The Person and Community in Mounier’s Philosophy

Posted on Nov 1, 2024 in Philosophy and ethics

The 1929 Crisis and the Need for Change

The Wall Street crash of 1929 and its devastating global impact deeply affected Mounier. This event highlighted the inadequacy of existing social and economic structures. Some advocated for changing these structures, believing that a better society would naturally follow. Others argued for changing individuals, believing that improved individuals would then transform the structures. Mounier found both approaches insufficient.

He believed that both structures and individuals must change. He called for a personalist and communitarian revolution.

Capitalist Individualism as the Source of Disorder

Mounier argued that our civilization originated from the Renaissance, a revolution against societal domination in favor of individual demands. However, this Renaissance individualism gave rise to what he termed “the bourgeois spirit.”

Bourgeois individualism, selfishness, and capitalism are intertwined. Capitalism, the reign of money (Mammon), prioritizes profit over labor and consumption over production.

To address this disaster, Mounier emphasized the need to restore a moral hierarchy of needs, replacing self-interested exaltation. This would enable the reform of structures and the creation of a fellowship based on respect for individuals.

Christians are best suited to undertake this task, but they too are susceptible to the negative influences of bourgeois individualism, as Nietzsche and Marx highlighted.

For the bourgeois, religious practice becomes individualistic, separated from others.

Negative values such as self-preservation and defensive reflexes are cultivated, leading to a desire for a comfortable and safe Christianity. In contrast, the person should cultivate values like embracing danger, opposition, generosity, and the pursuit of holiness.

Mounier’s Attitude to Fascism

Fascism emerged as a reaction against the bourgeois spirit, proclaiming a revolution in the name of the spirit and attracting many followers. However, Mounier recognized its limitations and inherent wickedness. He saw fascism as a symptom of a diseased body – an understandable reaction, but not a solution. Mounier understood its appeal but maintained a critical distance.

Mounier’s critique focused on two key points:

1. Fascism prioritizes irrationality over thought and the power of the spirit. He illustrated this with Goering’s quote: “When I hear the word spirit, I reach for my revolver.”
2. Fascism offers a distorted caricature of community. Despite its socialist rhetoric, fascism does not challenge the power of money. It prioritizes efficiency and economic self-sufficiency, serving the interests of capitalism, which in turn supports it as a force for “order.”

Mounier’s Attitude to Marxism

Mounier identified the fundamental flaw of Marxism in its materialism. This materialism, which rejects inherent goodness, leads to the failure of Marxist systems, including economics and technocracy.

Marxism envisions salvation solely through the collective training of the mass man, representing “a collective optimism of man masking a radical pessimism of the person.”

In contrast, Mounier sought a higher plane of truth, where “self-interest has no place.” The danger of Marxism lies in its blending of truth and error.

Mounier urged Marxists to critically examine and separate these truths and errors.

He envisioned the future of civilization as a confrontation between Marxism and Christian personalism.

Mounier’s Personalist and Communitarian Revolution

Mounier argued that the rebellion against individualism had devolved into a resurgence of individualism itself. A “new Renaissance” was needed, requiring a revolution.

This revolution, combating both the flaws of individualism and collectivism, must be personal and communal. He emphasized that only the limitations of language necessitate this double adjective, as community is an inherent dimension of the person.

Mounier’s Concept of the Person

The person is distinct from the false persona often presented externally. The person is rooted in the individual but transcends it. It represents a calling, a unity to be achieved within the depths of our being.

This “calling” signifies an elevation, a “transcendence.”

The individual experiences this calling with their entire being, body and soul, as humans are embodied beings. Personalism rejects both materialism, which reduces humans to objects, and false spiritualism, which reduces them to mere ideas. It is a “ritual spiritual realism.”

Mounier believed in the absolute nature of the person but also acknowledged its “mystery,” aligning with existentialist thought.

The Demands of the Person

a) Internalization

Humans are not solely bodies or spirits but are embodied beings living within various societies.

To fulfill their vocation, individuals must learn to disconnect and react, to withdraw into themselves to achieve unity. This response begins with an ongoing process of “conversion,” involving both introspection and concentration, counteracting the dispersion and temptations of individualism. This leads to “internalization” (self-presence) and “meditation” (deep reflection), which, like the “vocation,” shape the structures of the personal universe.

