Jean Guitton
Jean Guitton (born August 18, 1901 in Saint-Étienne , † March 21, 1999 in Paris ) was a French philosopher and writer with Christian roots.
Life
Jean Marie Pierre Guitton was born in Saint-Étienne in 1901 . The son of an entrepreneurial family, he grew up with his brother Henri, who became a well-known economist. The parents, Auguste Guitton and Gabrielle geb. Bertrand, are featured in his autobiographical writings with great respect, especially his mother who praises Guitton. Married late, the couple Marie-Louise (née Bonnet) and Jean Guitton remained childless.
Guitton attended the Lycée de Saint-Étienne, then the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He studied from 1920 to 1923 at the École normal supérieure (de la rue d'Ulm) , which he graduated as Agrégé of philosophy. He received his doctorate in 1933 with a thesis on Plotinus and Augustine . Working as a teacher at various Lycées (in Troyes, Moulins, Lyon), Guitton was appointed philosophy professor in Montpellier in 1937 . His profile was very conservative.
In 1940 Guitton was taken prisoner by the Germans, which lasted until 1945. He was interned in the Oflag IV-D camp in Hoyerswerda, Saxony .
First he taught at the Lycée of Avignon , politically burdened by his Journal de captivité . After rehabilitation, he received a professorship in Dijon in 1948 and only from 1955 (until 1968) for the history of philosophy at the Sorbonne . Until shortly before his death in Paris in 1999, the writer remained very productive in literary terms.
Guitton became known to a wider audience through his "Portrait de M. Pouget" , in which he introduced a tragically blind, but spiritually particularly far-sighted Lazarist priest, whose personal trust he won in long conversations. The only fictional work is "Césarine ou le soupcon" from 1947. In addition, Guitton came out with numerous writings on philosophy and theology. This earned him the recognition of being one of the important Catholic thinkers of the 20th century and, moreover, of having been one of the first “lay theologians”. Appointed a member of the Académie française in 1961 (succeeding Léon Bérard ), since 1987 also a member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques , Guitton remained a respected French intellectual of civil and religious profile throughout his life. In addition, the paintings by Guitton exhibited several times by his own hand also attracted some attention.
Guitton and the Papacy
After Guitton met with Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli in 1937 (who received him again in 1958 as Pope Pius XII ) to stand up for the biblical scholar Marie-Joseph Lagrange and in particular his research on Moses , he made friends with the man who worked in Paris in the post-war period Nuncio Angelo Roncalli . Guitton's book about the French Cardinal Saliège caught his attention positively. Saliège had campaigned for the Jews in the resistance against Adolf Hitler and was ecumenically open. Saliège was one of the first to formulate that the previous action catholique should not be a social group, but should articulate itself (as a movement of the presence of the Gospel) in the entire breadth of society. In 1949 Guitton published a work on La Vierge Marie, in which he plausibly presented the Catholic devotion to Mary in today's time horizon. A colleague of the Holy Office, the later Cardinal Pietro Parente , suspected that this théologie laïque reproduced the Catholic doctrine in an abbreviated form (especially with regard to the Blessed Mother's early knowledge of the identity of her child). So Roncalli recommended Guitton to get in touch with the substitute in the State Secretariat, Montini. On September 8, 1950, the first conversation between the two established a lifelong, friendly relationship. For 27 years the two dialogue partners met again and again at this Marian festival (but also on other occasions).
This friendship was shown in the fact that Guitton was allowed to publish a portrait of Montini in 1967 . For the first time in the history of the papacy, private thoughts of a ruling Pope were published, albeit in a literarily revised form. Similar private books about other popes appeared later. In June 1988, on behalf of the Pope, Guitton made a dramatic but unsuccessful attempt to prevent the traditionalist bishop Lefebvre from being ordained bishop . Although Guitton was personally acquainted with Lefebvre, he was unable to convince the "rebel" of the Catholic authenticity of the Second Vatican Council .
Jean Guitton was already by Pope John XXIII. invited as an observer to the Second Vatican Council. On behalf of Pope Paul VI. he spoke on December 3, 1963 to the Council Fathers about ecumenism , which Guitton had been a concern from his youth. (In particular, he sought contact with the Anglicans , such as Lord Halifax .) Guitton wrote his Petit Catéchisme for children in 1977 at the request of Pope John Paul I, and the portrait of Marie-Joseph Lagrange in 1992 at the request of Cardinal Ratzinger .
