Jean Guitton

Jean Guitton ( born August 18, 1901 in Saint- Étienne, † March 21, 1999 in Paris) was a French philosopher and writer Christian character.

Life

Jean Pierre Marie Guitton was born in 1901 in St. Etienne. The son of a business family, he grew up with his brother Henri, who became a noted economist. The parents, Auguste Guitton and Gabrielle born Bertrand, presented in his autobiographical writings with great respect, especially his mother boasts Guitton. Married late, the couple Marie -Louise (b. Bonnet ) and Jean Guitton remained childless.

Guitton attended the Lycée de St. Etienne, then the Lycée Louis -le- Grand in Paris. He studied from 1920 to 1923 at the École normale supérieure ( de la rue d' Ulm), which he completed as Agrégé philosophy. He received his doctorate in 1933 with a thesis on Plotinus and Augustine. As a teacher at the Lycée various active ( in Troyes, Moulins, Lyon), Guitton 1937 was appointed professor of philosophy in Montpellier. His profile was very conservative.

1940 came Guitton in German prisoner of war, which lasted until 1945. He was interned in the camp Oflag IV -D in the Saxon Hoyerswerda.

First, he taught at the Lycée of Avignon, politically burdened by his Journal de captivité. Rehabilitated he gained in the post- 1948 in Dijon professor and only since 1955 ( until 1968 ) for the history of philosophy at the Sorbonne. Until shortly before his death in Paris in 1999, the writer was literarily very productive.

A wider audience Guitton was known for his " Portrait de M. Pouget ," in which he 1941 a tragic blind, but spiritually particularly farsighted Lazaristenpriester introduced, whose personal confidence he gained in long conversations. The only fictional work is " Césarine ou le soupcon " of 1947. Moreover Guitton joined with numerous writings out to philosophy and theology. This earned him the recognition of being one of the major Catholic thinkers of the 20th century and, moreover, to have been one of the first " lay theologian ". In 1961, a member of the Académie française called ( in succession to Léon Bérard ), since 1987 also a member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, Guitton remained all his life a noted French intellectuals bourgeois- religious profile. In addition, the multiple issuing of Guitton paintings by his own hand found some attention.

Guitton and the Papacy

After Guitton 1937 once met with Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli ( of him in 1958 when Pope Pius XII. Again received ), in particular to enter there for the biblical scholar Marie -Joseph Lagrange, and whose researches to Moses, he befriended in the postwar period with the working in Paris Nuncio Angelo Roncalli on. This book by Guitton on the French Cardinal Saliège had noticed positive. Saliège had fought in the resistance against Adolf Hitler for the Jews, thinking ecumenically open. As one of the first formulated Saliège that the previous action catholique no social group should be, but rather should articulate (as movement of the presence of the Gospel ) across the width of the society. In 1949, Guitton published a work on La Vierge Marie, in which he portrayed the Catholic devotion to Mary in today's time horizon plausible. An employee of the Holy Office, later Cardinal Pietro Parente, suspected, this théologie laïque give the Catholic doctrine shortened again (especially to the early knowledge of the Mother of God to the identity of her child ). Roncalli recommended Guitton So, to get in touch with the substitutes in the Secretariat of State, Montini. On September 8, 1950, the first conversation between the two established a life-long, friendly relationship. Over 27 years, the two dialogue partners met again at this Marian feast (but on other occasions ).

This friendship proved that Guitton in 1967 allowed a portrait Montini publish. For the first time in the history of the papacy private thoughts of a reigning pope, as it were published, albeit in literary revised form. Later similar private books about other popes published. In June 1988, Guitton undertook on behalf of the Pope a dramatic but unsuccessful attempt to prevent non- authorized episcopal ordinations of traditionalist Bishop Lefebvre. Although Guitton was personally acquainted with Lefebvre, he was unable, to persuade the "rebels" of the Catholic authenticity of the Second Vatican Council.

Jean Guitton has been invited by Pope John XXIII. , As observers to the Second Vatican Council. Commissioned by Pope Paul VI. he spoke of 3 December 1963 to the Council Fathers on ecumenism, which was Guitton from his youth a concern. ( In particular, he sought contact with the Anglicans, about to Lord Halifax. ) His Petit Catéchisme for children Guitton wrote in 1977 at the request of Pope John Paul I, the portrait of Marie -Joseph Lagrange in 1992 at the request of Cardinal Ratzinger.

Catholicism and modern thinking

Guitton, who has worked with great intensity relations between the Catholic dogma and today's mental horizon, so that was the first layman, the word was ever granted to a council. This special honor was even honored by Charles de Gaulle, the Guitton, despite political differences in the time before 1945, once went to a personal debate ( as it later also occasionally François Mitterrand contacted ). The Journey Guittons characterize further remarkable encounters. As a student of Henri Bergson Guitton also met with his counterpart at the Collège de France, namely Alfred Loisy, the main representative of the early failure of modernism, which undertook unilaterally dissolve in favor of the current scientific knowledge, the tension between faith and knowledge. Bergson, however, of Jewish origin, approached from a scientific honesty out more and more convinced that there must be two sources of religion and morality, an anthropological tangible source of human religious behavior, but also the other, the mystery. Meanwhile, full-screen, any Gnosis incomprehensible to change, Bergson saw in Jesus Christ, and as the Gospels portray him to the church.

