Saint Bonaventure and the Entrance of God Into Theology

Emmanuel Falque

Description

Properly original, the new version of this essay intends both to nourish debate and differentiate points of view. In its new articulation, the book justifies work that has been carried out since. It justifies the sense of Franciscan rootedness that has never been denied and at the same time opens to the discovery of another reading of the Dominican Thomas Aquinas. The preface specially composed for this American edition, the opening debate with famous medievalist Etienne Gilson, and above all the afterword entitled "Saint Thomas Aquinas and the entrance of God into Philosophy" make it a radically new book.

Sujets

• Theology
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: The Franciscan Institute
• Date de parution: 18 octobre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781576594261
• Langue: English

Extrait

SAINT BONAVENTURE AND THE ENTRANCE OF GOD INTO THEOLOGY
A FTERWORD : S AINT T HOMAS AND THE E NTRANCE OF G OD INTO P HILOSOPHY
BY E MMANUEL F ALQUE T RANSLATED FROM THE F RENCH BY B RIAN L APSA R EVISED BY W ILLIAM C. H ACKETT
SAINT BONAVENTURE AND THE ENTRANCE OF GOD INTO THEOLOGY
T HE B REVILOQUIUM AS A SUMMA THEOLOGICA
BY E MMANUEL F ALQUE
W ITH A NEW PREFACE TO THE E NGLISH EDITION BY THE AUTHOR
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY BRIAN LAPSA AND SARAH HORTON REVISED BY WILLIAM C. HACKETT
All rights reserved.
No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publisher.
© 2018 Franciscan Institute Publications, St. Bonaventure University
Cover Art: Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel (open source) Cover Design: Jill M. Smith
ISBN 978-1-57659-425-4 E-ISBN 978-1-57659-426-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952720
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
Franciscan Institute Publications makes every effort to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials in the publishing of its books. This book is printed on acid free, recycled paper that is FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified. It is printed with soy-based ink.
FROM THE SAME AUTHOR
Works that have already appeared in English
Crossing the Rubicon : The Borderlands of Philosophy and Theology ( Passer le rubicon. Philosophie et théologie : essai sur les frontièrs , 2013), trans. Reuben Shank, 2016.
The Wedding Feast of the Lamb : Eros, the Body, and the Eucharist ( Les Noces de l’Agneau : Essai philosophique sur le corps et l’eucharistie, 2011), trans. George Hughes, 2016.
God, the Flesh, and the Other : From Irenaeus to Duns Scotus ( Dieu, la chair et l’autre : de Irenée à Duns Scot , 2008), trans. William Christian Hackett, 2014.
The Metamorphosis of Finitude : An Essay on Birth and Resurrection ( Métamorphose de la finitude : Essai philosophique sur la naissance et la résurrection , 2004), trans. George Hughes, 2012.
The Loving Struggle, Phenomenological and Theological debates (Le combat amoureux, Disputes phénoménologiques et théologiques, 2014), trans. Bradley B. Onishi and Lucas Mc Craken, 2018.
The Guide to Gethsemane, Anxiety, Suffering, Death (Le passeur de Gethsémani, Angoisse, souffrance et mort, Lecture existentielle et phénoménologique, 1999), trans. Georges Hughes, 2018.
The Guide of Gethsemane : Anxiety, Suffering, Death (Le passeur de Gethsémani, 1999), trans. George Hughes, 2018.
The Loving Struggle : Phenomenological and theological debates (Le combat amoureux, 2014), trans. B. Onishi and L. MCCraken, 2018.
W ORKS EXISTING ONLY IN F RENCH
Parcours d’embûches: S’expliquer , 2016.
Ça n’a rien à voir, Lire Freud en philosophe , 2018.
Le livre de l’expérience, D’Anselme de Cantorbéry à Bernard de Clairvaux , 2017.
S EE ALSO
Une analytique du passage: Rencontres et confrontations avec Emmanuel Falque , ed. Claude Brunier-Coulin, 2016.
Penser Dieu autrement. L’oeuvre d’Emmanuel Falque , Alain Saudan, 2013.
A UTHOR ’ S N OTE TO THE A MERICAN E DITION
This book is not just the translation of a work that originally appeared in French, Saint Bonaventure et l’entrée de Dieu en théologie . Properly original, the new version of this essay intends both to nourish debate and differentiate points of view. In its new articulation, the book justifies work that has been carried out since. It justifies the sense of Franciscan rootedness that has never been denied and at the same time opens to the discovery of another reading of the Dominican Thomas Aquinas. The preface specially composed for this American edition, the opening debate with famous medievalist Etienne Gilson, and above all the afterword entitled “Saint Thomas Aquinas and the entrance of God into Philosophy” make it a radically new book. None of this would have been possible without the hard work of the translators (Brian Lapsa and Sarah Horton), reviser (William C. Hackett) and the enthusiastic welcome of the Franciscan Institute for the publication of this book. Let them be here, each one, warmly and fraternally thanked.
Saint Bonaventure University, NY On the Feast of Saint Bonaventure 15 July 2017
N OTE ON THE R EVISION
