Rémi Brague (born 8 September 1947) is a French historian of philosophy, specializing in Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought of the Middle Ages. He is professor emeritus of Arabic and religious philosophy at the Sorbonne, and Romano Guardini chair of philosophy (emeritus) at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
Biography
Educated primarily at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, Brague began his career as a student of Greek philosophy, interpreted in a distinctly modern key. His doctoral thesis, later published as Aristote et la question du monde: Essai sur le contexte cosmologique et anthropologique de l'ontologie (1988), developed a phenomenological account of Aristotle's conception of the world.[1] In particular, his goal was to write the book on Aristotle that Heidegger would have written, had he not written Being and Time.[2] From there, he was led to study Hebrew in order to read the Old Testament, and Arabic in order "to read the Jewish philosopher Maimonides' The Guide for the Perplexed in its original language."[3] Since then, most of his work has taken place at the intersection of the three Abrahamic religions,[4] as they developed out of the ancient world, formed themselves in dialogue with one another, and eventually gave rise to modernity.
He is the author of numerous books on classical and medieval intellectual history, religion, national identity, literature, and law, and is perhaps best known in the English-speaking world for his book Europe, la voie romaine (1992), translated into English as Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization (2009). His masterwork thus far is his trilogy on the philosophical development of law in the West, La Sagesse du monde: Histoire de l'expérience humaine de l'univers (1999), La Loi de Dieu. Histoire philosophique d’une alliance (2005), and Le Règne de l'homme: Genèse et échec du projet moderne (2015). All have been translated into English as The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought (2004), The Law of God: The Philosophical History of an Idea (2007),[5] and The Kingdom of Man: Genesis and Failure of the Modern Project (2018).
While his intellectual influences are various, Brague has developed some of the chief points of his unique account of Western intellectual history in dialogue with the controversial political theoristLeo Strauss. Brague has said that "Leo Strauss taught me that when reading a text, you must be open to the possibility that it contains different layers of meaning. All philosophical books written before the Enlightenment aim at both a wider audience and a small elite, able to understand the deeper meaning of the texts." This approach informed Brague's understanding of Maimonides and the medieval Muslim philosopher Al-Farabi, among others, but he declared himself unconvinced "that it applies to the Greek philosophers" in the way Strauss has taught. Brague holds that "Strauss became so convinced of his own way of interpreting texts, that he came to apply it to all sorts of books, even Cervantes'Don Quixote. Strauss taught me to read very carefully. But I don't consider myself a Straussian, nor do the real Straussians consider me as one of them."[6] Arguably, Brague's "Roman" view of Western Intellectual History (as enunciated in Eccentric Culture) forms a kind of response to Strauss' famous emphasis on the longstanding tension between Athens and Jerusalem. For Brague, we cannot understand this tension correctly without understanding the historic mediation of both Athens and Jerusalem through Rome.[7] Likewise, Brague's account of Divine Law in the Western intellectual tradition (as presented in The Law of God) reframes the relationship between faith and reason, the secular and the sacred, in response to Strauss' recurrent emphasis on "the Theological-Political Problem."[8]
^On the role of Heideggerian Dasein in Brague’s account of Aristotle, see Sarah Broadie, Review of Aristote et la question du monde.Ancient Philosophy 13.1 (Spring, 1993): 201-204.
^A term Brague deprecates, as each religion understands Abraham, as well as its relation to Abraham, in fundamentally different ways. See On the God of the Christians (And on One or Two Others) (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’ Press, 2013), 9-14.
^See Paul Seaton, “Translator’s Introduction” to The Legitimacy of the Human (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2017) xi.
^"'Yellow Ants,' Fundamentalists, and Cowboys – An interview with Rémi Brague."The Clarion Review (Oct. 29, 2009). On Brague’s view of Strauss’s Maimonides, see “Leo Strauss and Maimonides,” in Leo Strauss’s Thought: Toward a Critical Engagement, ed. Alan Udoff (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1991), 93-114. On the kinds of texts (esp. Christian ones) to which Straussian interpretation fails to be adequate, see Brague, "Athens, Jerusalem, Mecca: Leo Strauss's 'Muslim' Understanding of Greek Philosophy,” Poetics Today 19.2 (Summer 1998): 235–259.
"The Failure of the Modern Project." The Modern Turn. Ed. Michael Rohlf. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2017. 291–306.
"Culture as a By-Product." Cooperatores Veritatis. Scritti in onore del Papa emerito Benedetto XVI per il 90° compleanno. Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2017. 297–317.
"God and Freedom. Biblical Roots of the Western Idea of Liberty." Christianity and Freedom, Volume 1: Historical Perspectives. Eds. T. S. Shah & A. D. Hertzke. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2017. 391–402.
"Diversity: How Far?" Justice Through Diversity?: A Philosophical and Theological Debate. Ed. M. Sweeney. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. 159–174.
"Five challenges to European Democracies." After the Storm. How to Save Democracy in Europe. Eds. L. van Middelaar & Ph. Van Parijs Tielt, Belgium: Lannoo, 2015. 43–52.
"Treason or Tradition?" Tradition as the Future of Innovation. Ed. Elisa Grimi. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2015. 96–110.
"The Concept of the Abrahamic Religions, Problems and Pitfalls." The Oxford Handbook of the Abrahamic Religions. Eds. Adam Silverstein, Guy Stroumsa, & Moshe Blidstein. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015. 88–108.
"Are There as Many Gods as Religions?" Modern Age. 57.3 (Summer 2015) 78–84.
"Epilogue: Camus and Christianity." In Albert Camus, Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism. Trans. Ronald Srigley. Notre Dame: St. Augustine's P, 2015. 134–139. ISBN978-1587311147
“On Aristotle’s Formula ὅ pote ὄn: Physics IV. 11, 14." tr. E. R. Jimenez. The Bloomsbury Companion to Aristotle. Ed. C. Baracchi. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. 75–88.
"Natural Law in Islam.” Human Rights and Natural Law: An Intercultural Philosophical Perspective. Ed. Walter Schweidler. Sankt Augustin: Academia-Verlag, 2013. 251–265.
"Christianity: a Fact in History." A Generative Thought: An Introduction to the Works of Luigi Giussani. Ed. E. Buzzi. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003. 34–39.
"How to Be in the World: Gnosis, Religion, Philosophy." Martin Buber: A Contemporary Perspective. Ed. Paul R. Mendes-Flohr. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002. 133–147.
"Facing Reality." Courage. Ed. B. Darling-Smith. South Bend, IN" U of Notre Dame P, 2002. 43–53.
"History of Philosophy as Freedom." Epoché. 7.1 (Fall 2002) 39–50.
"Is Physics Interesting? Some Late Ancient and Medieval Answers." Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal. 23.2 (2002) 183–201.
"Is European Culture 'a Tale of Two Cities'?". Historical, Cultural, Socio-political, and Economic Perspectives on Europe. Ed. Suzanne Stern-Gillet and M. Teresa Lunati. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2000. 33–50.
"Are we at Home in the World?" The Longing for Home. Ed. L. Rouner. U of Notre Dame P, 1997. 95–111.
"Cosmological Mysticism: The Imitation of the Heavenly Bodies in Ibn Tufayl's Hayy ibn Yaqzan." Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal. 19.2 / 20.1 (1997) 91–102.
"Geocentrism as a Humiliation for Man." Medieval Encounters. 3.3 (1997) 187–210.
"A Medieval Model of Subjectivity: Toward a Rediscovery of Fleshliness." The Ancients and the Moderns. Ed. R. Lilly. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996. 230–247.
"The Impotence of the Word: The God Who Has Said It All." Diogenes. 170 (1995) 43–68.
"Leo Strauss and Maimonides." Leo Strauss's Thought: Towards a Critical Engagement. Ed. Alan Udoff. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991. 93–114.
"The soul of salvation." Communio. 14.3 (Fall 1987).
"The Body of the Speech: A New Hypothesis on the Compositional Structure of Timaeus's Monologue." Platonic Investigations. Ed. D.J. O'Meara. Washington, D.C.: Catholic UP, 1985. 53–83.
"On the Christian Model of Unity: The Trinity." Communio 10 (1983): 149–166.
"Radical Modernity and the Roots of Ancient Thought." Independent Journal of Philosophy. 4 (1983) 63–74.