The French Roman Catholic philosopher Étienne Henry Gilson (1884-1978) was an important modern exponent of Thomism. He stressed the importance of rigorous philosophical reasoning corrected and expanded by Christian revelation.

On June 13, 1884, Étienne Gilson was born in Paris. He was educated at the Petit Séminaire de Notre-Dame-des-Champs and the Sorbonne (1895-1907). In 1908 Gilson married Thérèse Ravisé they later had one son and two daughters. He spent several years as a high school teacher and pursued research at the Sorbonne, receiving a doctoral degree in 1913 for a dissertation on the philosophy of René Descartes. The same year Gilson began teaching at the University of Lille. During this period he moved from a thorough training in modern philosophy to the study of medieval philosophy on the advice of his teacher at the Sorbonne, the distinguished philosopher Lucien Lévy-Bruhl...