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The Unity of Philosophical Experience

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This book is part history of philosophy, part history of philosophizing, and -- and its own way -- part introduction to philosophy. In so doing, Etienne Gilson shows the "unity of philosophical experience" through a study of important philosophers.

Etienne Gilson was one of the greatest historians of philosophy in the 20th century. His brilliance shows throughout this work and so much could be quoted. For example: "As soon as Descartes published it, it became apparent that, like Caesar's wife, the existence of the world should be above suspicion . . . . Descartes had endeavored to prove something that could not be proved, not beacause it is not true, but on the contrary, beacause it is evident." (p. 146.)

If you are new to the study of philosophy, get this book for an introduction; if you are familiar with philosophy, this is a great "refresher course."

Lectures given by Etienne Gilson in 1936 at Harvard. Gilson defines the coming war, World War II, as a philosophical war of two different heads of Hegelianism. Communism, which is inspired by a look forward, into what will be, and helping it along (all conjecture of course); and the Hitlarian (Romantic) looking to the past. Thus Hitler's paganism and his desire to rid Europe of all nonindigionious elements, especially Semetic. Christianity, after all, is a conquering force upon the natural purity and indigoniousness of Europe. It is a glorification of what man, or more importantly, a nation (peoples) would be had they been left in their natural state uncorupted by foreign elements. A Darwinian, Rousousian, Kantian mix (among others) that created the ultranationalistic Romanticism. Gilson defines these misguided principles (still the dominant principles of today) as leading to a future tragic bloody war. But it also explains why Japan, in WWII, wished to be rid of Americanism in their culture, and of any foreign influences. Anyway it leads to extreme nationalism that is just an end result of Romanticism. The problems with defining the truth of Hitler to modern minds is we are not far removed from the thesis and antithesis of his metaphyiscal plain.

The most important thesis of the book, however, is Gilson's defense that philosophy and more importantly metaphysics is a process and not a conclusion. Once one has made metaphysics a conclusion it ceases to be Metaphysics. Metaphyics can supose a greater truth, like an octagon being closer to a circle than a hexagon, but to incompus all truth is at least a human impossibility. However there have been many cycles in the history were postulations of a "metaphysical" entirety of truth have lead to philosophical cycles of argumentation, sometimes with real physical consequences. These cycles have turned into philosophical battles between true metaphyics and the false. The most recent false metaphicans have been Hegel, Kant, Carte, Hume, Descartes, and William of Ockham, plus their various disciples. The first cycle, Gilson defines, is that of Thales, 2,600 years ago, claiming all is an absolute of everything being air, followed by Anaximenes claiming everything was not air but water, and then Heraclitus caliming all is fire, then the first synthasis of this absurdity was Anaxaimander saying that the common things of all this stuff was indeterminable.

Gilson spends most of his effort, 99% of it, in defining the modern and medieaval cycles of metaphysical certatude and the resulting problems. Any summary of it would not do it justice.

The importance of this book to historians and pilosophers and historians of philosophy is immense. I don't know of any other book which so vividly paints a picture of modern thinking and how "it" got here than this book. Although I must admit I got hopelessly lost in the discriptions of Descarte's postulations, but the thesis of Descartes was made clear. One could go on forever about this book it is a cornicopia of ideas for further study and expansion. Highly recommended for any student of history or philosophy. Gilson brings a view that cannot be ignored. The question I have for Gilson, if I could ask it, is does Gilson agree that error illuminates the truth, as Aquinas did, and further, if error is good.

Gilson convincingly argues that there is unity to the philosophical experience and this experience is illuminating on the nature of man and perhaps more.

After almost missing brilliant Stanley Jaki, Benedictine priest, physicist, and consummate philosopher/historian of science because of his Catholicism; I smartened up. You wouldn't want to miss Einstein or Bertrand Russell either, would you? Okay, ditto for Jaki and Gilson. It was Stanley Jaki who sent me on to Gilson. I am a very fallen away Catholic with all the attendant hostilities, but I learned plenty from Gilson's The Unity of Philosophical Experience. Whatever your persuasions; if you respect intelligenge, methodical realism, and honesty, Jaki and Gilson are well worth your time.

