Description
When the end of his life work drew near, Tcilhard de Chardin became anxious to draft the outline of what he considered the stages, the directions and the major elements of his thought. In a short paper dated May 1948 he drew up his outline and gave it the title: My intellectual position.
This outline has guided J.-P. Demoulin in his choice of the extracts brought together in this book. They are taken from the nine volumes which have already been published and from Teilhard’s most important unpublished works. These extracts are intended to serve as an introduction to Teilhard’s original thought, and will also be useful to those who need a book for teaching purposes, as well as to those who wish to study Teilhard in greater detail. The major problems of Teilhard’s vision are dealt with: his method, the vision of the past, the phenomenon of man, the future of man, human energy (action, love, personalism), Omega Point, God, the phenomenon of religion, the Church, ethics, mysticism.
It may be said that here, for the first time, Teillrard sets forth and summarizes the whole of his thought (phenomenology— apologetics—ethics). It is for this reason that a phrase which often recurs in Père Teilhard’s writings has been chosen as the title of this book, a phrase which he used when he sought to throw light on his statements: Let me explain (Je m’explique). At the end of the book a few autobiographical pages are followed by an index and a table of references, which will enable the reader, taking this synthetic anthology as a starting point, to embark upon a systematic study of Teilhard’s thought.
Let Me Explain, Teilhard de Chardin, Collins, 1970
Hardback. Octavo. Blue cloth binding. Some minor spotting to page block and fore edge. Dust jacket has a small rip to the front. A line small line has been drawn in pen on the endpaper to the back, otherwise pages are unmarked. A clean, tight copy. 192 pp.
