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Wisdom and love in Saint Thomas Aquinas
Este libro recoge un discurso en Harvard sobre lo más característico del oficio intelectual, y una conferencia en la Universidad de Marquette, donde el autor argumenta sobre la importancia de la historia del pensamiento en la enseñanza general de la filosofía. Gilson logra despertar el afán de búsqueda, y enseña rigor intelectual y amor a la verdad a quien desea construirse y construir una sociedad mejor. Étienne Gilson (París, 1884-Auxerre, 1978) fue un filósofo e historiador francés, profesor de filosofía medieval en la Sorbona y uno de los mejores especialistas en Tomás de Aquino. Miembro de la Academia Francesa y eminente conferenciante, muchos de sus libros han sido traducidos al castellano.
- GenresPhilosophy
55 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 1951
9 people are currently reading
77 people want to read
About the author
Étienne Gilson
224 books166 followersÉtienne Henri Gilson was born into a Roman Catholic family in Paris on 13 June 1884. He was educated at a number of Roman Catholic schools in Paris before attending lycée Henri IV in 1902, where he studied philosophy. Two years later he enrolled at the Sorbonne, graduating in 1907 after having studied under many fine scholars, including Lucien Lévy Bruhl, Henri Bergson and Emile Durkheim.
Gilson taught in a number of high schools after his graduation and worked on a doctoral thesis on Descartes, which he successfully completed (Sorbonne) in 1913. On the strength of advice from his teacher, Lévy Bruhl, he began to study medieval philosophy in great depth, coming to see Descartes as having strong connections with medieval philosophy, although often finding more merit in the medieval works he saw as connected than in Descartes himself. He was later to be highly esteemed for his work in medieval philosophy and has been described as something of a saviour to the field.
From 1913 to 1914 Gilson taught at the University of Lille. His academic career was postponed during the First World War while he took up military service. During his time in the army he served as second lieutenant in a machine-gun regiment and was awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery upon relief from his duties. After the war, he returned to academic life at Lille and (also) Strasbourg, and in 1921 he took up an appointment at the Sorbonne teaching the history of medieval philosophy. He remained at the Sorbonne for eleven years prior to becoming Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the College de France in 1932. During his Sorbonne years and throughout his continuing career Gilson had the opportunity to travel extensively to North America, where he became highly influential as a historian and medievalist, demonstrating a number of previously undetermined important differences among the period’s greatest figures.
Gilson’s Gifford Lectures, delivered at Aberdeen in 1931 and 1932, titled ‘The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy’, were published in his native language (L’espirit de la philosophie medieval, 1932) before being translated into English in 1936. Gilson believed that a defining feature of medieval philosophy was that it operated within a framework endorsing a conviction to the existence of God, with a complete acceptance that Christian revelation enabled the refinement of meticulous reason. In this regard he described medieval philosophy as particularly ‘Christian’ philosophy.
Gilson married in 1908 and the union produced three children, two daughters and one son. Sadly, his wife died of leukaemia in late 1949. In 1951 he relinquished his chair at the College de France in order to attend to responsibilities he had at the Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto, Canada, an institute he had been invited to establish in 1929. Gilson died 19 September 1978 at the age of ninety-four.
Gilson taught in a number of high schools after his graduation and worked on a doctoral thesis on Descartes, which he successfully completed (Sorbonne) in 1913. On the strength of advice from his teacher, Lévy Bruhl, he began to study medieval philosophy in great depth, coming to see Descartes as having strong connections with medieval philosophy, although often finding more merit in the medieval works he saw as connected than in Descartes himself. He was later to be highly esteemed for his work in medieval philosophy and has been described as something of a saviour to the field.
From 1913 to 1914 Gilson taught at the University of Lille. His academic career was postponed during the First World War while he took up military service. During his time in the army he served as second lieutenant in a machine-gun regiment and was awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery upon relief from his duties. After the war, he returned to academic life at Lille and (also) Strasbourg, and in 1921 he took up an appointment at the Sorbonne teaching the history of medieval philosophy. He remained at the Sorbonne for eleven years prior to becoming Professor of Medieval Philosophy at the College de France in 1932. During his Sorbonne years and throughout his continuing career Gilson had the opportunity to travel extensively to North America, where he became highly influential as a historian and medievalist, demonstrating a number of previously undetermined important differences among the period’s greatest figures.
