Search results for ""Author Étienne Gilson""

A classic study of the art of painting and its relationship to reality In this book, Étienne Gilson puts forward a bold interpretation of the kind of reality depicted in paintings and its relation to the natural order. Drawing on insights from the writings of great painters—from Leonardo, Reynolds, and Constable to Mondrian and Klee—Gilson shows how painting is foreign to the order of language and knowledge. Painting, he argues, seeks to add new beings to nature, not to represent those that already exist. For this reason, we must distinguish it from another art, that of picturing, which seeks to produce images of actual or possible beings. Though pictures play an important part in human life, they do not belong in the art of painting. Through this distinction, Gilson sheds new light on the evolution of modern painting. A magisterial work of scholarship by an acclaimed historian of philosophy, Painting and Reality features paintings from both classical and modern schools, and includes extended selections from the writings of Reynolds, Delacroix, Gris, Gill, and Ozenfant.

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In this book (a translation of his well-known work L'esprit de la philosophie medievale), Etienne Gilson undertakes the task of defining the spirit of mediaeval philosophy. Gilson asks whether we can form the concept of a Christian philosophy and whether mediaeval philosophy is not 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 primarily historical and occasionally theoretical in suggesting how doctrines that satisfied our predecessors for so many centuries may still be found conceivable today.

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Este libro recoge un discurso en Harvard sobre lo más característico del oficio intelectual, y una conferencia en la Universidad de Marquette, donde el autor argumenta sobre la importancia de la historia del pensamiento en la enseñanza general de la filosofía. Gilson logra despertar el afán de búsqueda, y enseña rigor intelectual y amor a la verdad a quien desea construirse y construir una sociedad mejor.Étienne Gilson (París, 1884-Auxerre, 1978) fue un filósofo e historiador francés, profesor de filosofía medieval en la Sorbona y uno de los mejores especialistas en Tomás de Aquino. Miembro de la Academia Francesa y eminente conferenciante, muchos de sus libros han sido traducidos al castellano.

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Esta obra muestra de una manera clara y fundada los movimientos espirituales que se reflejan en Dante y que están en la alborada del Renacimiento; movimientos que pertenecen no sólo a la filosofía antigua -como el platonismo y el aristotelismo-, sino también a las últimas etapas de la filosofía medieval -como el averroísmo latino de Siger de Brabante, la Escuela de Chartres o la filosofía de santo Tomás de Aquino-. Cabe además destacar la magnífica reconstrucción de la filosofía política de Dante que Gilson ofrece en torno al libro de la Monarquía. Los sucesivos intentos de interpretar a Dante con meras claves teológicas, filosóficas o filológicas -u otras que puedan sobrevenir- son trabajados por Gilson y reconducidos a las fuentes originarias de Dante como poeta, cuya estructura simbólica es descrita y fundamentada por Gilson con admirable maestría. Étienne Gilson (1884-1978), cuyos escritos son referentes obligados para conocer la metafísica medieval y la discusión en torno a la exi

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In this final edition of his classic study of St. Thomas Aquinas, Etienne Gilson presents the sweeping range and organic unity of Thomistic philosophical thought. The philosophical thinking of Aquinas is the result of reason being challenged to relate to many theological conceptions of the Christian tradition. Gilson carefully reviews how Aquinas grapples with the relation itself of faith and reason and continuing through the existence and nature of God and His creation, the world and its creatures, especially human beings with their power of intellect, will, and moral life. He concludes this study by discussing the life of people in society, along with their purpose and final destiny. Gilson demonstrates that Aquinas drew from a wide spectrum of sources in the development of his thought-from the speculations of the ancient Greeks such as Aristotle, to the Arabic and Jewish philosophers of his time, as well as from Christian writers and scripture. The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas offers students of philosophy and medieval studies an insightful introduction to the thought of Aquinas and the Scholastic philosophy of the Middles Ages, insights that are still revelant for today.

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In this classic work, the eminent Catholic philosopher Étienne Gilson deals with one of the most important and perplexing metaphysical problems: the relation between our notion of God and demonstrations of his existence. Gilson examines Greek, Christian, and modern philosophy as well as the thinking that has grown out of our age of science in this fundamental analysis of the problem of God. “[I] commend to another generation of seekers and students this deeply earnest and yet wistfully gentle little essay on the most important (and often, at least nowadays, the most neglected) of all metaphysical—and existential—questions. . . . The historical sweep is breathtaking, the one-liners arresting, and the style, both intellectual and literary, altogether engaging.” —Jaroslav Pelikan, from the foreword “We have come to expect from the pen of M. Gilson not only an accurate exposition of the thought of the great philosophers, ancient and modern, but what is of much more importance and of greater interest, a keen and sympathetic insight into the reasons for that thought. The present volume does not fail to fulfill our expectations. It should be read by every Christian thinker.” —Ralph O. Dates, America

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Theology and the Cartesian Doctrine of Freedom, now for the first time available in English, was Étienne 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 Flèche, 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 Flèche and consequently about his philosophy instructor. By Gilson’s calculations François Véron taught Descartes for three years. Véron eventually left the Jesuits to be free to engage in extraordinarily aggressive anti-Calvinist polemics. If anything, Véron’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 Flèche 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 Bérulle, who encouraged Descartes in his intellectual quest to renovate European intellectual life. De Bérulle 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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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.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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