An Act of Infinite Love

Abstract To what extent do we depend on ourselves? The crucial point of this question, constantly asked by Maine de Biran, is that from the point of view of “spiritual life” an “explicit” answer is not really needed: the mystery of what supports us will be solved by a vertical dimension of feeling that welcomes, at the limit of a radical kind of passivity, an act of infinite love – as if one were connected to a divine Presence . In this paper I will try to show in what sense “love” is, according to Biran, the fundamental principle of “spiritual life” and to what extent such a concept can help us understand the fundamental coherence of Maine de Biran’s philosophical path.