Gilson’s Gifford Lectures, delivered at Aberdeen in 1931 and 1932, titled ‘The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy’, were published in his native language (L’espirit de la philosophie medieval, 1932) before being translated into English in 1936. Gilson believed that a defining feature of medieval philosophy was that it operated within a framework endorsing a conviction to the existence of God, with a complete acceptance that Christian revelation enabled the refinement of meticulous reason. In this regard he described medieval philosophy as particularly ‘Christian’ philosophy.
Gilson married in 1908 and the union produced three children, two daughters and one son. Sadly, his wife died of leukaemia in late 1949. In 1951 he relinquished his chair at the College de France in order to attend to responsibilities he had at the Institute of Medieval Studies in Toronto, Canada, an institute he had been invited to establish in 1929. Gilson died 19 September 1978 at the age of ninety-four.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 14, 2024
Bold and bracing. Gilson argues true Thomism is not about Thomas but truth. He may be a touch hagiographic, but the heartbeat of his lecture is inspiring to say the least. And it doesn’t hurt that it is less than 40 pages and can be read in a sitting.
April 1, 2022
This review is by a radical left wing atheist who, nevertheless, has a deep admiration for Etienne Gilson, the devout Roman Catholic, the Thomist, the quintessential scholar. That last epithet cannot be emphasized enough. Gilson's mastery of incredibly arcane and difficult medieval texts was truly remarkable, and really in the spirit of Scotus, Ockham, and Thomas. We live in an age of easy self-assertion, characterized by a dearth of learnedness. Gilson simply must be admired for this modest, tireless dedication to truth and to texts. There is a real sense in which this is a Roman Catholic tradition. Learnedness, the care for texts, and perhaps the art & beauty accidentally sponsored by the church, what Chateaubriand called "the genius of Christianity," are two areas in which the Reformation threw the baby out with the bath water. Enough tangential circling, on to the text.
Marquette University has had an annual lecture series, The Aquinas Lecture, and this is the text of the 1951 version. The lecturers were chosen by very high standards and I find these forgotten and neglected lectures fascinating and often enlightening. The reason for this is that the perspective of the lecturers, religious Roman Catholic philosophers ( usually, but not always, eg, Jewish philosopher Emil Fackenheim gave one) allow the reader to at least hear a different perspective.
Gilson opens the lecture in a fashion that foreshadows the work of Pierre Hadot. He points out that for the Ancients and Medievals philosophy was a way of life. In our era it has become a theoretical pursuit fully enmeshed in our system of "higher education" which is itself compromised by the domination of commerce and consumerism in our society. Gilson gets a good joke in at the outset. The Platonic Academy in Athens reportedly had a sign over the door, the gist of which was: "let no one pass this threshold who has not mastered mathematics." Gilson relates how he taught at a school at which students had to choose a very mathematical course of studies, or philosophy. He quips that "fear of mathematics was often the door to wisdom." Those of us who are humanities types, or "god damned English professors`' rather than "logical positivists" (a distinction made by Oxford's AJ Ayer I think) can appreciate this!
I think in this case, a "book" which is a published lecture numbering 39 pages, it is best NOT to review the argument made in detail. Why? The point should be to encourage people to read these forgotten texts and neglected authors for themselves, and to give the text some chance of reaching others. This might not be the case with a longer philosophical work, where the review is kind of a synopsis/ teaser. Instead, I will touch upon some ideas of Gilson's that struck me as either novel or relevant to me, personally. Why allow the personal to intrude? What could be less relevant than what strikes an unimportant reader as personally relevant? Well, the text is making the point that wisdom and love in Aquinas was a matter about the man, Thomas Aquinas. None of us are abstract intellects pursuing wisdom with love in a detached fashion. We are, in each case, the individual humans that we are trying to do this. As individuals we are more than our species being of "rational animal" (for Thomists and Aristotelians) we are a nexus of body, desire, will, soul, and mind. So, veering into the personal has some justification given that we have chosen to side-step a recapitulation of Gilson's argument as a totality and in detail for the reasons given. This point is quite amusing. Gilson disliked the existentialists and wrote Being and Some Philosophers as a challenge to their views (in part), and yet we see that he does not overlook the importance of existence, in the existentialist sense, here.
