Philosophy as “education to freedom”. A route from Fichte to Blondel

Abstract

This paper focuses on J.G. Fichte’s and M. Blondel’s “philosophy of freedom”: in their different philosophical perspectives these authors defend the human freedom with important arguments and theorize the philosophy as "education for freedom". The first section of the work discusses the overcoming of determinism (Überwindung des Determinismus) in Fichte’s Theory of Science (Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, 1796-99). According to the German philosopher, the will is the foundation of human thought, and the cognitive act (Bestimmung) is an “act of free will” (Willensbestimmung). The second section analyzes the study and the revival of Fichte’s transcendental philosophy in French culture of nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In particular, we have examined authors as Maine de Biran, Jules Lequier, and especially Maurice Blondel. Even in these prospects freedom is interpreted as the foundation of knowledge, as the condition of possibility of thought and being: «liber sum, ergo cogito, ergo sum». Blondel has theorized a “science of practical” focused on human action. In his first work (L’Action, 1893) he makes an important distinction between the willing will (volonté voulante) and the willed will (volonté voulue): the willing will is the desire for the infinite that is in man, is the transcendence of the ego. Through these considerations on the “metaphysics of subject” Blondel comes to deal with the relationship between philosophy and Christianity, the natural and the supernatural.