The philosophical writings of Jean Guitton therefore devote themselves always the question of the relation of time and eternity, history, their development and their determination. Guitton thus builds except Bergson also to John Henry Newman and Jacques Maritain. With the book " L' Église et l' Évangile " Guitton 1959 replied to Alfred Loisy. Guitton has taken from a philosophical point of view, inspired by Lagrange, the criticism of the Bible and their relationship to the Catholic dogma. In Germany, the literary creation of the thinker so far remained largely unexplored.

In his " Testament Philosophique " of 1997 ( German: " My Judgement Day ", 2001 ) summarizes Guitton his way narratively together: In a fictional apologetic conversation with Blaise Pascal, he explained that it was inevitable, absolute and that the Absolute. To worship God personally was in contrast to the second step. There is only the choice between theism ( belief in God ) and pantheism (belief in an immanent absolutum ). The reasons for Christianity calls Guitton in another fictional conversation with Bergson. It relies 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 interview, with fictitious Pope Paul VI. out Guitton leaves for Catholicism argue that this is the only religion that demand obedience, in the sense that at the same time disclosing this freedom. He tried a synthesis of Aristotle, Augustine, and Bergson, Guitton summarizes.

In his 1991 published in France and particularly widely read book about Dieu et la science. Vers le métaréalisme Guitton comes to the conclusion neothomistischen:

"I urge the reader therefore to reflect on the three characteristics that [ metarealistischen ] that seem to define the framework:

• Spirit and matter, a form and the same reality
• The creator of this universe of matter and spirit is transcendent
• Reality "in itself" of this universe is not visible

Is our approach legitimate? Anyway, it is a confusing echo in the philosophy of a thinker who in the late Middle Ages had the inspiration of what the metarealism announced that Thomas Aquinas. As a metaphysician, logician and theologian at the same time he has set out to reconcile the Christian faith with the rational philosophy of Aristotle. "

Guitton also keeps in his last publications firmly, is that a new Christian philosophy possible and even likely in the 3rd millennium. Therefore, he called himself aware of " a fossil of the future".

Discussion of the origin of the universe with the physicists Grichka and Igor Bogdanov

Igor Bogdanov describes in a conversation among other things, the impossibility to predict singular events for quantum mechanics. He refers also to the decay of radium. In 1600 years, half of the radium atoms will be gone, but you can not predict what will be this. Thus, however, you can indeed make statements for a group of particles, individuals were not.

He also discussed the accident. Mathematicians developed random -producing machines, but these would have to come to similar numbers as they are necessary to the creation of the universe, likely forever. Also, the probability that everything had appeared by chance, equal to zero.

Jean Guitton uses this thesis Bogdanov to argue that there must be a higher degree of order - something universal, like God.

Works (selection)

• Le temps et l' Eternité chez Plotinus and Saint Augustine, 1933 *
• La philosophie de Leibniz, 1933
• Le cantique of cantiques, 1934
• Actualité de Saint Augustin, 1935
• La Pensee et le modern catholicisme (7 vols 1934-1950 ) Perspectives (1934 )
• Newman et Renan (1938)
• La Pensee de M. Loisy (1936 )
• Critique de la critique (1937 )
• Le Problème de la connaissance et de la pensée religieuse
• Le Problème de Jésus et le you fondement témoignage chrétien (1946 )
• Développement des idées dans l' Ancien Testament (1947 )

• Le livre des vocations, 1935
• Portrait d' une mère, 1935
• Portrait de M. Pouget, 1941 * (2: 1959, Tb 1985 dt synthesis of Christianity, 1959)
• Justification du temps, 1941 (2: 1993)
• Journal de captivité, 1943 *
• Pages pour les jeunes, 1945
• Conseils à deux enfants, 1946
• Le problème de Jésus, 1946 *
• Nouvel art de penser, 1946 *
• La philosophie de Newman, 1946
• Césarine, 1947
• Difficulté de croire, 1948
• Essai sur l' amour humain, 1948 * (Eng. The nature of love between husband and wife, 1960)
• L' Existence temporelle, 1949 * (2: 1989)
• La Vierge Marie, 1949 * (2: 1954) (Eng. 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, Tb 1999, German 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 Mystery of Joan of 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' Eglise et les laics, 1963 * (German fellow citizens of Truth, 1964)
• Vers l' unité dans l' amour, 1963 *
• Le Christ écartelé, 1963 * (2: 1981st Crise dans l' église, Germany Divided Christ, 1965)
• [ La conversion en] Ratisbonne, 1964 *
• Siloam, heures de en terre sainte méditation, 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
• Profile parallèles (1970 ) Newman et Renan
• Pascal et Leibniz
• Teilhard et Bergson
• Claudel et Heidegger

Oeuvres complètes (1978 ):

• Bd 1: Portraits
• Bd 2: Critique religieuse
• Bd 3: Sagesse
• Bd 4: Philosophy
• Bd 5: Journal de ma vie
• Bd 6: Oecuménisme

The works referred to above with * are included in the Oeuvres complètes; see: List on the Internet

Swell

• Jean Guitton, Un siècle - une vie, Paris 1988;
• Writings, Le siecle qui s'annonce, Paris 1997.;
• Writings, Mon testament Philosophique, Paris 1997.;
• Writings, Ultima verba, Paris 1998.;
• Writings, Paul VI secret, Paris 1979.;
• Trans., Dialogues avec Paul VI, Paris 1967.