Several points struck me as personally important. Firstly, Gilson's notion that novelty and originality, though important are incredibly rare. Plato and Aristotle did not quite get things right, and it was over 1,000 years before St Thomas Aquinas could discern the truth. He had the modesty to characterize this as him clarifying the truth already latent in Aristotle, Augustine, etc., and NOT as some original insight of his own. This is clearly in stark contrast to our own era in which every philosophical hack believes he has made some "original contribution" to truth. Gilson points out that metaphysics is difficult, as Aristotle pointed out, the most difficult subject matter. It remains so. Therefore, the problem is that the truth, when found, is easily forgotten, or overlooked. And this is the point of novelty (ironically) that struck me in the text, a challenge to the way of thinking in our own day. As Gilson puts it, and I paraphrase, the issue 'is not finding the truth but assenting to it once it is found.' For Gilson, the truth is just sitting there, in the works of Aquinas, waiting to be taken up. We do not need to wait for some present or future genius to show us the way, the way has been open for centuries. Here is an exact quote from page 30, "Thomas is the greatest among the few philosophers to whom it has been given to be new and right; if we cannot be new, let us at least be right." Food for thought in an age of immodest self-assertion.
Secondly, the role of error in philosophy. It is not clear who Gilson disliked more, pragmatists, existentialists, or Hegelians. He certainly saw Hegel as the greatest and most serious threat to Thomism. Hegel was a philosopher in the highest sense of the word for Gilson---the other two schools had simply not done their homework. Yet, he strikes a very Hegelian note here, one that Josiah Royce would make much of---that error is part and parcel of the truth, error is the path to truth rather than its polar opposite. "For a disciple of Thomas Aquinas the only way to destroy error IS TO SEE THROUGH IT, that is once more, to understand it qua error." (page 32, emphasis mine).
This point leads inexorably to the final one I wish to make. We must never fail to look for truth in the statements of our adversaries. To do this we must have a philosophical temperament. We must be at peace with ideas in a spirit of tolerant tranquility. We must avoid anger and ad hominem. We must realize that we are not always right even in our most passionate convictions. This point struck home very deeply, and personally. In all honesty, I am something of a "know-it-all," and I am very passionate about ideas and my beliefs. I often veer into a dogmatism and ad hominem attacks that I justify because of the evil that can clearly be discerned as ruling in this world. Evil that is usually founded upon unquestioned dogma, and received opinion. I need to work on having a more dispassionate attitude to philosophical questions. I am not sure I can with regard to political matters, and philosophy ultimately becomes political since it is about how we should live as a community, BUT I need to be aware of this Achilles heel and try to combat my tendency to philosophical rashness. This lesson alone made the text worth reading.
I commend this lecture, and Gilson's works generally to all. They are neglected works, and he was a unique and great man, a tireless scholar, and a modest, self-effacing genius.
Marquette University has had an annual lecture series, The Aquinas Lecture, and this is the text of the 1951 version. The lecturers were chosen by very high standards and I find these forgotten and neglected lectures fascinating and often enlightening. The reason for this is that the perspective of the lecturers, religious Roman Catholic philosophers ( usually, but not always, eg, Jewish philosopher Emil Fackenheim gave one) allow the reader to at least hear a different perspective.
Gilson opens the lecture in a fashion that foreshadows the work of Pierre Hadot. He points out that for the Ancients and Medievals philosophy was a way of life. In our era it has become a theoretical pursuit fully enmeshed in our system of "higher education" which is itself compromised by the domination of commerce and consumerism in our society. Gilson gets a good joke in at the outset. The Platonic Academy in Athens reportedly had a sign over the door, the gist of which was: "let no one pass this threshold who has not mastered mathematics." Gilson relates how he taught at a school at which students had to choose a very mathematical course of studies, or philosophy. He quips that "fear of mathematics was often the door to wisdom." Those of us who are humanities types, or "god damned English professors`' rather than "logical positivists" (a distinction made by Oxford's AJ Ayer I think) can appreciate this!