Gilson's work is composed of four parts. In each of the first three parts he explores the advent and demise of a philosophical system (the Medieval experiment, the Cartesian experiment, the Modern experiment) and identifies the recurring fatal attribute contained in each: the application of a particular science (logic, mathematics, science respectively) to the investigation of first principles. The successive failures of these systems has led to the "natural" but not "logical" modern conclusion that metaphysics is impossible. Gilson rejoins that simply because no one has ever succeeded in forming a complete metaphysical system that "explains" all reality doesn't spell the death of metaphysics. Such an enterprise isn't the goal of metaphysics to begin with, and anyone attempting such an undertaking is doomed before he starts. One cannot start with a method and attempt to encapsulate being since being is inexhaustible. Rather, one must start with being and work his way out. As Gilson observes, "Man is not a mind that thinks, but a being who knows other beings as true, who loves them as good, and who enjoys them as beautiful." The metaphysician must accept being a priori and interpret it anew for each generation. Metaphysics is not dead or static, but alive and as new as each succeeding moment. The nihilism which marks the present age is the result of systems imposing themselves upon being which results in frustration and emptiness. It is only when one allows being to reveal itself to us that any meaning can be derived from existence.

Not too many books in philosophy or about philosophy deserve to be called delightful, but this is one such book. Originally delivered as lectures--and that's when philosophers are at their best--this work is part history of philosophy, part criticism, part positive doctrine. What Gilson succeeds doing better than most is writing a story of Medieval and modern philosophy. A single narrative that weaves through the various thematic threads and keeps them all in sight. We learn about the continuity of thought and what specific concerns a philosopher had with his predecessors. In Medieval philosophy, he concentrates on later and more obscure thinkers. He spends a lot of time--too much--on Descartes, laying out and paraphrasing his method and reactions to it.

There's a pattern in the history of philosophy. A pattern of error. One philosopher's enthusiastic and idealistic doctrine will be taken by his followers to its ultimate conclusions, which then leads invariably to skepticism. The way out of skepticism has been mysticism or moralism. The book lays out how this happens in Medieval times, with Descartes, and in Modern philosophy after Descartes. He does not focus much on mysticism because that pertains to religion more than philosophy.

He concludes his book by telling us how all these philosophers have erred- repeatedly. And in doing so he gives us the guidelines, the principles, of what a philosopher would have to do in order to avoid repeating the same error again. Such a philosophy would not be devoid of metaphysics, on the contrary, it would be a metaphysics that does not begin by trying to emulate an external method of one of the sciences and thus is not subject to the inexorable reductive degeneration into that science--a degeneration that often not just destroys philosophy, but the science as well.

There's a lot here to be learned. The book is very clear and concise and gets to the main ideas of the thinkers it discusses. And it is also very readable. It is a quick read that can be easily accomplished, no preparation--mental or otherwise--is needed. It is at times humorous. It is not very thought-provoking though. Despite dealing with metaphysics, it's not deep, and you won't get lost in it due to overconcentration.

Some criticisms: most philosophers are rather parochial. Gilson is no exception. For the most part, his philosophical universe is populated by Frenchmen. His positive teachings occupy perhaps 7 pages or so. I would have been interested in reading more about it. Aquinas is notoriously absent, unless it was assumed that his audience knew him already. Gilson mentiones him often and in glowing terms but he never tells us what Aquinas is all about.

I found this little book a quarter of a century ago. I have never seen it since, but I've never forgotten it. What Gilson has to say here is simple, sane, important and exciting and just really fun to read. And sturdy too. It holds up. A reviewer below said that he was thrilled to see this is back in print. Well, so am I.

