Background
Nédoncelle, Maurice was born on October 30, 1905 in Roubaix, Nord, France.
Nédoncelle, Maurice was born on October 30, 1905 in Roubaix, Nord, France.
Seminary Saint-Sulpice and the Sorbonne.
Taught philosophy and theology, Nogent-surMarne, 1930-1945. Professor of Theology and Dean, Université des Sciences Humaines de Strasbourg, 1945-1976.
Nédoncelle was a leading Catholic exponent of a type of philosophy called ‘personalism’, a philos°phy that does not simply uphold the value of Personality but contends that personal life is the active ground of the world, that the key to the Problems of philosophy is found in personality and, furthermore, that reality consists of a system °f persons related through God as the supreme Person. His philosophy was also much inspired by *he works of Cardinal Newman and Baron von P*“gel. Like von Hügel, he attached importance to Jhe direct mystical apprehension of God but, also like von Hügel, he insisted on the divine transcendence. Nédoncelle contended that the human personality ‘creates itself’', but each individual person can only truly develop in unifying his or her relation with every other and with God and it is the Christ, the God-Man, who unifies our relation with God and others. NédonCelle’s personalism was that rare thing, a rigorous Philosophy inspired by a devotional spirit. It rePresents an important strand of Catholic re*igious philosophy in the twentieth century. influential not only in France but also in Italy and Germany.