I think in this case, a "book" which is a published lecture numbering 39 pages, it is best NOT to review the argument made in detail. Why? The point should be to encourage people to read these forgotten texts and neglected authors for themselves, and to give the text some chance of reaching others. This might not be the case with a longer philosophical work, where the review is kind of a synopsis/ teaser. Instead, I will touch upon some ideas of Gilson's that struck me as either novel or relevant to me, personally. Why allow the personal to intrude? What could be less relevant than what strikes an unimportant reader as personally relevant? Well, the text is making the point that wisdom and love in Aquinas was a matter about the man, Thomas Aquinas. None of us are abstract intellects pursuing wisdom with love in a detached fashion. We are, in each case, the individual humans that we are trying to do this. As individuals we are more than our species being of "rational animal" (for Thomists and Aristotelians) we are a nexus of body, desire, will, soul, and mind. So, veering into the personal has some justification given that we have chosen to side-step a recapitulation of Gilson's argument as a totality and in detail for the reasons given. This point is quite amusing. Gilson disliked the existentialists and wrote Being and Some Philosophers as a challenge to their views (in part), and yet we see that he does not overlook the importance of existence, in the existentialist sense, here.
Several points struck me as personally important. Firstly, Gilson's notion that novelty and originality, though important are incredibly rare. Plato and Aristotle did not quite get things right, and it was over 1,000 years before St Thomas Aquinas could discern the truth. He had the modesty to characterize this as him clarifying the truth already latent in Aristotle, Augustine, etc., and NOT as some original insight of his own. This is clearly in stark contrast to our own era in which every philosophical hack believes he has made some "original contribution" to truth. Gilson points out that metaphysics is difficult, as Aristotle pointed out, the most difficult subject matter. It remains so. Therefore, the problem is that the truth, when found, is easily forgotten, or overlooked. And this is the point of novelty (ironically) that struck me in the text, a challenge to the way of thinking in our own day. As Gilson puts it, and I paraphrase, the issue 'is not finding the truth but assenting to it once it is found.' For Gilson, the truth is just sitting there, in the works of Aquinas, waiting to be taken up. We do not need to wait for some present or future genius to show us the way, the way has been open for centuries. Here is an exact quote from page 30, "Thomas is the greatest among the few philosophers to whom it has been given to be new and right; if we cannot be new, let us at least be right." Food for thought in an age of immodest self-assertion.
Secondly, the role of error in philosophy. It is not clear who Gilson disliked more, pragmatists, existentialists, or Hegelians. He certainly saw Hegel as the greatest and most serious threat to Thomism. Hegel was a philosopher in the highest sense of the word for Gilson---the other two schools had simply not done their homework. Yet, he strikes a very Hegelian note here, one that Josiah Royce would make much of---that error is part and parcel of the truth, error is the path to truth rather than its polar opposite. "For a disciple of Thomas Aquinas the only way to destroy error IS TO SEE THROUGH IT, that is once more, to understand it qua error." (page 32, emphasis mine).
This point leads inexorably to the final one I wish to make. We must never fail to look for truth in the statements of our adversaries. To do this we must have a philosophical temperament. We must be at peace with ideas in a spirit of tolerant tranquility. We must avoid anger and ad hominem. We must realize that we are not always right even in our most passionate convictions. This point struck home very deeply, and personally. In all honesty, I am something of a "know-it-all," and I am very passionate about ideas and my beliefs. I often veer into a dogmatism and ad hominem attacks that I justify because of the evil that can clearly be discerned as ruling in this world. Evil that is usually founded upon unquestioned dogma, and received opinion. I need to work on having a more dispassionate attitude to philosophical questions. I am not sure I can with regard to political matters, and philosophy ultimately becomes political since it is about how we should live as a community, BUT I need to be aware of this Achilles heel and try to combat my tendency to philosophical rashness. This lesson alone made the text worth reading.
