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fionnchu's review
4.0
Very slow going, but as it was written as lectures that Gilson claims weren't addressed to philosophers but a general audience, it's instructive to ponder how standards have shifted nearly nine decades on. I read it one or two chapters at a sitting, and I struggled, as a non-philosopher. That's undoubtedly due my own shortcomings in education, but Etienne Gilson manages to incorporate a lot of context for his understandably frequent Latin quotes from the sources, so one can get the gist. I know basic Latin, but I'm glad I have a book to read the content in, rather than hear it. It's full of endnotes that will assist specialists. He labors to elucidate how far reason could take the medieval thinker. He does touch on Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonodes, but naturally given the title, he focuses on Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, and as well as the expected attention to Aquinas, a considerable look at Duns Scotus, to me the most interesting of the minds here plumbed. I'd have liked an updated ed. with an intro on the book's impact...it helped convert Thomas Merton.
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