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Étienne 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 Académie française. He was nominated for the
Nobel Prize in Literature in 1959 and 1964. This major biography of
Gilson was first published in France in 2018, and now arrives in a
long-anticipated English translation. Florian Michel traces
Gilson's life through his time as a professor at the College de
France and member of the French Academy. Gilson was a prisoner of
war in Germany, was one of the first to describe the horrors of the
famine in Ukraine (1922), created an institute of medieval studies
in Toronto, published hundreds of articles in the French daily
press and took part in the founding conferences of the United
Nations.He was neither for Sartre nor for Aron, and advocated, when
the NATO agreements were signed, the neutrality and non-alignment
of Europe. Gilson did not hesitate to engage in quarrels with the
bishops and allows us to understand how one passes from a critical
modernism before the First World War to a liberal Thomism and to
the Vatican Council II. James G. Colbert, who translated Gilson's
The Metamorphosis of the City, offers a careful and measured
translation to bring this important work to an English speaking
audience.
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.
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Philo of Alexandria (Hardcover)
Jean Danielou; Translated by James G. Colbert
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R1,159
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Discovery Miles 9 210
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Philo of Alexandria (Paperback)
Jean Danielou; Translated by James G. Colbert
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R651
R520
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Medieval Essays (Hardcover)
Etienne Gilson; Translated by James G. Colbert
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R1,243
R986
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Medieval Essays (Paperback)
Etienne Gilson; Translated by James G. Colbert
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R782
R643
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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
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
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