I commend this lecture, and Gilson's works generally to all. They are neglected works, and he was a unique and great man, a tireless scholar, and a modest, self-effacing genius.
March 2, 2025
I’ve always loved the idea of a journey that doesn’t need an ending or a specific goal, and this book put that concept into words better than I ever could. Sometimes, hope is what makes us feel hopeless. Always hoping to reach a certain point, to become a certain person by a certain time, to finally “arrive.” But the real magic is in the climb itself.
That moment when you finally reach the top of a mountain and just feel overwhelmed, not because you made it, but because you loved every step, every leaf, every second along the way. Some people spend their whole lives just walking, never getting the perfect view at the end, and that’s still just as beautiful.
Also, I really liked Aquinas’ thoughts on temperance when it comes to listening to other people’s worldviews. No one is completely wrong, everything connects in some way, and we’re all just seeing different parts of the same truth. That whole idea really stuck with me.
A short, thoughtful, and really lovely read. Definitely recommend if you’re into philosophy or just like books that make you sit with your thoughts for a while.
That moment when you finally reach the top of a mountain and just feel overwhelmed, not because you made it, but because you loved every step, every leaf, every second along the way. Some people spend their whole lives just walking, never getting the perfect view at the end, and that’s still just as beautiful.
Also, I really liked Aquinas’ thoughts on temperance when it comes to listening to other people’s worldviews. No one is completely wrong, everything connects in some way, and we’re all just seeing different parts of the same truth. That whole idea really stuck with me.
A short, thoughtful, and really lovely read. Definitely recommend if you’re into philosophy or just like books that make you sit with your thoughts for a while.
February 15, 2008
Gilson argues that to be a Thomist is to love the pursuit of truth for truth's own sake. Using Thomistic logic, we are most wise when we are pursuing our ultimate end. According to Gilson, our greatest end is the knowledge of God (or absolute truth), so the wise person will live a life of contemplation in pursuit of truth. There is little specifically Christian in Gilson's notion of human beatitude. He substitutes love of wisdom for love of God, justifying this substitution by noting that for Thomas Jesus Christ is the pinnacle of wisdom. I think that Gilson takes one strain in Thomas's thought--valuing contemplation (theology and philosophy) as greater than action (practical ethics and technical aptitude)--and runs too far with it in a primarily philosophical direction, which gives a skewed portrait of Thomas. Even so, the book is worth reading and contains many thought-provoking nuggets.
June 19, 2025
A beautiful little essay on the dispositions and motives that all theologians and philosophers should aspire to. The anecdote near the end sharing that Saint Thomas Aquinas was most remembered from his time in university as someone whose default stance was to listen deeply before anything else is formative.
July 5, 2024
Libro corto y que toca el corazón de todos aquellos que quieren dedicar su vida a la sabiduría
September 14, 2024
What a beautiful little essay.
November 26, 2013
A short but marvelous little philosophical book about the Love of Wisdom, and its place in the thought of Thomas Aquinas.
April 24, 2019
Saint Thomas and the division between intellect and will have a lot to teach still in our times. To will (voluntas) come from the same indo European root, *wehn that means “to choose”. What do you choose? And what you choose affects the intellect, the intellect doesn’t go along with all the knowledge, the will defines what is to know, how long to go with the knowledge. Is extremely important this distinction because the machines surely have a lot of knowledge, but the will? The machines could really choose? Because choose is to choose in the open, to choose in the contingent, but machines are created for regularities, for necessity, to do the same, and if a machine can work under uncertainty is going to choose according its limitations, it’s not open to chaos, to randomness, the will is forged on randomness, is the son of the random, a lot of think of this book.
December 30, 2025
Etienne Gilson In Milwaukee -- 2
"Wisdom and Love in Saint Thomas Aquinas" (1951) is the text of the second of two lectures that the great scholar of Medieval philosophy, Etienne Gilson (1884 -- 1978) delivered as the annual Aquinas Lecture presented by the Philosophy Department of Marquette University, Milwaukee. Gilson delivered his first Aquinas Lecture, "History of Philosophy and Philosophical Education" in 1947, and I have reviewed it here earlier. I have learned a great deal from Gilson's two lectures, particularly as they involve understanding philosophy as a way of life more than a subject to be taught and learned in a classroom. The return to an understanding of philosophy as a way of life is associated with Gilson and with a later French philosopher, Pierre Hadot (1922 --2010).
