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“The Legend of the Middle Ages adds another serious, informed, and nuanced voice to the facile and unhistorical views bandied about today concerning the Middle Ages, and especially its philosophical traditions. We are far from appreciating historically the culture of the Middle Ages, and even if one does not fully agree with some of Professor Brague’s views, one cannot help but come out enriched with further questions from the encounter with his thoughts.”
Dimitri Gutas, Yale University

“Rémi Brague is one of the few scholars alive who is equally an expert on medieval Arabic, Jewish, and Latin philosophy (as well as on ancient Greek philosophy).… The Legend of the Middle Ages demonstrates his special ability to discover profound philosophical implications in notions and questions in medieval texts that modern scholars would usually pass over.”
Kent Emery, Jr., University of Notre Dame

The Legend of the Middle Ages


Philosophical Explorations of Medieval Christianity, Judaism, and Islam

By Rémi Brague

For decades now, in volume after volume, the celebrated French thinker Rémi Brague has delved deep into the past and emerged, again and again, with fresh insights that sharply illuminate the present. In his acclaimed The Wisdom of the World, for example, Brague showed how modernity stripped the universe of its ethical and sacred wisdom. The Law of God, his last work, added depth and context to current debates about God’s role in worldly affairs. And now, The Legend of the Middle Ages proceeds in Brague’s characteristically brilliant style to unknot the long-tangled strands of our ideas about this misunderstood age.

Recently, the Middle Ages have emerged as the model for a harmonious future—a time when different religions and cultures peacefully coexisted and exchanged ideas. This legend, Brague argues, comes no closer to telling the full story than the Enlightenment-era portrayal of the Middle Ages as a benighted past from which the West had to evolve.

Here, in a penetrating interview and sixteen essays, he marshals nuanced readings of medieval religion and philosophy to reconstruct the true character of this complicated and intellectually rich period. Brague’s vibrant portrait—of an age neither dark nor devoid of conflict—not only makes for compelling intellectual history but also, finally, sorts out the era’s true lessons for our own time.

Rémi Brague is professor of philosophy at the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and at the University of Munich. He is the author of nine other books, including The Law of God and The Wisdom of the World, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

 

Rémi Brague is available for interviews. For more information, please contact Megan Marz at (773) 702-7490 or mmarz@uchicago.edu

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