Medieval essays
By: Étienne Gilson ; translated by James G. Colbert
Publisher: Cascade Books
Published: 2011
Place of publication: Eugene, Or
Language: eng
Number of pages: 222
ISBN-13: 9781608993871
Subjects: Philosophy and religion; Theory of Knowledge; God; Proof; Philosophy; Medieval Philosophy; Christianity
Work titles: Études médiévales
Description: 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 into English. The publication of Medieval studies represents a vital step in bringing these important works into the English-speaking world. 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. All the articles give an insight into the great synthetic visions articulated by the better-known works of Gilson like The Spirit of Medieval philosophy. "The Middle Ages and ancient naturalism" contrasts Renaissance humanists and Reformers with the medievals on the defining issue of their attitude toward nature to understand who actually stands closer to the Greeks. 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. 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.
Notes: A collection of 9 essays based on lectures delivered previously between 1932 and 1969 and published as Études médiévales by Vrin in 1956.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-222).
Table of contents: title: Critical historical research and the future of scholasticism; title: The Middle Ages and ancient naturalism; title: The meaning and nature of St. Anselm's argument; title: Peter Lombard and the theologies of essence; title: The concept of existence in William of Auvergne; title: Maimonides and the philosophy of the exodus; title: Boethius of Dacia and double truth; title: Notes for the history of efficient causality; title: Avicenna in the West during the Middle Ages.