Etienne Gilson
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Total reviews: 2
Average rating: 5.0 of 5
Staking a claim for a Christian philosophical tradition. 5 out of 5 stars.
39 of 39 people found this review helpful.
What does it mean to speak of a Christian philosophy? That is a question that motivated Gilson's work. As a profoundly gifted scholar and historian of philosophy, Gilson was in a perfect position to raise this tendentious question.This is the first book by Gilson that I had the pleasure to read. Reading it now seven years later after much study of medieval philosophy, I might have a slightly different reaction. But perhaps this first impression will be more useful to the reader who is taking a summary view of the subject, as I was at that time. And, honestly, his thesis has been sustained by my own experience.
In this volume Gilson steers a course between two extremes. The one extreme is to identify Christian philosophy with the Christian Faith. In this sense, Christian philosophy would mean nothing more than apologetics. There would be one Christian philosophy coterminous with the doctrines of the Church. The other extreme is say that there are only Christians who happen also to be philosophers. In this way would there be a great variety of Christian philosophies, but it is difficult to conceive how one could call any of them Christian. There would be no trace of the Christian influence in their writing or their thinking.
Gilson maintains that there is indeed a legitimate sense in speaking of Christian philosophy, one that does not succumb to either extreme. This sense is in the spirit in which the inquiry is done, and it is good to recall that philosophy in its exact sense does not mean a body of doctrine, but a love of wisdom. While distinguishing natural wisdom from supernatural, Gilson maintains that Revelation does have a bearing on the practice of philosophy. Not only does it serve as a negative principle that eliminates hypotheses contrary to Faith, thus preserving it from error, but it also positively influences the choice of problems and the animating spirit of the philosophical inquiry.
The examination of medieval European philosophy is the examination of a specifically Christian tradition of philosophy. It thus must be shown that the thinkers in this tradition, while having much latitude in their choice of problems and their solutions, are all together bound in a common inquiry and show a similar spirit.
I think that Gilson accomplishes his task, and that his approach is instructive for those who lament a crushing uniformity of thought, but believe that the source of this uniformity lies in the profession of the Faith. Far from it. Medieval philosophy, for all its (justified) concerns with right thinking about revealed truth, exhibits a spectacular variety of perspectives and ways of thinking about the world around us. It is a period as rich, diverse, and innovative as any other. (If you want to explain the stultification of philosophy, look no farther than the modern university.)
Gilson was one of the important thinkers of the 20th century and his work has had some lasting consequences. Perhaps more than any other, he is responsible for the serious consideration of medieval philosophy in contemporary circles. It is not out of place to remember that when he wrote this work, that was far from the situation. He is also responsible in large measure for a particular school of Thomism that thrives today, a school propagated through his students and in turn through their students.
Editorial Review:
In this translation of Etienne Gilson's well known work L'esprit de la philosophie medievale, he undertakes the task of defining the spirit of mediaeval philosophy. Gilson asks whether we can form the concept of a Christian philosophy and, second, whether mediaeval philosophy is not precisely its most adequate historical expression. He maintains that the spirit of mediaeval philosophy is the spirit of Christianity penetrating the Greek tradition, working within it, and drawing out of it a certain view of the world that is specifically Christian. To support his hypothesis, Gilson examines mediaeval thought in its nascent state, at that precise point where the Judeo-Christian graft was inserted into the Hellenic tradition. Gilson's demonstration is purely historical and occasionally theoretical in suggesting how doctrines that satisfied our predecessors for so many centuries may still be found conceivable today.