My revision of Brian Lapsa’s translation of Saint Bonaventure et l’entrée de Dieu en Théologie only requires a few comments. In keeping with a convention I found necessary in translating Dieu, la chair et l’autre , citations are almost always direct translations of the author’s own use of French editions, or of his translations of the originals. Following a process begun by Lapsa, where necessary, originals were consulted, and English renderings modified. (And sometimes the decision is discussed in a translator’s note.) Usually, the author’s own distinctive use, and (more often than not) rich modification, of the French editions demanded a direct rendering of the French into English. To replace such a profoundly hermeneutical engagement with citations of standard English translations would completely bypass these essential philosophical moments crucial to the author’s style and method. The reader will quickly see what I mean. However, I left in place Lapsa’s general references to available English editions in case the reader would like to take the author’s hermeneutical engagement into their own intellectual foyer, layering that over Falque’s, Lapsa’s and/or my own. The same strategy was undertaken in regards to Sarah Horton’s translations of the Preface, the “Opening” and the Afterword. This latter text in particular, “Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Entrance of God into Theology,” is crucially important to a full understanding of the present work in the context of Emmanuel Falque’s thought, regarding both its entire breadth and historical development.
A quick comment on some difficult decisions. I found both Lapsa and Horton to have sound intuitions. This gave me confidence in the work of revision, which played itself out in the final decisions I made. I refer to three here: One could translate (and I settled on it) originarité as “originarity”—not a word in the OED. According to Le Trésor de la langue française , in philosophical and theological contexts, originaire can bear the same sense as original(e) , “original”—present from the beginning as source. The fact is that the word is common in French philosophy. Originarity [ originarité ] means, generally: the quality (-ity) of that which belongs to the origin. The French translation of Bonaventure’s Breviloquium used by Falque translates sentire as sentir: pretty straightforward. The standard English translation of the key passages involved usually translates sentire as “to conceive.” One will find both to be good translations but between the French and English only a heavy amount of theological labor could build a bridge. The connection between French sentir , Latin sentire , English “to sense,” “to feel” and “to conceive,” as well as to Falque’s use of co-/auto-affectivity in the text on this Franciscan theologian is a theologically dense constellation worth keeping in mind. This is highlighted in a translator’s note in chapter four. And in this constellation there is also the play between sentir and res(s) entir that I will allow the reader the pleasure of discovering in due course (there is an explanatory note at the end of § 8).
Finally, the most consequential: one has to deal aggressively with Falque’s own use of a modern neologistic enterprise called on in chapters one and three, involving first the words “principiel –elle” (adj.) and “principiellement” (adv.), located within the philosophically fruitful constellation governed by the two great lights of principe (n.) and principal (n.)—in relation to the Latin principaliter, principalis, principium, princeps , etc. The word principiel, -elle is found, representatively, in Barthes (1953: Essais critiques , p. 21) and Jankélévitch (1957: Le Je-nesais-quoi et le Presque-rien , p. 238). It means (according to Le Trésor , on which I rely again), “relative to the principle as first cause of something.” But principiellement is a hapax legomenon of Sartre’s, from Ê tre et Néant (1943: p. 479). It means “in principle”: a “consistent attitude to the Other” would only be possible, for Sartre, if we could approach it as revealed as both subject and object, as “transcendance-transcendante” and as “transcendance-transcendée”: this is in principle (“in theory,” “at root”) impossible (“ce qui est principiellement impossible”). Falque decides to translate the Latin principaliter (first found at the beginning of the Breviloquium , I 1, 1) by principiellement instead of the usual principalement (as his French edition of Bonaventure has it): theology treats of God, the Three in One principaliter, “principiellement” (not principalement ). Falque gives his reasons for this in a footnote to §1(b) below. The short of it is that he wants to emphasize the connection between the allusion to the opening words of the Gospel of John and the Book of Genesis with which Bonaventure starts (“in principio,” which can mean both “in the beginning” and “in the principle”) and his (immediately following) description of the content of theology (as the English translation of Bonaventure has it: “theology deals principally with the First Principle—God, three and one.”). 1 Suffice to say that a lot in Falque’s interpretation is manifest through this distinction. And it has only a little to do with Sartre’s neologism: he borrows the word but uses it for his own ends. Whereas French only has one adverb ( principalement ) for both principal and principe , Falque wants to introduce principiellement in order to raise their distinction onto the adverbial plane as well. “In principle” for principiellement is not sufficient. For this English text, Lapsa proposed a neologism: “princ e pally,” to distinguish it