Étienne Gilson (1884-1978) and Hans Blumenberg (1920-1996) offer two paradigmatic figures for understanding the place of the Middle Ages in the history of philosophy and thinking about its link with modernity. Étienne Gilson, a modernist who became an anti-modernist, demonstrated the medieval underpinnings of Descartes' thought in his 1913 thesis. The discoverer of a continent, that of medieval philosophy, which the Sorbonne of his time regarded not as terra incognita but as a useless and obscure land, Étienne Gilson is the author of a body of work in which historical method is the principle of order, and which extends to political commitment, "Christian philosophy" and theology.
Since the translation of La légitimité des temps modernes in 1999, Hans Blumenberg's work has given rise to little debate among French medievalists. Yet, in opposing the various versions of the secularization thesis, Blumenberg was directly questioning the place of the Middle Ages in the history of philosophy, at the very moment when medieval philosophy was beginning to find its place in the academic world. The modern gesture had not consisted of a disguised reworking of medieval theological concepts in secular form, but rather constituted a strong, albeit protean, break with scholastic thought. However, Blumenberg recognized that part of medieval theology, particularly in the nominalist camp, had in some way enabled the advent of modern rationalism. Even if Blumenberg's documentation is now outdated, some of his hypotheses seem to retain an undeniable heuristic value. So what can medievalists gain from reading this work? And what conclusions can we draw, almost twenty years after the book's publication in France?
The aim of these study days is to think with Gilson and Blumenberg, and against them if need be, in order to shed light on this grey area between the Middle Ages and modernity.