“Conversion” does not imply a rejection of external realities. The individual who withdraws inward does so to process and personalize these realities, achieving “ownership.” Thus, “having” enriches “being”: knowledge becomes wisdom, and appreciation becomes friendship.

b) Externalization

However, “meditation” can degenerate into unhealthy introspection, and “interiority” can become selfish and sterile. “Having” can then hinder “being.”

Therefore, another movement is necessary to generate complementary dimensions of the person: “externalization” (reaching out beyond oneself) and, more profoundly, “expropriation” (learning to divest oneself to see more clearly), leading to “communion” (dialogue between persons). These movements are interconnected and constantly interact.

The pride of being a person must be earned, as personhood is an ongoing conquest that is never complete and cannot endure without “generosity.” “Personal life is a continuous assertion and denial of self.”

Mounier’s philosophy of personalism welcomes all people of goodwill, inviting them into a broad “brotherhood.” However, he believed that “the ultimate notion of the person” is found only in Christianity.

Mounier’s Concept of Community

The profound movement that compels individuals towards “communion” with others aligns with a fundamental experience that Mounier termed “communication.” This experience begins in childhood, with the first encounters of community, such as attending school.

Mounier identified different types of societies:

• Anonymous mass, or “impersonal world”
• Closed societies, or “our world” (political parties, churches, ghettos)
• Family, nation, “vital societies”

Just as the person must be achieved, the community must be built. For a society to be a true community, it must support its members in becoming “persons.” Mounier analyzed various societies based on this criterion, identifying their strengths and weaknesses. He even outlined specific “structures of a personalistic regime” for teachers.

His conclusions resonate with contemporary demands for respect for privacy, gender equality, quality education, democracy, an economy that serves humanity, access to culture for all, social peace, and racial and international harmony.

The Demands of Community

Achieving the ideal of community requires a revolution, potentially involving violence.

While freedom is the ideal of both community and the person, it remains a “probation.” These conditions are realized through a threefold movement reflecting the demands of personal communities.

a) Opposition

Mounier acknowledges that “communication” initially manifests as “opposition.”

“Opposition” arises against our own bodies and against nature.

“Opposition” is particularly evident against other individuals, who are both mysterious and potentially selfish. This opposition reflects our own weaknesses and limitations.

“Opposition” is necessary.

This opposition can lead to a positive “yes,” resulting in personal growth. Alternatively, it can result in “protest” or “rejection.”

In contrast to Sartre, Mounier argues that opposition does not equate to futility.

“Opposition” towards others is beneficial if it leads to dialogue, if the “I” progresses towards the “you” before reaching the “us” of community.

However, achieving dialogue is challenging. It requires a series of unique acts from the person:

1. Stepping outside oneself.
2. Understanding.
3. Taking on the other’s perspective.
4. Giving. The driving force of personal impulse is not eradication (as in petty bourgeois individualism) or a struggle to the death (as in existentialism), but bounty or gratuity – ultimately, the gift given without measure and without expectation of return.
5. Being faithful.

Dialogue unfolds within love. “Love creates the unity of the community, just as calling creates the unity of the person.”

b) Cooperation

Cooperation involves concrete action, acknowledging the “primacy of the spiritual” because humans are embodied beings, both body and soul.

Mounier was a philosopher and intellectual in the truest sense. He believed that valid action must be preceded and accompanied by reflection; otherwise, it is merely reflexive activity.

This collaboration between thought and action involves struggle and tension, which Mounier termed “the dramatic intelligence.”

It requires active participation with strength, but without coercion or brutality.

c) Prophetic Action

Personalism is realistic enough to acknowledge and recommend technical and political action. However, “spiritual realism” operates on a higher level and is ultimately more effective because it informs technical and political action: it is the level of the prophet.

The “prophet” bears witness to the transcendent. Through this lens, failure, suffering, and even death – the “gift of self that crowns all others” – acquire absolute value.

In the same vein, the spiritual concentration of forces, even within a small group, is more urgent and effective than the purely numerical grouping of an inorganic and mechanized mass.

