▼ Philosophical Father of the See-Judge-Act  Another Ozanam

• http://www.olle-laprune.net/philosopher-of-the-see-judge-act

• Léon Ollé-Laprune can be considered, along with Alphonse Gratry from whom he drew inspiration, as one of the key philosophers of Marc Sangnier’s Sillon movement and later of the YCW movement founded by Joseph Cardijn.

Cardijn read the philosophy of Léon Ollé-Laprune as a young seminarian,  Indeed, this influence is evident as soon as you start reading the works of Léon Ollé-Laprune.

Born in Paris in 1839, Léon Ollé-Laprune was a brilliant student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure where he would later become maître de conférences in 1875, a position he held until his premature death as a result of appendicitis on 13 February 1898.

He was much influenced by Frédéric Ozanam, who is most well known as founder of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, but was also a pioneer supporter of the workers democracy founded after the February Revolution of 1848. Ozanam had also been a lecturer in the French university system and it was his Christian commitment lived out in his lay life which most influenced Léon Ollé-Laprune.

As mentioned, Léon Ollé-Laprune’s philosophy drew heavily on the work of Alphonse Gratry, another democrat of 1848.

▼ Léon Ollé-Laprune and the Sillon

• Léon Ollé-Laprune and his family were also close to the parents of the young Marc Sangnier and it is evident that the philosopher had a great influence on the founder of the Sillon movement. Indeed, Albert Lamy, also from the Sillon, wrote of Léon Ollé-Laprune, that “sa philosophie de la vie est la nôtre”, his philosophy of life is our philosophy.

In fact, in a small virtually forgotten book, Les Sources de la Paix Intellectuelle (The Sources of Intellectual Peace) published in 1892, Ollé-Laprune discussed the need to build a “movement” based around the idea that everyone has “quelque chose à faire dans la vie”, that each person has “something to do in life” as a co-operator of God.

Marc Sangnier and a number of students at the Stanislas University College in Paris were the first to take up this challenge of building such a movement dedicated to enabling people to discover their lay mission in the world in this way. Originally known as the Crypt, their group later adopted the name, Le Sillon (The Furrow) for their soon to be famous movement.

▼ Léon Ollé-Laprune and the See, Judge, Act method

• Although it was Cardijn who formulated the famous expression “see, judge, act” it was Léon Ollé-Laprune who was mainly responsible for developing the philosophical theory that lay behind the method.

In fact, the foundation of the see-judge-act method had already been developed by Léon Ollé-Laprune’s neighbour, Frédéric Le Play, the pioneering social scientist. Le Play’s méthode d’observation sociale formed the basis of the enquiry method later adopted by the Sillon, the YCW and other lay apostolate movements. Le Play, however, held to an elitist, paternalist conception of social organisation as indicated by the subtitle of his famous work La Méthode Sociale, “ouvrage destiné aux classes dirigeantes” (a study addressed to the ruling classes).

Léon Ollé-Laprune rejected Le Play’s elitist conception of society in favour of a democratic ideal. Ollé-Laprune’s writings thus developed a notion of the “moral person” acting in the world based on Aristotle’s conception of prudence (Phronesis – a much broader concept than the modern understanding of prudence) as the virtue necessary for political leader.

Ancient Greek democracy, however, had been restricted to the elite. Ollé-Laprune saw that a modern democratic society reqiured that every citizen needed to develop the level of prudence necessary for participating in governance. For Ollé-Laprune, prudence therefore became the democratic virtue and education for democracy was necessary to foster the growth of the ‘moral person’ as a responsible citizen.

Marc Sangnier’s Sillon movement took up the challenge of building the necessary movement of democratic education, a notion later adapted by Cardijn as the basis of the worker education methodology of the YCW.

Léon Ollé-Laprune’s philosophy therefore lies at the heart of the YCW method and he can therefore justly be considered as the philosophical father of the See, Judge, Act.

▼ Alphonse Gratry, Mystic and reformer

• Alphonse Gratry, the 19th century French priest, mystic and philosopher, was a major source of inspiration for the young Joseph Cardijn.