Catholicism and modern thinking
Guitton, who worked with great intensity on the relationship between Catholic dogma and today's spiritual horizon, was the first layman to ever be given the floor at a council. This special honor was even recognized by Charles de Gaulle , whom Guitton, despite political differences in the period before 1945, once visited for a personal discussion (as François Mitterrand later contacted him occasionally ). Other notable encounters mark the path of Guitton's life. As a student of Henri Bergson , Guitton also met his counterpart at the Collège de France , namely Alfred Loisy , the main exponent of the early failed modernism , who tried to dissolve the tension between belief and knowledge one-sidedly in favor of the current state of scientific knowledge. Bergson, on the other hand, of Jewish origin, came closer and closer to the conviction out of scientific honesty that there must be two sources of religion and morality, one anthropologically tangible source in people's religious behavior, but also the other, the mystery. Bergson saw its full image, incomprehensible to any Gnosis , in Jesus Christ , just as the Gospels of the Church describe him.
The philosophical writings of Jean Guitton are therefore always dedicated to the question of the relationship between time and eternity, history, its development and its destination. In addition to Bergson, Guitton also ties in with John Henry Newman and Jacques Maritain . In 1959 Guitton responded to Alfred Loisy with the work "L'Église et l'Évangile" . From a philosophical point of view, inspired by Lagrange, Guitton also took up criticism of the Bible and its relationship to Catholic dogma . In Germany the literary work of the thinker has so far remained largely unexplored.
In his " Testament philosophique " from 1997 (German: "My Last Judgment", 2001), Guitton sums up his path in a narrative: In a fictional apologetic conversation with Blaise Pascal , he explains that it is inevitable to set the absolute as absolute. In contrast, to worship God personally is the second step. There is only the choice between theism (belief in God) and pantheism (belief in an immanent absolute). Guitton gives the reasons for Christianity in another fictional conversation with Bergson. It is based on the historical probability that the Gospels tell a true historical event, the resurrection of Jesus, and the authenticity of the apostolic witnesses. A third conversation, fictional with Pope Paul VI. Guitton can argue for Catholicism that this is the only religion that requires obedience, in the sense that it opens up freedom at the same time . He tried a synthesis of Aristotle , Augustine and Bergson , summarizes Guitton.
In his most recent publications, too, he maintains that a new Christian philosophy is possible and even likely in the third millennium. Therefore it called itself self-confident and modest at the same time "a fossil of the future".
Discussion about the origin of the universe with physicists Grichka and Igor Bogdanov
In his book on Dieu et la science , published in France in 1991 . Vers le métaréalisme , Guitton comes to the neo-Thomistic conclusion after a conversation printed there with the two physicists (which incidentally was not suggested by him, but by the latter) :
"So I urge the reader to think about the three characteristics that seem to define this [metarealistic] framework:
- Mind and matter form one and the same reality
- the creator of this universe of matter and spirit is transcendent
- the reality "in itself" of this universe is not recognizable
Is our approach legitimate? In any case, it finds a confusing echo in the philosophy of a thinker who in the deep Middle Ages had the inspiration of what heralded metarealism, Thomas Aquinas . As a metaphysician, logician and theologian at the same time, he set out to reconcile the Christian faith with the rational philosophy of Aristotle. "
In this conversation Igor Bogdanov describes, among other things, the impossibility of predicting singular events for quantum mechanics . He also refers to the decay of radium. In 1,600 years, half of the radium atoms will have disappeared, but it is impossible to predict which they will be. Thus one can make statements for a group of particles, but not for individual ones.
He also addresses coincidence. Mathematicians developed random-producing machines, but in order to arrive at numbers similar to those necessary for the creation of the universe, they would have to calculate infinitely long. Also, the probability that everything appeared by chance is zero.
Grichka Bogdanov also emphasizes on the origin of life: "For the connection of nucleotides to lead to the development of a usable RNA molecule 'by chance' , nature would have had to continue its experiments 'at random' a hundred thousand times longer than our universe is old .. . "
Jean Guitton uses these Bogdanov theses to claim that there must be a higher degree of order - something universal, like God.
