Background
Le Senne, René was born in 1882 in Elbeuf, Normandy.
Le Senne, René was born in 1882 in Elbeuf, Normandy.
Tcole Normale Supérieure.
Cofounder and c°editor, with Louis Lavelle, of the collection La Philosophie de iEsprit: appointed Lecturer at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. and then (1942) Professor °* Moral Philosophy, University of Paris. 1948, fleeted to the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques.
Le Sennc developed his philosophical system in opposition to what he saw as the antimetaphysical, positivist and determinist influences which, he alleged, were invading contemporary French thought. He considered himself to be working within the metaphysical tradition which stemmed from Descartes, and he thought that the crucial aspect of the cogito was the will, which led to action. Le Senne maintained that humanity's place within the scheme of things was bounded by two things: the realm of the absolute or God, on whom we depend and in whom we participate; and the concrete reality of the external world. The essence of the self, according to Le Senne, lies in the consciousness of our own actions. In our preconscious state, there is the continuity of an undirected and dynamic spiritual flow or upsurge, ultimately derived from God. Our self-consciousness is achieved through the ‘organ-obstacle’ of reality. This ‘organ-obstacle’ is the instrument of our self-consciousness, as it breaks and crystallizes the undifferentiated spiritual flow into determinate acts of will, but it also limits the self by providing us with the recognition that determinate acts of will are limited. In the obstacle we find the divine will, which intends our selfrealization. As essentially spiritual beings we are in search of value, which Le Senne identifies with divine grace. Our preconscious spiritual flow grasps value in an undifferentiated form, but when the upsurge breaks against the limitations of reality, value crystallizes and becomes determinate in specific values. Thus the ‘organ-obstacle’, through its resistance to our will, is instrumental in our becoming conscious of values. We are not aware of value in its pure form: we can be conscious only of values in their impure and determinate form, but these are indicative of the absolute value towards which we constantly strive. Corresponding to this, Le Senne maintained that the self has two aspects. There is the private self which is aware of God as the source of our existence and of absolute value, and is the subject of our feeling of totality in the aesthetic or moral appreciation of an object or situation. By contrast, there is the public self which concentrates on the concrete detail of the object perceived. Our lives are spent in constant oscillation between these two aspects of the self. Le Senne’s philosophical system is ultimately anti-individualistic, because the pure spiritual dynamism of the self merges into the absolute, and has no characteristics which allow us to distinguish one person from another.