Pierre Courcelle

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Pierre Courcelle (born March 16, 1912 in Orléans , † June 25, 1980 in Paris ) was a French historian of philosophy.

Life

Pierre Courcelle, born the son of the businessman Paul Courcelle and his wife Madeleine Giroux, was a professor at the Sorbonne (1944–1952) and from 1952 at the Collège de France as the successor to Alfred Ernout . His research interests included Augustine and Boethius . In 1937 he married the art historian Jeanne Ladmirant in Liège. With her he had eight children: Jérôme, Jean-Pierre, Marie, Etienne, Vincent, Anne, Benoit and Pascal. On November 9, 1972, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Salzburg . In 1965 he became a corresponding member of the British Academy . Since 1968 he was an elected member of the American Philosophical Society .

Research on the Confessions of Saint Augustin

Pierre Courcelle's main work, Recherches sur les Confessions de Saint Augustin , contributed to a paradigm shift in Augustine research. In 1969, Cornelius Petrus Mayer called it an “epochal work”. “Courcelle's work is characterized by a hitherto unusual criticism of the sources. He examined Augustine's texts for intellectual and emotional currents that influenced Augustine's life and thus his work. Courcelle was the first to study the influence of Platonic thought on the young Augustine in extenso. The greatest achievement, however, was the reference to the penetration of the Christian intellectuals around Ambrose in Milan by Neoplatonism . This thesis founded the research history of the following decades. The peculiarity of the work of Pierre Courcelles is that he continued to understand Augustine as a Christian, on the other hand insists that Augustine's Christianity was a platonic one. In contrast to the research papers before him, Courcelle puts this point in the historical context, through which he shows that the Christians around Ambrose in Milan around 380 were shaped by Platonic ideas. ”Despite increasing criticism of Courcelle's theses“ in the recent past. .. it should be noted that Pierre Courcelle's investigation is to be seen as a milestone which has brought the Augustine research forward. "

Publications (selection)

  • Le site du monastère de Cassiodore, in: MAH 55 (1938) 259-307.
  • Les lettres grecques en Occident. De Macrobe à Cassiodore. Paris 1943.
  • Paulin de Nole et saint Jerôme, in: Revue des Etudes Latines 25 (1947) 250-280.
  • Histoire littéraire des grandes invasions germaniques. Paris 1948.
  • Research on the Confessions of Saint Augustin. Paris 1950.
  • L'Entretien de Pascal et Sacy. Ses sources et ses énigmes. Paris 1960.
  • The confessions of Saint Augustin in the tradition littéraire. Antécédents et postérité. Paris 1963.
  • The consolation of philosophy in tradition littéraire. Antécédents et postérité de Boèce. Paris 1967.
  • Research on Saint Ambroise. Paris 1973.
  • Connais-toi toi-même. Paris 1974.
  • Prison (of the soul), in: RAC 9 (1976) 294-318.

literature

  • Georges Folliet, Pierre Courcelle 1912-1980. In: Revue des études augustiniennes 26 (1980) 204-206.
  • Jean Doignon, L'œuvre de Pierre Courcelle. In: Orpheus NS 2 (1981) 1-5.
  • Who's who in Europe
  • Qui est qui en France

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed May 17, 2020 .
  2. ^ Member History: Pierre Courcelle. American Philosophical Society, accessed June 29, 2018 .
  3. ↑ The signs in the spiritual development and in the theology of the young Augustine. Würzburg 1969. p. 33. The philosophy professor Frederick Van Fleteren also speaks of an “epoch-making work” (Art. Porphyry, in: Augustine Through the Ages. An Encyclopaedia. Grand Rapids 1999. p. 663)
  4. ↑ Quoted from Peter Seele, Philosophy of the Epoch Threshold. Augustine between antiquity and the Middle Ages. Berlin 2008. p. 12f.
  5. ↑ Peter Seele, Philosophy of the Epoch Threshold. Augustine between antiquity and the Middle Ages. Berlin 2008. p. 13. On the importance of Courcelles cf. Ulrich Volp too: “A new phase of Augustine research began with ... the greater focus on individual philological studies. First and foremost, Pierre Courcelle should be mentioned, whose detailed results have helped determine research to this day and who were able to show that Augustine's view of a sharp disjunction between Christianity and Neoplatonism is inappropriate. "(Arbeitsbuch Theologiegeschichte, Vol. 1. Stuttgart 2012, p. 146 )
personal data
SURNAME Courcelle, Pierre
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French historian of philosophy
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Orleans
DATE OF DEATH June 25, 1980
Place of death Paris