Blondel, ultimate human beatitude is necessarily both knowing and loving God at the same time