Gilson's short, eloquent 40-page lecture explores the traditional definition of philosophy as the love of wisdom. Gilson argues that both wisdom and love are central to the thought of his philosophical master, Aquinas, and more generally to philosophy. Gilson develops the role of wisdom and love in philosophy in his lecture. arguing that they are both essential and cannot be separated. Wisdom is a matter for the intellect and, for Gilson, is a study of first things and first principles, both beginning and ending with Being. But study and learning, no matter how full, would be useless without the love of wisdom, the purpose and meaning that drives the work of the seeker of wisdom. This is love, with Gilson also equates with the concept of will in Augustine. The thought of Thomas, and the understanding of philosophy, requires both wisdom and love. It requires, Gilson argues, a complete lifelong dedication in the seeker which is rare.
Aquinas taught that contemplation was the highest form of wisdom, but Gilson points out as well the great active labor necessary to aquire wisdom and to set it down in writing. Gilson insists that the virtues of contemplation are not meritorious in themselves. Rather, "charity, justice, and the other moral virtues are required in order to make the speculative virtues to be meritorious by conferring on us the right use of their acts." Gilson argues that love/will give direction to man in determining the studies to be purused and in putting together the result of studies to reach a conclusion. Even in the sciences, for Gilson, "there are many reasons why at the hour of decision, the assent of an intellect should require the consent of the will."
Philosophy and metaphysics, the nature of being, have, for Gilson proven much more difficult and intractible than the sciences, as witnessed, for example, by the many competing interpretations of Aquinas and Aristotle by scholars. The wisest of metaphysicians "bide their time" and reach conclusions only when they have to by the shortness of life A philosopher is a "lover of wisdom" as Pythagoras and Socrates both realized because "however much a man may try to achieve wisdom, he is always presumptuous in saying that he has achieved it. A true philosopher is but a man who loves wisdom for its own sake because to love it for the sake of something else is to be a lover, not of wisdom, but of something else."
In the last pages of his lecture, Gilson stressed the duty of the philosopher to look for the truth and to try to see things as they are. This search requires a certain kind of mind and emotion rooted in tranquility. The philosopher, as Gilson finds Aquinas did, must welcome all expressions of philosophical position and not brush them aside or "refute' them but instead find the kernel of what is worthwhile in the positions with which one disagrees. The seeker of wisdom will attempt to find what is of value in ideas expressed, by both opponents and supporters and even with a philosopher one loves, such as Aquinas in Gilson's own case, will look for the truth of the position expressed rather than for the love and respect for the speaker. Also, in the event a particular position appears obscure or difficult to grasp, after study, it is the part of wisdom to admit the limitations of intellect. Human beings are imperfect, limited creatures and a large degree of humility, a trait different from skepticism, is of crucial importance in the search for wisdom.
Gilson concludes his lecture with a reference to the study of Aquinas:
"Intellectual life, then, is 'intellectual' because it is knowledge, but it is 'life' because it is love. Unless we be among the few who wish to undergo such a life-long labor for the mere love of knowledge, we may well be brilliant students, great professors, or even scholars thoroughly versed in the knowledge of Thomism: but we will not even have begun to become true disciplines of Thomas Aquinas."
I have studied philosophy for much of my life and was inspired by this lecture of Gilson and by his earlier lecture. I first studied philosophy in Milwaukee and was also inspired to see Gilson sharing his wisdom in Milwaukee and contributing to the intellectual life of my old home town.
Robin Friedman
"Wisdom and Love in Saint Thomas Aquinas" (1951) is the text of the second of two lectures that the great scholar of Medieval philosophy, Etienne Gilson (1884 -- 1978) delivered as the annual Aquinas Lecture presented by the Philosophy Department of Marquette University, Milwaukee. Gilson delivered his first Aquinas Lecture, "History of Philosophy and Philosophical Education" in 1947, and I have reviewed it here earlier. I have learned a great deal from Gilson's two lectures, particularly as they involve understanding philosophy as a way of life more than a subject to be taught and learned in a classroom. The return to an understanding of philosophy as a way of life is associated with Gilson and with a later French philosopher, Pierre Hadot (1922 --2010).
