Étienne Gilson: Philosophy

Étienne Gilson was French historian and philosopher. Explore interesting quotes on philosophy.

Étienne Gilson: 44 quotes3 likes

“What is most apparent and constant in Thomas' personality, the image he most likely had of himself, is the teacher. The saint was essentially a Doctor of the Church; the man was a teacher of theology and philosophy; the mystic never entirely separated his meditations from his teaching, which drew its inspiration from them.”

Étienne Gilson

Introduction
Thomism: The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas

“What, then, will this philosophy be? Thomas only employed it for the service it renders Christian wisdom. No doubt this is why he never thought of separating it from this wisdom and giving it a name. He probably did not foresee that the day would come when people would go through his works to extract the elements of a philosophy from his theology. He himself never attempted this synthesis.”

Étienne Gilson

Introduction
Thomism: The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas

“If there is a single initial error at the root of all the difficulties philosophy is involved in, it can only be the one Descartes committed when he decreed, a priori, that the method of one of the sciences of reality was valid for the whole of reality.</i”

Étienne Gilson

Methodical Realism

“Up to Descartes' time, and particularly during the Middle Ages, it had always been agreed that philosophy consisted in a transposition of reality into conceptual terms”

Étienne Gilson

Methodical Realism