Father Marie-Dominique Philippe,

philosopher for our times

In a career teaching philosophy which began in 1939 at the Saulchoir, continuing at the University of Fribourg from 1945 to 1982 and subsequently in the houses of formation of the Brothers and Sisters of the Family of Saint John, of which he was the founder, Father Marie-Dominique Philippe consecrated his whole life to the search for truth. His philosophical approach appears within contemporary philosophy somewhat paradoxical: it is at once a return to the sources of Western thought and an incessant confrontation with the questions of modern man. .

Return to the sources

Father Philippe’s desire to work on St Thomas’s own Greek sources arose as he found himself faced with a scholastic approach that was all too often incapable of tackling modern-day questions and immersed in a labyrinth of logical quibbles and fruitless conclusions. The attempt, which had long been the attempt of Thomism, to extract a philosophy from St Thomas’s theological approach, without undertaking for oneself the work of him whom St Thomas calls ‘the Philosopher’, amounts to a denial of the fact that there are two radically different spheres of knowledge: the sphere of knowledge of man-the-believer, nourished by the Word of God and trying to express the mystery of Faith with the help of his intelligence (which recognizes its own powerlessness to speak adequately about that which infinitely surpasses it); and the sphere of knowledge of man seeking to understand man, starting from his own experience, so as to discover progressively what he is in all his dimensions, and what his personal finality is – that for which he is.

This distinction between starting either from the divine light of Revelation or from the obscurity of human experience is, in a certain sense, the key to Father Philippe’s continued two-fold philosophical and theological research – researches carried out in parallel and in dialogue with one another.

The return to Aristotle, implying a perspective which is different from that of St Thomas, allowed Father Philippe to rediscover the strength and richness of philosophical realism.

Aristotle’s heritage appears in Father Philippe’s thought firstly with the realism of the judgment of existence, receiving reality as it is, and with the confident questioning on what reality is, beyond that which conditions its way of being and its “how”, yet discovered through its way of being and its how. This same heritage is subsequently seen in the distinction between practical philosophy and so-called ‘speculative’ philosophy: practical philosophy starts from the experience of work, the experience of actions carried out with a view to happiness and the experience of life in human and political communities; ‘speculative’ philosophy seeks to understand man himself, beyond the experiences of human activity, and thus opens onto a first philosophy: a philosophy of being. This culmination of the search for the truth in the work to discern what being is in its fundamental and ultimate aspect is what enables the problem of the human person, and of the human person’s being open to the question of the transcendent First Being, to be addressed.

The dimensions of the human person

Thus Father Philippe’s philosophical inquiry has been developed in all fields of philosophy:

- the discovery of man capable of transforming the universe (philosophy of art), starting from the experience of work and of the accomplishment of a piece of work;
- the discovery of man capable of loving and of being responsible for another person (ethical philosophy), starting from the experience of friendship-love.
These two practical developments of philosophy, along with political philosophy – which is also practical and starts from the experience of cooperation – are the starting point for every realist philosophy.
From them, a philosophy known as ‘speculative’ philosophy may be developed – a philosophy that seeks the truth for its own sake:
- in philosophy of nature, seeking a knowledge of matter above and beyond the transformations that may be brought about in it by the artist, and looking at man as part of the universe thanks to his body;
- in philosophy of the living being, seeking to know man as a living being, beyond the experience of friendship-love, which can be broken by death.

However, it is in first philosophy (metaphysics) that Father Philippe put fully back under the spotlight the crucial importance of the judgment of existence at the very starting point of philosophical inquiry. The research carried out in first philosophy, structured by the inductive discovery of the proper principles of that-which-is – substance (ousia) and being-in-act – and culminating with the consideration of the human person, is what Father Philippe drew upon in order to re-examine, in a properly philosophical perspective, the problem of the ways leading to the existence of a First Being whom the religious traditions call God, and thus to rediscover what wisdom is and what the philosophical judgment of wisdom is, namely, the philosopher’s discovery of the existing of the First Being, of the First Person; the contemplation of His proper ways of existing, of His own life of light and love; the question of the relationship between this First Person and man (Creation); seeing man as a creature, and as a creature capable of adoring (the judgment of wisdom).

Confronted with humanity of today

Unlike a systematic thought, this research into each dimension of the human person enables there to be a dialogue and lively confrontation with the questions of our times. The return to the Greek sources and the clear distinction between the Christian theological question and the philosophical approach give Father Philippe’s reflection the possibility of better situating contemporary philosophy and the interrogations to which it seeks to respond.

The post-Cartesian and, to a greater degree, the post-Hegelian philosophies have, in fact, constantly tried either to salvage dogmatic theology or to oppose it, and have often done the same with respect to the Christian and religious point of view which is the foundation of Western civilization (as have the atheistic ideologies, also). In other words, most of the questions of modern and contemporary philosophies – from Leibniz to Feuerbach, from Freud to Heidegger – are related in some way to the Christian or theological standpoint. The rediscovery of Aristotelian realism enabled Father Philippe both to discern that which pertains to strictly theological questions or to the ultimate questions of philosophy (which require a perspective of wisdom that is only reached at the end of a long and patient labour of analysis), and also to engage very pointedly with some of the more profound intuitions that have been those of contemporary philosophy when it seeks the truth. His highlighting of the importance of experience and of the judgment of existence converges with the return to reality advocated by the phenomenologists. The rediscovery of being, in first philosophy, remains close to the questions raised by Heidegger in his Being and Time, and by Merleau-Ponty in The Visible and The Invisible. The determining character of the discovery of the ‘other’ through a true personal bond responds to the research of Emmanuel Levinas. Finally, the importance of the ‘I am’ in a person’s own experience of himself – which means that the development of metaphysics takes shape around the problem of the human person – overlaps with the work of Karol Wojtyla in The Acting Person.

Father Philippe’s work has also always demonstrated the readiness to listen to the questions put to the philosopher by contemporary man. Thus, faced with Nietzsche and Marx, the philosophy of artistic activity and of work addresses the questions of creativity and of the world of economy and business. Ethical philosophy, starting from the experience of friendship-love, can situate the new questions raised by bioethics, and brings to light the responsibility and freedom man has in his activity, beyond any ethical modalities. Philosophy of the living being, with its reminder of the discovery of the spiritual soul, can receive the contribution which is proper to biology to the knowledge of the living being, and can situate that blossoming within man’s growth which psychology, at its own level, describes. Finally, first philosophy, culminating with natural theology and with wisdom, will be the key to a reflection on the existential questions voiced again in recent times by contemporary philosophy and which pervade our post-Christian civilization.

However, faced with the anxieties of humanity of today, in this transitional time that the Church is living since Vatican II, it is in mystical theology that Father Philippe’s contribution makes its most profound impact on our human and Christian lives. After a life-time’s work on the Johannine writings (the Gospel, and First Epistle and the Book of Revelation), and formed by St Thomas’ rigorous theological perspective and by a theology of mercy (which the life of an apostle and contemplative constantly calls for), it is with the elaboration of a theology centered upon the mystery of Christ Crucified and Glorified, and upon the mystery of Mary, that Father Philippe, under the shadow of the wings of St John, makes his greatest contribution to the spiritual renewal of the Church.


Brother Samuel Rouvillois