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 the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

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.

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 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."

Since then, most of his work has taken place at the intersection of the three Abrahamic religions, 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.

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), 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 theorist Leo 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."

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.

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."

Brague is the recipient of numerous awards, including honors by both the French National Centre for Scientific Research and the Academy of Moral and Political Science.

Histoire philosophique d’une alliance (2005), and Le Règne de l'homme: Genèse et échec du projet moderne'' (2015).

In 2009, he received both the Josef Pieper Prize and the Grand prix de philosophie de l'Académie française, and he was awarded the 2012 Ratzinger Prize for Theology alongside Brian E. Daley.

In 2013, he was named a Chevalier de l'Ordre National de la Légion d'honneur.

Books and Edited Volumes in French (and other languages):

Books in English:

Articles in English: