Examining Gilson's Approach to Comparative Philosophy

Gilson's concern was to explain similar views of different Western philosophical traditions. In fact, the main questions are as follows: How should the similarities between different traditions and schools of thought be justified? Are these similarities made by chance or by intelligible rules? In other words, either it must be admitted that there is no cause-and-effect relationship between two similar theories and thus rule out the discussion of one taking influence from the other or a suitable explanation should be provided. Gilson did not believe in chance and believed that there are comprehensible rules or explanations for schools of thought and philosophers’ similar views. The following explanations can be briefly mentioned: explanation based on apparent history and tracing influences (philosophical historians' explanation), historical materialism (the explanation sought by left-wing Hegelians and Marxists), explanation based on the spirit of time (explanation emphasized by Herder), explanation based on origin and single source (explanation preferred by traditionalists and theosophists), explanation based on transhistory (Corben and Toshihiko Izutsu), and explanation based on internal history (Gilson's preferred explanation).In Gilson's view, a purely historical approach should not be taken to philosophies. In other words, instead of the external history, the internal history and the necessity of ideas should be considered. He extracted similar philosophical experiences through the inner history of ideas and spoke of the unity and common nature of experiences in at least two historical periods of the Middle Ages and the New Age. To explain similar views, Gilson used a method that he called the method of classifying philosophical families. His method of classifying and reducing the different thinkers’ views to several families or several similar experiences, in addition to facilitating learning of different philosophies, leads the reader to the depths of thoughts and, in his own words, to the pure essence of thoughts. In his book entitled “Existence in the Philosophers' Thought”, he reduced the various views on the existence to 4 family: Platonic family as existence and unity, Aristotelian family as existence and essence, Sinaitic family as existence and nature, and Tomai family as existence and being. Deep knowledge of them and the possibility of better evaluation provided the next perspectives. He placed modern Western philosophers’ views on existence, from Descartes to Kierkegaard, under the Sinai family and by presenting their views in an independent chapter entitled “Existence versus Existence”, he showed that he was aware of their differences. In his book called “Wisdom and Revelation in the Middle Ages”, he followed the same procedure by reducing all views to the 3 families: Augustine family (precedence of faith over reason), the family of Ibn Rushdie (precedence of reason over faith), and Tomai family (harmony of reason and revelation). In his book entitled “Critique of Western Philosophical Thought”, he used the above method to enumerate similar experiences and reduce them to a single experience. In fact, in this book, the word “experience” has replaced the word “family”. According to him, those who give originality to a particular science, such as theology, mathematics, physics, logic, psychology, and sociology, will have similar experiences in the face of philosophical problems regardless of the school of thought or religion, to which they belong. And these seemingly different experiences will lead to one experience, that is, solving philosophical problems in a non-philosophical way. Thus, he first considers different thinkers, regardless of their religion or philosophy, in one family and then places all these families or different experiences in one larger family or a single experience. This is a brief overview of some of Gilson's similar experiences, i.e., similar experiences that solve philosophical problems through theology (by comparing Malbranesh's view with Ghazali’s), similar experiences that examine philosophical issues through psychology (by comparing David Hume’s view with William Ockham’s), similar experiences that examine philosophical issues through logic, similar experiences that result from frustration or despair of philosophy, which results in discrediting philosophy and announcing the end of philosophy, as well as inclining to practical ethics and mysticism and returning to the Bible based on some thinkers’ views). After listing the various experiences, Gilson reduced them all to one experience, indicating that any attempt to solve philosophical problems through non-philosophy is doomed to failure because the final explanation of the history of philosophy must be made by philosophy itself.