Etienne Gilson 1884 – 1978

Etienne Gilson was a French philosopher and historian of philosophy, the leading figure of twentieth-century neo-Thomism. He devoted his career to recovering medieval philosophy as a serious philosophical interlocutor and not merely as a historical curiosity, producing monographs on Augustine, Anselm, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Bernard of Clairvaux. He held chairs at the College de France and at Toronto, where he was a co-founder of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. His Gifford Lectures, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, defined a generation of Catholic philosophical thought.