Etienne Gilson (1884-1978) was a French philosopher and historian of philosophy, as well as a scholar of medieval philosophy. In 1946 he attained the distinction of being elected an ""Immortal"" (member) of the Academie francaise. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1959 and 1964. The appearance of Gilson's Metamorphosis of the City of God, which were originally delivered as lectures at the University of Louvain, Belgium, in the Spring of 1952, coincided with the first steps toward what would become the European Union. The appearance of this English translation coincides with the upheaval of Brexit. Gilson traces the various attempts of thinkers through the centuries to describe Europe's soul and delimit its parts. The Scots, Catalonians, Flemings, and probably others may nod in agreement in Gilson's observation on how odd would be a Europe composed of the political entities that existed two and a half centuries ago. Those who think the European Union has lost its soul may not be comforted by the difficulty thinkers have had over the centuries in defining that soul. Indeed the difficulties that have thus far prevented integrating Turkey into the EU confirm Gilson's description of the conundrum involved even in distinguishing Europe's material components. And yet, the endeavor has succeeded, so that the problem of shared ideals remain inescapable. One wonders which of the thinkers in the succession studied by Gilson might grasp assent and illuminate the EU's path.

The spirituality and immortality of the soul might seem to be an essential Christian doctrine, but in fact many early Christian writers held that the soul is material and that immortality is a gift. As Ernest Fortin's study of Claudianus Mamertus (d. 475), a priest of Vienne in Gaul, and his De Statu Animae, On the State of the Soul (ca. 470) shows, St. Augustine did not settle the question. De Statu Animae is the only explicitly philosophical work in the West that we possess between Augustine (354-430) and Boethius. It responds to a defense of the corporeality of the soul by Bishop Faustus of Reii, modern Riez. Like many early Christian writers, Faustus held that God alone is spirit, so that the human soul is material, immortality is a gift, and Platonic dialogues or neo-Platonic textbooks of philosophy are the product of unhealthy curiosity. By contrast, Claudianus is an exuberant Christian neo-Platonist, guided by St. Augustine but also by Porphyry (235-ca 305). In this neo-Platonic tradition, Claudianus argues, for instance, that the created universe would have been incomplete without spiritual or both spiritual and corporeal creatures. But, secondly, the book's title alludes to a more general theme: Claudianus Mamertus is a creator of Christian philosophy. As Fortin sees it, Claudianus does not just use philosophy to fight the pagans with their own weapons. He also takes the riskier position of using philosophy as both a stimulus but also a check against bad uses we might make of revelation asking the Bible to answer questions it never asks. Claudianus Mamertus and his circle, which included the poet Apollinaris Sidonius, are tragic figures. The Roman system of higher education had disappeared in the West. The empire crumbled around them, as barbarian tribes took over Roman Gaul piece by piece. Claudianus and Sidonius knew things would never be the same. They knew they were the last of their kind.

Theology and the Cartesian Doctrine of Freedom, now for the first time available in English, was Etienne Gilson's doctoral thesis and part of a larger project to show the medieval roots of Descartes at a time when the very existence of medieval philosophy was often ignored. Young Descartes was sent to La Fleche, one of the Jesuits schools that offered a complete philosophical program, and Descartes would have had the same philosophical training as a Jesuit. There is some controversy about the exact dates of Descartes's stay at La Fleche and consequently about his philosophy instructor. By Gilson's calculations Francois Veron taught Descartes for three years. Veron eventually left the Jesuits to be free to engage in extraordinarily aggressive anti-Calvinist polemics. If anything, Veron's overbearing manner may have contributed to Descartes antipathy toward Scholastic philosophy. (Whatever Descartes's objections to its philosophy curriculum, later in life he recommended la Fleche as the best school in France.) Descartes,s great intellectual mission in life was not his mathematics but his physics, which was understood as a part of philosophy. We see him navigate the shoals of heated theological and religious strife in his attempt to articulate the metaphysical foundations (and in particular a philosophical vision of God) for his physics or theory of nature. As a layman, he always pleaded ignorance in technically theological matters. He presented himself as a loyal Catholic, quite sincerely in the portrait Gilson paints. Descartes certainly did not avoid controversial philosophical positions. For example, he held that God has created eternal truths rather than the latter being eternal participations in God's essence, which seems to put in doubt the necessity of these truths. Descartes took sides in the great seventeenth-century debate between Thomists and Molinists on human freedom. Gilson presents a Descartes influenced personally and intellectually by the Augustinianism of the founder of the French Oratory, Cardinal Pierre de Berulle, who encouraged Descartes in his intellectual quest to renovate European intellectual life. De Berulle and his disciple, the theologian Guillaume Gibieuf, rather than Thomism and Scotism would have influenced Descartes. Still, we also meet a Descartes determined to have his Principles of Philosophy adopted as the textbook for the schools run by the Jesuits who had educated him. Indeed, Descartes is somewhat opportunistic in reinventing his theory of freedom to bring it closer to the Molinist doctrine held by the Jesuits. Alas, the Jesuits had their own textbooks. This is not Gilson's last work on the development of Descartes' thinking, but the book already shows the engaging, vivid historian of thought who would become world famous. As Gilson guides us through Descartes' voluminous correspondence, the feelers he sends out through his friend Marin Mersenne, his attempts to make peace with the Jesuits, we feel we have lived in seventeenth-century French intellectual circles

