Louis Lavelle

Doctrine of Participation

For Le Senne God is the Value and hence transcends all ruptures and contradictions. For Lavelle (1883-1951) although God is transcendent, He is the most intimate of all determinations of being; all is filled with Him. The sense of being filled with God is what Lavelle calls "the mystery of our existence."

Having arrived at this stage, Lavelle observes that we must seek a point of contact with God; and when we discover this point, we must be prepared to sacrifice joyously all other particular things, in order to illuminate this contact with the Divinity. Thus the existent finds the meaning of its existence.

In order to explain what he means by communion with God, Lavelle appeals to the doctrine of "participation." According to him, God is the absolute Act, while the creature is a "participant" of the divine act; God is the "Act"; we are "from the Act."

To clarify his teaching that we are distinct from God, Lavelle introduces the theory of the interval. By "interval" he means the distinction between essence and existence. Thus the exemplar of our essence is in God; but our existence, which if "from" God, is not in God.

The existence of a contingent being means poverty and deficiency in relation to its own essence, and hence it must make every effort to have its existence coincide with its essence. To what what we are means to know what we must do to make our existence worthy of its essence.