Works (selection)
- Le temps et l'eternité chez Plotin et Saint Augustin, 1933 *
- La philosophie de Leibniz, 1933
- Le cantique des cantiques, 1934
- Actualité de Saint Augustin, 1935
- La Pensée modern et le catholicisme (7 vols. 1934–1950)
- Le livre des vocations, 1935
- Portrait d'une mère, 1935
- Portrait de M. Pouget, 1941 * (2: 1959, p. 1985; German synthesis of the Christian, 1959)
- Justification du temps, 1941 (2: 1993)
- Journal de captivité, 1943 *
- Pages pour les jeunes, 1945
- Conseils à deux enfants, 1946
- The problem of Jésus, 1946 *
- Nouvel art de penser, 1946 *
- La philosophie de Newman, 1946
- Césarine, 1947
- Difficulté de croire, 1948
- Essai sur l'amour humain, 1948 * (German. On the essence of love between man and woman, 1960)
- L'Existence temporelle, 1949 * (2: 1989)
- La Vierge Marie, 1949 * (2: 1954) (German The Virgin Mary, 1957)
- Le travail intellectuel, 1951 * (2: 1985)
- Pascal et Leibniz, 1951
- Dialogues avec M. Pouget, 1954 * (2: 1999)
- Jésus, 1956 (2: 1970, p. 1999; Ger. 1961)
- Invitation à la pensée et à la vie, 1956 *
- Apprende à vivre et à penser, 1957
- Le Cardinal Saliège, 1957 *
- L'Église et l'Évangile, 1959 *
- La vocation de Bergson, 1960 *
- Plato, 1960 *
- Une mère dans sa vallée, 1961 * (2: 1978)
- Une femme dans la maison, 1961
- Problème et mystère de Jeanne d'Arc, 1961 *
- Le Clair et l'Obscur, 1964
- Léon Bérard, 1962 *
- Dialogue avec les précurseurs, 1962 *
- Génie de Pascal, 1962
- Regard sur le concile, 1962 *
- Images de la Vierge, 1963
- L'Église et les laics, 1963 * (German co-guarantors of the truth, 1964)
- Vers l'unité dans l'amour, 1963 *
- Le Christ écartelé, 1963 * (2: 1981. Crise dans l'église; Eng. The divided Christ, 1965)
- [La conversion de] Ratisbonne, 1964 *
- Siloe, heures de méditation en terre sainte, 1965 *
- Livre d'heures, 1966 *
- Dialogues avec Paul VI, 1967 * (German dialogue with Paul VI., 1967)
- La pensée et la guerre, 1969 *
- La dernière heure, 1969 *
- Histoire et destinée, 1970
- Critique religieuse, 1970
- Profils parallèles (1970)
- Ce que je crois (1971)
- L'amour divin, 1971 *
- Le catholicisme, 1972 *
- Rue du Bac ou la superstition depassée, 1973
- écrire comme on se souvient, 1974 *
- Paul VI et l'année sainte, 1974
- Prières pour l'année sainte, 1974
- Journal de ma vie, 1976
- Nouvel éloge de la philosophie, 1977 *
- Philosophy de la résurrection, 1977 *
- L'évangile dans ma vie, 1977 (2: 1990; German between the lines of the Gospel, 1979)
- Mon petit catéchisme. Dialogue avec un enfant, 1978 (2: 1992)
- Paul VI secret, 1979
- Le temps de une vie, 1980
- Jugements, 1981
- Pages brûlées, 1984
- L'absurde et le mystère, 1984
- Portrait de Marthe Robin, 1985
- Silence sur l'essentiel, 1986
- Le Nouveau Testament: une nouvelle lecture, 1987
- Un siècle, une vie, 1988 *
- Portraits et circonstances, 1989
- Dieu et la science, 1991 (German God and Science, 1993)
- L'impur, 1991
- Portrait du Père Lagrange, 1992
- Les pouvoirs mystérieux de la foi, 1993
- Lettres ouvertes, 1993
- Celui qui croyait au ciel et celui qui ne croyait pas, 1994
- Le genie de Thérèse de Lisieux, 1995 (based on 1962)
- A la recherche de Dieu, 1996
- Chaque jour que Dieu fait, 1996
- Le siècle qui s'annonce, 1997
- Mon testament philosophique, 1997 (German My Last Judgment, 2001)
- Le Livre de la sagesse et des vertus retrouvées, 1998
- Ultima verba, 1998
Oeuvres complètes (1978):
- Vol. 1: Portraits
- Vol. 2: Critique religieuse
- Vol. 3: Sagesse
- Vol. 4: Philosophy
- Vol. 5: Journal de ma vie
- Vol. 6: Oecuménisme
The works marked with * are included in the Oeuvres complètes.
swell
- Jean Guitton, Un siècle - une vie , Paris 1988;
- Ders., Le siecle qui s'annonce , Paris 1997;
- Ders., Mon testament philosophique , Paris 1997;
- Ders., Ultima verba , Paris 1998;
- Ders., Paul VI secret , Paris 1979;
- Ders., Dialogues avec Paul VI , Paris 1967.
Individual evidence
- ↑ cf. John Paul II : in conversation with André Frossard , finally souvenir volumes ; Joseph Ratzinger in dialogue with Peter Seewald
- ↑ cf. Jean Guitton , God and Science, p. 161 f.
- ↑ List on the Internet L'oeuvre de Jean GUITTON ( French ) bohort.free.fr. Retrieved May 19, 2019.
Web links
- Literature by and about Jean Guitton in the catalog of the German National Library
- Short biography and list of works of the Académie française (French)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Guitton, Jean |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French philosopher and writer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 18, 1901 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Saint-Etienne |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 21, 1999 |
| Place of death | Paris |