This book is a deceptively light read. Gilson's writing is so clear that it's easy to miss the profundity of it.
Just as he compares the history of philosophy to a scientist's laboratory, I'd like to compare this book to a science class. That is to say, do your homework. When a teacher explains things in class, everything makes perfect sense, but unless you take what the teacher said and see how it applies to different situations, you won't learn very much.
This book is great, but I wouldn't recommend reading it unless you have time to really think about the things he says. Of course reading it quickly won't hurt, but just like you wouldn't chug a bottle of fine wine, save this one for when you've got time to really appreciate it.
One more thing I'd like to mention is how impressed I was by his ability to show the greatest respect to philosophers of previous ages even while he explained why their ideas are hopelessly mistaken.

This is a good book. However, it's not the best book ever written on the history of philosophy. For one thing, the focus is mostly on metaphysics, which is only one branch of philosophy. Further, I teach introduction to philosophy and I think this would be a difficult introduction to the subject for the average college freshman. Having some background knowledge of philosophy definitely helps while reading.

That being said, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of philosophy, philosophy of science, or metaphysics. The writing is lively, engaging, interesting, at times humorous, and extremely quotable. For example, it is in this work that Gilson comments that philosophy always buries its undertakers.

This quote is actually at the heart of his thesis. Gilson shows how metaphysics goes through cycles, always culminating in a philosopher thinking he's solved all the problems of philosophy and the discipline is now dead. Yet, it always turns out things are never that simple. To explore this idea, Gilson goes through several iterations of this cycle throughout history and shows how the same problems keep creeping up. He also draws a parallel with how we handle metaphysics and how we handle science, and the ways in which the two disciplines need one another. In the final section, he lays out several laws of metaphysics that he has derived from the observations he makes of the history of philosophy.

I was thrilled that this work is back in print. It is a valuable and, indeed, essential book for any library of a philosopher, historian, or serious scholar. Gilson's book, taken from a series of "lectures" is highly-readable and is philosophically sound. His critique of P. Abailard is accurate.

When Etienne Gilson looked at the history of philosophy he saw a cycle repeated numerous times. To put it entirely too briefly, a new philosophical movement arises out of skepticism, but is corrupted into some form of idealism before plunging back into skepticism and again requiring rescue. In The Unity of Philosophical Experience, Gilson describes that process and follows it through three different periods--or "experiments"--in the history of philosophy.

The problem propelling the cycle is essentially a category error, in which philosophers attempt to "do" philosophy according to the rules of some other discipline. As C.S. Lewis put it in The Discarded Image, "Aristotle had impressed on all who followed him the distinction between disciplines and the propriety of following in each its appropriate method." Failure to do so inevitably leads to a "breakdown," resulting in skepticism.

So, for instance, as Gilson first examines "The Medieval Experiment" he shows how Abelard and Ockham undermined the philosophy revived by Aquinas and led to the skepticism of the late Middle Ages/Renaissance. Against that skepticism came mysticism like that of Thomas a Kempis or "the moralism of the Humanists," like Erasmus. With philosophy mired in skepticism, the cycle was set to begin again, and Descartes was there to begin it. Descartes's own cycle ended in the skepticism of Hume, and Kant began the latest rotation, "The Modern Experiment," which had still not concluded in Gilson's day but was leading quite clearly to disaster. In each case, the philosophers in question forced philosophy into the mold of some other discipline. So Ockham with logic, Bonaventure with theology, Descartes with mathematics, Kant with science, and Comte with sociology. They found that philosophy simply didn't fit, and so jettisoned vital parts of philosophy, like metaphysics.

Gilson ends the book with a summary and analysis of the cycle and adds seven conclusions drawn from this history. I found it remarkably moving to read this book, published in 1936, in which Gilson makes it clear that the world is heading toward disaster on the basis of false philosophical premises.

I have to concur with a few other reviewers that though this book is excellent, it is not for beginners. Even with a background in medieval philosophy the book was still tough going in places. After all, this book began as a series of lectures to university-level philosophy students, so a certain familiarity with philosophy and the history of philosophy is assumed. That said, though the ideas are sometimes difficult the book is briskly written and immensely rewarding.

Highly recommended.