Rémi Brague

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 LMU 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 world conception. In particular, his goal was to write the book on Aristotle that Heidegger would have written had he not written Being and Time. From there, he was led to study Hebrew to read the Old Testament and Arabic in order "to read the Jewish philosopher Maimonides' The Guide for the Perplexed in its original language." Since then, most of his work has occurred at the intersection of the three Abrahamic religions as they developed out of the ancient world, formed themselves in dialogue, and eventually gave rise to modernity.

He has written numerous books on classical and medieval intellectual history, religion, national identity, literature, and law. He 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).