Gilson's short, eloquent 40-page lecture explores the traditional definition of philosophy as the love of wisdom. Gilson argues that both wisdom and love are central to the thought of his philosophical master, Aquinas, and more generally to philosophy. Gilson develops the role of wisdom and love in philosophy in his lecture. arguing that they are both essential and cannot be separated. Wisdom is a matter for the intellect and, for Gilson, is a study of first things and first principles, both beginning and ending with Being. But study and learning, no matter how full, would be useless without the love of wisdom, the purpose and meaning that drives the work of the seeker of wisdom. This is love, with Gilson also equates with the concept of will in Augustine. The thought of Thomas, and the understanding of philosophy, requires both wisdom and love. It requires, Gilson argues, a complete lifelong dedication in the seeker which is rare.
Aquinas taught that contemplation was the highest form of wisdom, but Gilson points out as well the great active labor necessary to aquire wisdom and to set it down in writing. Gilson insists that the virtues of contemplation are not meritorious in themselves. Rather, "charity, justice, and the other moral virtues are required in order to make the speculative virtues to be meritorious by conferring on us the right use of their acts." Gilson argues that love/will give direction to man in determining the studies to be purused and in putting together the result of studies to reach a conclusion. Even in the sciences, for Gilson, "there are many reasons why at the hour of decision, the assent of an intellect should require the consent of the will."
Philosophy and metaphysics, the nature of being, have, for Gilson proven much more difficult and intractible than the sciences, as witnessed, for example, by the many competing interpretations of Aquinas and Aristotle by scholars. The wisest of metaphysicians "bide their time" and reach conclusions only when they have to by the shortness of life A philosopher is a "lover of wisdom" as Pythagoras and Socrates both realized because "however much a man may try to achieve wisdom, he is always presumptuous in saying that he has achieved it. A true philosopher is but a man who loves wisdom for its own sake because to love it for the sake of something else is to be a lover, not of wisdom, but of something else."
In the last pages of his lecture, Gilson stressed the duty of the philosopher to look for the truth and to try to see things as they are. This search requires a certain kind of mind and emotion rooted in tranquility. The philosopher, as Gilson finds Aquinas did, must welcome all expressions of philosophical position and not brush them aside or "refute' them but instead find the kernel of what is worthwhile in the positions with which one disagrees. The seeker of wisdom will attempt to find what is of value in ideas expressed, by both opponents and supporters and even with a philosopher one loves, such as Aquinas in Gilson's own case, will look for the truth of the position expressed rather than for the love and respect for the speaker. Also, in the event a particular position appears obscure or difficult to grasp, after study, it is the part of wisdom to admit the limitations of intellect. Human beings are imperfect, limited creatures and a large degree of humility, a trait different from skepticism, is of crucial importance in the search for wisdom.
Gilson concludes his lecture with a reference to the study of Aquinas:
"Intellectual life, then, is 'intellectual' because it is knowledge, but it is 'life' because it is love. Unless we be among the few who wish to undergo such a life-long labor for the mere love of knowledge, we may well be brilliant students, great professors, or even scholars thoroughly versed in the knowledge of Thomism: but we will not even have begun to become true disciplines of Thomas Aquinas."
I have studied philosophy for much of my life and was inspired by this lecture of Gilson and by his earlier lecture. I first studied philosophy in Milwaukee and was also inspired to see Gilson sharing his wisdom in Milwaukee and contributing to the intellectual life of my old home town.
Robin Friedman
March 23, 2022
Con la genialidad acostumbrada, Gilson nos recuerda que, también en lo que respecta a la razón, Cristo no ha venido a abolir la ley, sino a darle cumplimiento. Y, si Cristo es la sabiduría del cristiano, solo una búsqueda rigurosa de la verdad, movida por un amor igualmente puro, permite acercarse, en el plano filosófico, a esa auténtica sabiduría.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews