With gratitude for the work of a great thinker whose work inspired many of our notes along the Gospels in the ‘Philosophy’ and ‘Literature’ sections, we are passing on the fine tribute paid to him by prof. Cappelle-Dumont
Paris, december 2018, 10.
Dear Members and Sociétaires,
It is with great sadness that I inform you of the death on 10 December of Father Xavier Tilliette SJ at the age of 97. An honorary member of our Academy since its foundation, he was one of the last great Jesuits, close to the generation of Fathers Henri de Lubac, Jean Daniélou and Karl Rahner.
A renowned philosopher, internationally commented on and celebrated in particular through the Istituto Xavier Tilliette founded by Italian academics, he left a major philosophical and theological body of work which for over four decades has inspired not only Christian thinkers but also many commentators on German Idealism, principally Schelling, of whom he was the world specialist.
The initiator of the ‘philosophical Christology’, an astute reader of Soeren Kierkegaard, Paul Claudel, Maurice Blondel and Gustav Siewerth, he defended the idea of Christian philosophy with a rare erudition and an ardour that was sometimes hidden behind elegance, overcoming with talent the objections raised by the advocates of a clear separation between faith and reason. He was personally consulted during the drafting of the great encyclical “Fides et ratio” by the philosopher Pope John Paul II.
Having been close to him for 40 years, as were Jean-Louis Vieillard-Baron and Bertrand Saint-Sernin and so many philosopher friends of all ages, I can only join them and the whole community of Catholic philosophers in feeling a profound loss.
His former students and colleagues at the Gregorian University in Rome and the Catholic Institute in Paris, as well as his French, Italian, Anglo-Saxon, Portuguese and Spanish readers, will undoubtedly appreciate more than ever, in the coming months and years, how much they owe to a personality as discreet as he was luminous, whose death, feared for some years, now opens up the time for gratitude.
Father Dean Philippe Capelle-Dumont
President of the Académie catholique de France
