THE PHILOSOPHER AND THEOLOGY

by Etienne Gilson ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

In his latest work, a random summing-up of philosophy and theology, both autobiographically and historically, the celebrated Thomist, Etienne Gilson, writes with effortless grace, ex cathedra charm: his Catholic pieties are still profound, their rational bases manifest. For him Thomistic metaphysics is not of ens only, of being as an abstract, a ""thingism"", but rather a comprehension of being as the act of existing, the esse of things. Thus it is Essence and Existence are identical and man, the world and god are to be attained as existents, postulates generally attuned to the modern day existentialist ethos, cf Maritain, Weil, Marcel, if not Sartre. In a more personal vein, Gilson comments sympathetically and shrewdly re: secular study at the Sorbonne with sociologists Durkheim and Levy-Bruhl, encounters with poet Peguy and Paulet, the early Descartes thesis which led him to the Scholastics, the revival of medieval thought and the passing of Suarezianism, his formative years at the Petit Seminaire Notre-Dames-des-Champs; and a brilliant, sometimes baffling, analysis of Bergson's relation to Aquinas. Deep and devout, a devotee must.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962

Categories: NONFICTION