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The ‘Chosisme’ of Étienne Gilson and Marie-Dominique Chenu

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Abstract

Francesca Murphy reads Étienne Gilson’s and Marie-Dominique Chenu’s approach to the thought of Thomas Aquinas as a kind of ‘chosisme’, or ‘thingism’—a predilection for facts rather than philosophical abstraction or knowledge of essences as the basis for realism. The basis of philosophical realism, for Gilson, is the ‘fact’ of existence, which cannot be derived from knowledge of essences. In any event, the order of Thomas’ thought did not derive from an ideal logical or essential order, but from the historical fact of the incarnation. For that reason, Thomas’ Summa theologiae does not begin with logic and metaphysics, but with theology, the facts of salvation history. Neither did Thomas regard Aristotelian philosophy, or Aristotle’s notion of ‘nature’, as a static ideal system, but as a still-living act of thinking capable of undergoing creative evolution once inside the mind of a Christian theologian. The philosophy of Saint Thomas, then, is not a once-and-for-all catalogue of propositions about essences, but an expression of a spirituality, a response to the fact of the incarnation. This approach on Thomas’s thought both drew inspiration from, and exerted significant influence upon, the just-emerging discipline of scientific study of medieval texts. Professor Murphy narrates the confrontation of Gilson’s and Chenu’s retrieval of Thomas with neo-Thomism in compelling historical detail by drawing widely from Chenu and Gilson’s letters and texts.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The most prolonged and detailed description of the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Neo-Thomism is Georges Van Riet, Thomistic Epistemology: Studies Concerning the Problem of Cognition in the Contemporary Thomistic School, 2 vols., trans. Gabriel Franks, Donald G. McCarthy and George E. Hertrich (St Louis: B. Herder Books, 1963–1964; French 1946).

  2. 2.

    Marie-Dominique Chenu, ‘L’interprète de Saint Thomas d’Aquin’, in Étienne Gilson et nous: la philosophie et son histoire, ed., Monique Couratier (Paris: J. Vrin, 1980), p. 44.

  3. 3.

    Étienne Gilson, Introduction au système de S. Thomas D’Aquin (Strasbourg: A Vix, 1919), p. 24. Gilson’s first book on Aquinas was delivered as lectures in the University of Lille, in 1913; half of them had been published in the Revue des cours et conférences, in 1914, before the Great War put an end to such academic ventures. After the war, the whole text was published at Strasbourg, where Gilson was then teaching.

  4. 4.

    Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P., Aquinas and His Role in Theology, trans. Paul Philibert O.P. (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2002), p. 45; French, Thomas d’Aquin et la théologie, Maîtres Spirituels (Paris: Seuil, 1959).

  5. 5.

    Gilson to Marie-Dominique Chenu, 27 February 1942, in the Saulchoir archives, Saint-Jacques, Paris. ‘Une Sélection des Lettres entre Marie-Dominique Chenu et Étienne Gilson’, edited and annotated by Francesca Aran Murphy, Revue Thomiste 105 (Janvier-Mars 2005): pp. 25–86; here, pp. 50–51.

  6. 6.

    Étienne Gilson, ‘Note sur un texte de S. Thomas’, Revue Thomiste 54 (1954): pp. 148–152; reprinted in Autour de saint Thomas, ed. Jean-Francois Courtine (Paris: J. Vrin, 1983), pp. 35–40; here, p. 39.

  7. 7.

    Étienne Gilson, Le thomisme: introduction au système de saint Thomas d’Aquin, 3rd ed., revised and augmented (Paris: J. Vrin, 1927), p. 39.

  8. 8.

    Étienne Gilson, Le philosophe et la théologie (Paris: Librarie Arthème Fayard, 1960), p. 23.

  9. 9.

    Marie Dominique Chenu, Jacques Duquesne interroge le père Chenu: Un théologien en liberté (Paris: Le Centurion, 1975), p. 27.

  10. 10.

    Ibid., p. 44.

  11. 11.

    Marie Dominique Chenu, Une école de théologie: le Saulchoir (1937; reprint, edited by Giuseppe Alberigo [Paris: éditions du Cerf, 1985]), p. 119.

  12. 12.

    Gilson, Le philosophe et la théologie, p. 54.

  13. 13.

    Géry Prouvost, ‘Les relations entre philosophie et théologie chez E. Gilson et les thomistes contemporains’, Revue Thomiste 94, no. 3 (July–September 1994): pp. 413–430; here, p. 418.

  14. 14.

    Étienne Gilson quotes Sanseverino saying this in ‘Les principes et les causes’, Revue Thomiste 52 (1952): pp. 39–63; revised version published as Chapter II of the posthumous Constantes philosophiques de l’être (Paris: Vrin, 1984), pp. 53–84; see p. 59.

  15. 15.

