Gilson tells this tale chiefly by weaving together two principles, which he takes chiefly from history and philosophical metaphysics. Nonetheless, Gilson’s chief point about philosophy’s history being philosophy’s laboratory is simply that, once they leave the minds of people who call themselves “philosophers” and enter the minds of other people, philosophical teachings tend to generate like effects within those other minds and human culture that they had generated within the mind and culture from which they had been derived. While Gilson is clear to indicate that he does not think philosophical ideas and relations can exist apart from philosophical knowers, not easily comprehensible is the essentialistic flavor of Gilson’s above remarks regarding philosophy and history. Thomas to be an essentialist, and need for a philosopher considered in general to avoid essentialism, and to an anti-Cartesian and anti-idealistic spirit that tended to be trademarks scholars would later often associate with Gilson. The claims immediately above appear to be antithetical to Gilson’s well-known teachings about the: centrality of existential judgment in St. The history of these concepts and their relationships is the history of philosophy itself.” hilosophy consists of the concepts of philosophers taken in the naked, impersonal necessity of both their contents and their relations. Yet what Shook says of Gilson presents a striking contrast to what, in 1937, Gilson had said in his classic The Unity of Philosophical Experience: “Though philosophical ideas can never be separated from philosophers and philosophies, . . . He believed that this could be achieved through the kind of education that fostered the acquisitions of moral virtues through the writings of Cicero and Seneca.” Shook, says of Gilson, “An Erasmian humanist at heart, he wanted to end all wars and to liberate men to work out their salvation in the context of personal freedom. The first, from Gilson’s biographer Lawrence K. Odd, then, are two claims related to Gilson made by people who knew him well. Thomas’s revolutionary focus upon the principle of the act of existence ( esse) within the natures of things, and a shift away from ideas to existential judgments within Western philosophical thought. For additional details about the conference, please visit the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute website.Īnyone familiar with Étienne Gilson’s teachings knows he is celebrated for: being a Thomist, his criticism of “essentialism” in philosophy, emphasizing St. The following paper was presented at the 2015 Telos Conference, held on February 13–15, 2015, in New York City.

Agere sequitur esse