Étienne Gilson, la filosofia cristiana e la filologia

That of Christian philosophy has been one of the notions that have most influenced the historiographical debate of the last century. Étienne Gilson spent much time to elaborate on it. In some writings, Gilson also associates the development of the notion of Christian philosophy with a depreciating view of philology. This is a criticism that may at first be surprising, not only because it seems to conflict with the attention to texts that characterizes all of Gilson’s research, but also because it is developed in a work of his mature production, as the Introduction à la philosophie chrétienne (1960). In this article I discuss Gilson’s critique of philology and show that in fact it concerns only a qualified acception of philology and aims to question a privilege that, according to Gilson, philologists arrogate to themselves—a privilege whose removal appears to Gilson necessary in light of the fundamental assumption from which Christian philosophy must start.