    For a general statement, see Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, God: His Existence and His Nature. A Thomistic Solution of Certain Agnostic Antinomies, trans. from the fifth French edition by Dom Bede Rose, O.S.B. (French, 1914; English, St Louis, Mo.: B. Herder, 1939), pp. 117–118. Much of God: His Nature and Existence is reproduced verbatim from Garrigou’s Le sens commun: le philosophe de l’être et les formules dogmatiques (Paris: Nouvelle Librairie Nationale, 1909, 1922). For the specific critique of Bergson, see Le sens commun, chapter one, section three: ‘Conséquences du nominalisme bergsonien: Négation de la raison et de la valeur objective du principe de non-contradiction’. The tone of Garrigou’s Thomism is of course unique to his era; one may wonder, however, whether the persistent interest of analytic philosophy of religion, including analytic Thomism, in logic and ‘possible worlds theory’ constitutes any advance or change on Baroque scholasticism.

  16. 16.

    Étienne Fouilloux, Une Église en quête de liberté: La pensée catholique française entre modernisme et Vatican II: 1914–1926 (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1988), p. 51

  17. 17.

    Chenu, in Jacques Duquesne interroge le père Chenu, p. 38.

  18. 18.

    Gilson, Le philosophe et la théologie, pp. 102–103.

  19. 19.

    Étienne Gilson, La philosophie de saint Bonaventure (Paris: J. Vrin, 1924), p. 69.

  20. 20.

    L. Lévy-Bruhl, Ethics and Moral Science, trans. Elizabeth Lee (French: 1903; English, London: Archibald Constable & Co. Ltd., 1905), p. 80.

  21. 21.

    According to Lawrence Shook, Gilson called La morale et la science des moeurs an ‘almost incredible book’: Laurence K. Shook C.S.B., Étienne Gilson (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984), p. 11. At its publication, in 1903, the Louvain Thomist Simon Deploige began a campaign against the book, which Maritain was still pushing on with in 1923.

  22. 22.

    Gilson, Le philosophe et la théologie, pp. 31–33.

  23. 23.

    Étienne Gilson, God and Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941, 1955), p. xiii.

  24. 24.

    Lévy-Bruhl, Ethics and Moral Science, p. 21.

  25. 25.

    Pierre Mandonnet, O.P., ‘Le Thomisme: Introduction au système de S. Thomas d’Aquin par É. Gilson, 1923’, Le Saulchoir, Bulletin Thomiste I (1924–6): pp. 132–136; see, p. 136.

  26. 26.

    Fouilloux, Une Église en quête de liberté, pp. 127–128.

  27. 27.

    Mandonnet, Le Thomisme, p. 135.

  28. 28.

    Chenu to Étienne Gilson, 5 November, 1923, in the Saulchoir Archives, Saint Jacques, Paris, filed under Correspondence: Étienne Gilson à M.-D. Chenu / Chenu à Gilson.

  29. 29.

    Marie-Dominique Chenu, ‘É. Gilson, Le Thomisme. Introduction au système de S. Thomas d’Aquin’, Bulletin Thomiste 2 (January 1928), pp. 242–245; p. 244.

  30. 30.

    So, for instance, in reference to the defence of ‘Christian philosophy’, in Gilson’s The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy (1932), Chenu pointed out that this phrase only came into existence in 1535–8, when it was first used by Javelli. See Marie-Dominique Chenu, ‘Note pour l’histoire de la notion de philosophie chrétienne’, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques (1932, vol. 21), pp. 231–5. Chenu would later call The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, ‘Gilson’s most beautiful book’: See Chenu’s ‘L’interprète de Saint Thomas d’Aquin’, p. 45. The Spirit is, I think, the work of Gilson’s to which Chenu refers the most often, and the most affectionately.

  31. 31.

    Fouilloux, Une Église en quête de liberté, p. 153.

  32. 32.

    Marie Dominique Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, trans. A.-M. Landry, O.P. and D. Hughes, O.P. (English: Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1963); French: Introduction à l’étude de Saint Thomas d’Aquin, 1950), citing É. Gilson, ‘Le Moyen Age et le naturalisme antique’, leçon d’ouverture du cours d’histoire de la philosophie au Moyen Age, au Collège de France, in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge, VII (1932), pp. 5–37; here, p. 35. The whole lecture is accessible as an appendix to Gilson’s Héloise et Abélard (Paris: J. Vrin, 1938).

  33. 33.

    Marie-Dominique Chenu, ‘Position de la théologie’, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques (1935); reprinted in Chenu, La parole de Dieu: La foi dans l’intelligence (Paris: Cerf, 1964), pp. 115–137; here, pp. 134–135, citing Gilson, ‘Le Moyen Age et le naturalisme antique’.

  34. 34.

    Chenu, ‘Position de la théologie’, p. 128.

  35. 35.