Description: This book is a collection of nine articles by the twentieth century's leading medievalist, Etienne Gilson. A major participant in the revival of Thomistic philosophy, Gilson was a member of the French Academy and, after a university career culminating at the Sorbonne and the College de France, he turned down an invitation from Harvard University to become the guiding spirit of the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto for several decades. Several of the articles stand on their own as making a significant contribution to topics like St. Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God. Likewise, "The Middle Ages and Naturalism" contrasts Renaissance Humanists and Reformers with the medievals on the defining issue of their attitude toward nature in order to understand who actually stands closer to the ancient Greeks. All of the articles give an insight into the great synthetic visions articulated by the better-known works of Gilson like The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy. We see Gilson's meticulous spadework for the broader theme of Christian philosophy in his examination of the Latin Averroist Boethius of Dacia's book on the eternity of the world. Gilson finds that Boethius never expresses the view attributed to Latin Averroism that there are contradictory truths in religion and philosophy, although he does think that Boethius is unsuccessful in his account of the relations between philosophy and theology. The opening piece revisits a battle now won (and won in great measure by Gilson's efforts), namely the fight to acknowledge the very existence of medieval philosophy and win its place in the academic world. But the article also makes the effort--which becomes a connecting thread throughout the nine articles-to pinpoint the uniqueness of what Gilson calls Christian philosophy. The closing article studies the profound influence of the great Muslim thinker Avicenna on Latin Europe drawing a parallel between Avicenna's work and that of the great Christian medievals like Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. When Gilson died in 1978, a great deal of his work on the history of philosophy, and specifically God, the primacy of existence or esse over essence, and the impact of Christianity on philosophy had been translated. A significant amount of material, however, has not yet appeared in English. The publication of Medieval Studies represents a vital step in bringing these important works into the English-speaking world. Endorsements: "Back in the days before Vatican II, when Catholic students of philosophy were trying to understand manuals such as the ones written, say, by the Benedictine, Joseph Gredt, OSB, while their contemporaries at secular schools were excited by existentialism or phenomenology or analytic philosophy, they would turn to the works of Etienne Gilson. In my recollection, Gilson's luminous historical works helped them both to understand Aquinas and to situate his thought in relation to such modern philosophers as Descartes, Hume, and Kant intelligently and without distorting caricature. Turning to these Medieval Essays with a certain sentiment of nostalgia, then, I marveled to encounter the subtle scholarship, the wide-ranging erudition, and the detailed knowledge of the authors and texts in relation to issues that still burn today. Gilson's even-handed defense of the study of medieval philosophy is imbued with an understanding of the justice of the Renaissance and Enlightenment complaints against scholastic thought; but it takes the readers by the hand and leads them into an utterly refreshing appreciation of those old authors and texts that is rarely, if ever, matched in the depth of its gratitude to his masters and in its profound courtesy towards those with whom he disagrees. These essays take the readers back to school and offer the opportunity to experience the thrill of discovery even with regard to texts and issues with which they may have had a great