Mounier places “contemplation” at the pinnacle of this constant struggle with oneself, with nature, and with others. It is both a goal to be achieved and a perspective to be maintained at the heart of action.

The Problem of the Basis of Facts

The Dimensions of Man

Reflecting on humanity reveals its multidimensionality. Some of these dimensions have been explored in the course of Philosophy, while others are studied in other subjects:

• Biological dimension: Humans are physical bodies, living beings, animals connected to the rest of nature through multiple links. (Studied in Biology and touched upon in Philosophy when discussing the philosophical aspects of evolution.)
• Psychological dimension: Humans exhibit behavior driven by their minds. The study of human behavior and the mind is the subject of Psychology. (Studied in Psychology and Sociology.)
• Personal dimension: Humans as free and rational beings. (Studied in the chapter on “The Human Person.”)
• Dimension of openness: Humans cannot be conceived without their connection to the world; they are “beings-in-the-world.” (Studied in previous coursework, with allusions in the topics of “Philosophical Problems about Evolution” and “The Individual” within Mounier’s personalism.)
• Social dimension: Openness to others, essential for personal life. (Studied in the topic “Society and State,” in the discussion of Mounier’s personalism, and in Psychology and Sociology.)
• Moral dimension: Humans define themselves through their actions, becoming better or worse depending on their choices. (Studied in Ethics.)
• Historical dimension: Humans exist within history, both collective (studied in History) and individual (found in personal reflection on life). (Studied in History courses and in the History of Philosophy.)
• Absolute dimension: Openness to an absolute reality, often seen as the foundation of all reality. When this absolute reality is recognized as God, the absolute dimension becomes the religious dimension. (Studied in this chapter.)

The Great Enigmas and the Religious

The Great Enigmas

Humans have primarily approached the question of God through two fundamental enigmas or mysteries: the mystery of reality and the mystery of humanity itself. From these, a third enigma arises: the enigma of the Absolute.

The Enigma of Reality

When humans critically and reflectively confront reality as a whole – total reality – numerous questions emerge:

• Why is there something rather than nothing?
• Where does reality come from?
• Where is reality going (if it is going anywhere)? In other words, what is its purpose?

The Enigma of Man

If reality is perplexing, humanity is even more so.

A story is told of a traveler in the desert who encounters a group of Bedouins. Their leader approaches and asks the traveler three questions:

• Man, who are you?
• Where do you come from?
• Where are you going?

The story doesn’t reveal the traveler’s response or the outcome of the encounter. What matters are the questions themselves. These are three eternal questions that humanity has grappled with throughout history.

How would each of us answer the Bedouin’s questions?

Many of us might struggle to provide definitive answers. This would be a serious matter, suggesting that we are beings without a clear identity, lacking direction, lost in the desert of life. If we don’t know who we are, where we come from, or where we are going, it’s no wonder we struggle to know what to do. We lack understanding of the meaning of our existence. How can we find the right path if we don’t know our destination?

The Enigma of the Absolute

Humans are inherently open to something fundamental:

• Something that transcends (goes beyond) themselves, others, and the world.
• Something that underpins (forms the foundation of) everything.
• A “pole” that exists above us and empowers us to be and to act.
• In essence, an absolute being.

Broadly speaking, most philosophies agree on the existence of an absolute reality, an eternal entity upon which all other things depend and are relative.

This absolute reality has been called Being (Parmenides), the Absolute (Hegel), Pure Act (Aristotle), the First Cause (Thomas Aquinas), Nature (Spinoza), “the unknowable” (Spencer), the “numinous” (Otto), and even the subject (Marx).

The true challenge arises when we ask about the nature of the Absolute and its relationship with the world:

• Is it a single entity or multiple entities?
• Is it a reality separate from and above the world, or is it the world itself (the cosmos, the universe)?
• Is it a personal being (intelligent and free) or not?

One line of thought, originating with Greek philosophers like Anaxagoras and Aristotle and later embraced by the Judeo-Christian tradition, conceives of the Absolute as a unique, personal being, distinct from the world, absolutely perfect in all aspects (wisdom, beauty, goodness, justice, omnipotence, etc.), and the creator of the world and humanity. Understood in this way, the Absolute is called God.

The fundamental question then becomes: Does God exist?