    Gilson to Marie-Dominique Chenu, 29 April 1936, in the Saulchoir archives, Saint Jacques, Paris. This is the same letter in which he asks for an ‘imprimatur’.

  36. 36.

    Chenu, ‘Position de la théologie’, p. 129.

  37. 37.

    Chenu, Une école de théologie: le Saulchoir, p. 124.

  38. 38.

    Chenu, ibid., p. 136.

  39. 39.

    This theme in Chenu’s theology is brought to the fore by Christophe Potworowski, in Contemplation and Incarnation: The Theology of Marie-Dominique Chenu (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001).

  40. 40.

    Chenu, Une école de théologie: le Saulchoir, p. 144.

  41. 41.

    Ibid., pp. 148–9.

  42. 42.

    Ibid., p. 148.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., pp. 153 and 157.

  44. 44.

    The ten propositions which Chenu was required to sign in 1938 are set out in R. Guelluy, ‘Les Antécédents de l’Encyclique Humani Generis dans les sanctions romaines de 1942: Chenu, Charlier, Draguet’, Revue D’histoire Ecclesiastique, vol. 81 (1986): pp. 421–497; see pp. 461–462. There is also a facsimile in Chenu’s Une école de théologie: Le Saulchoir, p. 35. This 1985 reprint of Une école contains a number of helpful historical essays about the pamphlet, by Giuseppe Alberigo, Étienne Gouilloux, Jean Ladrière and Jean-Pierre Joshua.

  45. 45.

    Gilson to Marie-Dominique Chenu, 27 February 1942, in ‘Une Sélection des Lettres’, pp. 50–51. On receiving the news from Chenu, Gilson wrote to him twice in two days; this is the second one, written after he had re-read Une école. Both Gilson and Maritain made sustained efforts to get the ban on Chenu’s teaching lifted; these were unsuccessful.

  46. 46.

    Yves Congar records his 1954 discussion of the passage with Browne in Journal d’un théologien: 1946–1956 (Paris: Cerf, 2000), pp. 330–331.

  47. 47.

    L. Lévy-Bruhl Ethics and Moral Science, p. 161.

  48. 48.

    Ibid., p. 162.

  49. 49.

    Gilson, God and Philosophy, p. 107. I owe my noticing this quotation to Paul Molnar’s reference to it, in Divine Freedom and the Doctrine of the Immanent Trinity: In Dialogue with Karl Barth and Contemporary Theology (London/New York: T&T Clark / Continuum, 2002).

  50. 50.

    Gilson to Marie-Dominique Chenu, 5 February 1942, in the Saulchoir archives, Saint Jacques, Paris.

  51. 51.

    Ibid.

  52. 52.

    Chenu to Étienne Gilson, 4 February, 1942, in the Saulchoir archives, Saint Jacques, Paris.

  53. 53.

    Gilson is remarking adversely on Cajetan’s adage, semper formalissime loquitur Divus Thomas; see Le Thomisme: Introduction à la philosophie de saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Vrin, 1942, 1944, fifth edition); English, The Christian Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, trans. Lawrence K Shook (London: Victor Gollancz, 1961), p. 11. Chenu comments in the same vein on Cajetan’s formula, in Towards Understanding Saint Thomas, pp. 117–121: ‘With his formaliter, Cajetan gave us only one side of Saint Thomas’ (p. 121).

  54. 54.

    Gilson’s 1931–1932 Gifford lectures, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy, which is not a history book but an historical defence of the principle that Christian philosophy can and does exist, begin to articulate this theme. But I think the first use of the phrase ‘metaphysics of the Exodus’ is in Gilson’s L’être et l’essence (Paris: J. Vrin, 1948), p. 291.

  55. 55.

    Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, p. 60.

  56. 56.

    Ibid., p. 99.

  57. 57.

    Ibid., p. 309.

  58. 58.

    Potworowski, Contemplation and Incarnation, pp. 207–213 and 229, citing numerous critiques of Chenu on this point. In my recollection, Hans Urs von Balthasar also levels the same accusation.

  59. 59.

    Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, p. 307.

  60. 60.

    Ibid., pp. 188–191; Chenu, Aquinas’ Role in Theology, pp. 85–89.

  61. 61.

    Chenu, Toward Understanding Saint Thomas, p. 165.

  62. 62.

    Ibid., p. 178.

  63. 63.

    Ibid., p. 179.

  64. 64.

    Ibid, p. 165.

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  1. University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA

    Francesca Aran Murphy

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  1. Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Budapest, Hungary

    Balázs M. Mezei

  2. University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA

    Matthew Z. Vale

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Murphy, F.A. (2019). The ‘Chosisme’ of Étienne Gilson and Marie-Dominique Chenu. In: Mezei, B., Vale, M. (eds) Philosophies of Christianity. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 31. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22632-9_9

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