The Experience of Weakness and Power in Maine de Biran

Abstract The originality of Maine de Biran’s philosophy is his discovery of the apperceptive intuition of effort as the basis for the constitution of the conscious (my)self. Yet, although Biran routinely associates this effort with the exercise of force, his late philosophy is often characterized as a philosophy of the renunciation of power for a quietist embrace of passivity. Biran’s life-long struggle with physical debilitation perhaps speaks in support of a philosophy of weakness over strength. However, this paper takes the opposite view and sees in Biran’s personal experience of sickness, not weakness but ‘phenomenology’ of a will to triumphing power. Further, it argues that in this desire for strength is a Biranian theological opening to a power, which impossible to give myself, is the ground for a transcending aspiration into the power of God. The experience of weakness is the experience of a deeper longing for the transformation of effort.