Mass Society and Its Culture, and Three Essays concerning Etienne Gilson on Bergson, Christian Philosophy, and Art

A medievalist and defender of the notion of Christian philosophy, Etienne Gilson had a lifelong interest in the philosophy of art.

He questioned whether what is reproduced as art in contemporary society is art at all.

This is not a simple issue. A cheap version of a novel is still a novel. A picture of a statue is not a statue, nor indeed is a photograph of a painting a painting.

Recorded music has particular complications. The organizer of an industrial assembly line is neither an artist nor an artisan.

Yet, thanks to such mass production, a much broader population has knowledge of artworks than would otherwise be possible. Religions must minister to mass societies and provide appropriate liturgies.

But in the process, there is a danger of misrepresenting complex religious teachings.

At the end of his own life, Henri Gouhier, Gilson's first doctoral student, prepared three essays on Gilson.

The first, on Bergson, gives a sense of Gilson's formation in early twentieth-century French philosophy.

The second reconstructs the development of the notion of Christian philosophy and the heated controversy it provoked.

Finally, Gouhier presents Gilson's general philosophy of art and gives a helpful framework to Gilson's comments on art in a mass society.