Personalism

Emmanuel Mounier and many other young Frenchmen in the early 1930’s rejected the values, the ideas, and the structures of society. They recognized a crisis which endangered the future of Western life and which demanded the most revolutionary solutions. Mounier and his comrades established the journal Espirit to propound their revolutionary programs and the outlook of personalism, which became their philosophical guideline. This volume is Mounier’s final definition of personalism. First published less than a year before his tragic death in 1950, it is a beautifully written, clear yet unsystematic statement of personalism. Mounier addresses himself to the relationship between the temporal and the spiritual. He believes that although man’s goal is beyond the temporal and beyond human history, man must seek this goal within the changing materials of history. Man must bear witness to eternal truths by committing himself in the world’s affairs.