Born in 1805, Gratry became a leading figure of the first generation of Christian social action in the period before and after the Workers Revolution of 1848. He was close to Frédéric Ozanam, who he brought in as a lecturer at the Stanislas College in Paris of which Gratry was director in the 1840s. After the death in 1854 of the excommunicated priest, Félicité de Lamennais, it was Gratry who celebrated a mass in his memory. He also knew Frédéric Le Play, the pioneering social researcher, whose methods were later adapted first by the Sillon and later by the YCW in its see-judge-act method. As John Henry Newman had done in England, so too in France did Gratry restore the Oratory, an association of priests founded by St Philip Neri. In short, Alphonse Gratry was a towering personality but whose influence always remained somewhat in the background.

He wrote a number of books, including a manual of social action published during the 1848 revolutionary period. Later his works took a more philosophicala and theological bent. His book, Les Sources, became an important reference for spiritual direction. His last book, La Paix, which was published in 1869, just before the outbreak of the Franco-German war of 1870, caused a storm in the militaristic ruling circles who dominated French political life.

Gratry opposed the definition of papal infallibility at the first Vatican Council. He was perhaps a major influence in the prevention of a broader definition from being adopted at the Council. After a period of reflection, he finally adhered to the teaching of Vatican I shortly before his death, preferring not to isolate himself or cut himself off from the Church as Lamennais had done.

His writings would later become an important source for the second generation of modern lay apostolate leaders and thinkers. The philosopher, Léon Ollé-Laprune, himself a disciple of Ozanam, nevertheless placed Gratry on a pedestal even higher than that of the founder of the Society of St Vincent de Paul. Gratry’s writings, together with those of Ozanam and Ollé-Laprune, would also be greatly influential with Marc Sangnier and his collaborators in the foundation of the Sillon in the Crypt of Stanislas College in the 1890s.

Gratry exercised a wide influence at the end of the 19th century. The philosopher, William James, who wrote extensively on the philosophy of religious experience, and whose writings were also read by the young Cardijn, was one of many who were influenced by Gratry.

Like his predecessors, Cardijn also drew heavily on the writings of Alphonse Gratry, who thus became a vital source for the development of the third generation of the modern lay apostolate.

Alphonse Gratry’s thought would also become an important source for the recently canonised philosopher, St Edith Stein. Other social movements also drew on his thinking, e.g. the Moral Rearmament movement begun at Oxford in the 1930s.

Another to be influenced by Gratry was the English mathematician and philosopher, George Boole in whose honour we today speak of boolean logic.

In recent times, Gratry’s work has been been largely forgotten. 

However, the late Spanish philosopher, Julian Marias, published a book, La Filosofía del padre Gratry.,

And in 2006, the French Oratorians and the Cercle du Sillon hosted a colloquium at the French Senate, where Gratry had been chaplain, to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth;

Other recent references to Gratry can be found by searching by a (Boolean!) search on altavista or another search engine.

▼ Wikipedia

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Oll%C3%A9-Laprune

• As Frédéric Ozanam had been a Catholic professor of history and foreign literature in the university, Ollé-Laprune’s aim was to be a Catholic professor of philosophy there. Theodore de Regnon, the Jesuit theologian, wrote to him:

“I am glad to think that God wills in our time to revive the lay apostolate, as in the times of Justin and Athenagoras; it is you especially who give me these thoughts.”

The Government of the Third Republic was now and then urged by a certain section of the press to punish the “clericalism” of Ollé-Laprune, but the repute of his philosophical teaching protected him. For one year only (1881-82), after organizing a manifestation in favour of the expelled congregations, he was suspended from his chair by Jules Ferry, and the first to sign the protest addressed by his students to the minister on behalf of their professor was the future socialist deputy Jean Jaurès, then a student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure.

The Academy of Moral and Political Sciences elected him a member of the philosophical section in 1897, to succeed Vacherot. Some months after his death William P. Coyne called him “the gre