Front Matter (foreword) Three Quests in Philosophy by Etienne Gilson
Foreword
[by James K. Farge]
This
slim volume contains seven previously unpublished lectures by Etienne Gilson.[1]
He delivered the first of them, “The Education of a Philosopher,” in Montréal
in 1963. The next three, grouped under the title “In Quest of Species,” were
delivered in Toronto France ;
but his advanced age and declining health prevented his travelling to Canada Toronto
The first lecture was prompted when a group of
students in philosophy at the Université de Montréal invited Gilson to speak at
their inaugural “Semaine de Philosophie” on Tuesday, 19 March 1963. An audio
tape recording was made, and some of the students later typed a transcription
of it for private circulation. For forty-four years the lecture remained
unknown except to those students who were present to hear it.[3]
Then, in June 2007, Dr Raymond Fredette of Fitch Bay
It was with great excitement and pleasure that
Armand Maurer first read the lecture by his esteemed friend reflecting on his
own career as a philosopher and on the principles that guided him in preparing
others for that career. Father Maurer clearly felt as if he were reliving some
of the experiences he and Gilson had shared first as student and teacher and
later in their long professional collaboration. Thinking that it might be
published with the six other lectures by Gilson on which he had been working
for some time, he asked me to translate it into English.
At the same time, however, Father Maurer was
somewhat troubled by what seemed to be an inconsistency in the lecture which,
he feared, might confuse some of its readers. In a short note to me about this,
he pointed out how, not far into the lecture, when Gilson is speaking of the
differences between philosophy and the sciences, he seems to limit the
philosopher’s field of interest to concepts (which he does not define) and to
reserve the study of reality to the scientist. He added that, in this first
instance, Gilson “sounds like a Platonist – something he surely was not!”[4]
In the same note to me, however, Father Maurer cited the later section of the
lecture where Gilson takes quite a different tack when he says, “philosophy is
really interesting only when it concentrates on reality.” He urges the aspiring
philosopher to “start with a real object and a real knowledge of that object,”
and then hammers home the point with this: “One can philosophize about
everything provided that it be about something.”
Father Maurer was now confident that these remarks, coming at the end of the
lecture, would reveal the real position of the Gilson he knew so well. He also
sensed that the seven lectures published together could serve to throw light on
the long, continuing debate about whether Gilson believed there is a philosophy
of nature.[5]
In his note to me, Father Maurer concluded, “In the [six lectures on species
and matter] he accepts a philosophy of nature – and not just of the concept of
nature but in the light of metaphysics.” Finally, just two days before his
death on 22 March 2008, he told me to publish the first lecture – just as he
had originally planned – as an introductory essay to the other six lectures. He
felt confident that readers would recognize in them Gilson’s position on this
controversy, adding that the six lectures on species and matter illustrate and
confirm, each in its own distinct way, the principles which Gilson expounds in
the first one, “The Education of a Philosopher.” As was his custom, Armand
Maurer was philosophizing to the very end.
Father Maurer had worked especially hard on editing
the three lectures which Gilson entitled “In Quest of Species” and in composing
the “Introduction” to them. The subject of these lectures lent itself in a
special way to Armand Maurer’s life-long love of science and his conviction
that science and philosophy should work, each in its own sphere, to elucidate
truth. But his waning strength and final illness prevented him from devoting
equal time to editing the three lectures which Gilson called collectively “In
Quest of Matter” and prevented him from composing an introduction for them. To
fill this gap, I have drawn on the short historical context which Laurence K.
Shook provided for them in his biography of Gilson.[6]
This seemed an appropriate solution, since Father Shook had corresponded with
Gilson about the lectures and later studied them in order to comment on them in
the biography. As well, Shook was attuned to Gilson’s thought, since he was the
translator of the fifth edition of Gilson’s Le
thomisme.[7]
Years later, he began the translation of its sixth and final edition,[8]
which Maurer reviewed and completed after Shook’s death.
In editing the lectures, Father Maurer was intent
on respecting the integrity of Gilson’s texts. He thus placed square brackets
around his own footnotes in order to distinguish his editorial interventions
from the footnote references that Gilson had supplied. He kept the latter
intact, even in cases where more modern editions had become available, although
in some cases he and I supplemented them with bibliographical details. Noting
that Gilson quoted Darwin’s Origin of
Species from at least two different editions – the sixth edition (London,
1872; several reprints), which was the last in which Darwin introduced changes,
and the Great Books of the Western World edition
(Chicago, 1952) – we have cited both in each case. Unless otherwise noted,
English translations in the texts of the six “Quest” lectures are by Gilson
himself. The Bibliography of works cited (compiled by me) comprises works used
by Gilson, Maurer, and me.
I am grateful to Father Lawrence Dewan, OP, who
discussed several aspects of this manuscript with me, and to Prof. R. James
Long, who supplied some references for it. The two anonymous appraisers who
read the manuscript for the Institute’s Department of Publications made several
helpful suggestions, especially about footnote references to the texts.
Etienne Gilson was seventy-nine years old when he
spoke to the students in Montreal Toronto
James K. Farge
[1] Just
before going to press, I have learned that the French version of the first
lecture has been published under the title, “Réflexions sur l’éducation
philosophique,” with no annotations, in the journal Conférence 26 (2008): 611– 631. The following correction to its
introductory note should be made: the French text came to us directly from Dr
Raymond Fredette, not from the Institute archives. I gave a copy to Professor
Brian Stock, who then communicated it to the editors of Conférence.
[2] Letter
to Father Lawrence Dewan, OP, in November 2006.
[3] Laurence
K. Shook, Etienne Gilson (Toronto , 1984), makes no
mention of it.
[4] An
anonymous reader of this manuscript has commented that, very early in his
career, Gilson elaborated upon philosophy as concerned with the necessary,
impersonal sequences of ideas. See “Le rôle de la philosophie dans l’histoire
de la civilisation,” in Proceedings of
the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy, Harvard University
Armand Maurer himself had
commented on this subject in a note written at an earlier time and only
recently found among his papers: “Gilson argued that youth is no time for
metaphysics; yet he began with it, and only later in life did he delve into the
philosophy of nature or physics. Aristotle started with physics and came later
to metaphysics.”
[5] On this
see Ralph Nelson, “Two Masters, Two Perspectives: Maritain and Gilson on the
Philosophy of Nature,” in Wisdom’s
Apprentice: Thomistic Essays in Honor of Lawrence
Dewan, O.P., ed. Peter A Kwasniewski (Washington ,
D.C.
[6] Etienne Gilson, 388–389.
[7] The Christian Philosophy of St Thomas
Aquinas (New York ,
1956; repr. Notre Dame, Ind. ,
1983, 1994).
[8] Thomism: The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas
(Toronto ,
2002).
© 2008
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
