Rémi Brague

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. 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.

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

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.

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.