He studied Russian in a prisoner-of-war camp, then remade medieval philosophy
Étienne Gilson began as a Descartes specialist, fought at Verdun, spent two years as a prisoner learning Russian and reading Bonaventure, and went on to found a medieval studies institute in Toronto. He argued that Thomas Aquinas was a rebel against dry scholasticism, not its champion.
Born in Paris on 13 June 1884 to a Catholic family with Burgundian roots, Gilson attended a minor seminary and then the Lycee Henri IV. Military service introduced him to Rene Descartes, and his degree work traced how scholastic ideas had shaped Cartesian thought. At the Sorbonne he studied under Victor Delbos and Lucien Levy-Bruhl, and at the College de France under Henri Bergson, graduating in philosophy in 1906. After marrying Therese Ravise of Melun in 1908 and teaching at a string of provincial high schools, he defended a doctorate in 1913 on liberty in Descartes and theology.
The First World War interrupted everything. Drafted as a sergeant, he fought at Verdun as a second lieutenant, was captured in February 1916 and held for two years, time he used to learn Russian and study St Bonaventure. He later received the Croix de Guerre for bravery.
Peace brought a rapid academic rise: a chair in the history of philosophy at Strasbourg in 1919, then medieval philosophy at the University of Paris from 1921 to 1932. In 1929, invited by the Basilian fathers, he set up the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto with St Michael's College, which still hosts an annual lecture in his name. He also taught at Harvard and Indiana, and in 1946 was elected one of the Immortals of the Academie francaise. His wife's death in November 1949 hit him hard, and in 1951 he gave up his College de France chair to Martial Gueroult so he could devote himself to Toronto until 1968. He died on 19 September 1978.
Gilson considered himself a historian first and refused the label neo-Thomist, yet alongside Jacques Maritain he led the 20th century revival of Aquinas. His reading was historical: true Thomism, he held, was a revolt against scholasticism in its narrow, pejorative sense. He feared modern philosophy was surrendering humanity's claim to judge and govern nature, shrinking people into mere parts of it and opening the door to reckless social experiments, and he saw a return to Aquinas as the escape. A society founded in 2009 now promotes his thought through the journal Studia Gilsoniana.
Source: Étienne Gilson
