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We explore the idea that a testimony is always constituted by at least three parts--the word of the witness, the listening of the one to whom it is addressed, and language as a symbolic register where speaking and listening are inscribed. Thus, the structure of testimony would not be captured only by the subjective formula "I was there"--a subject designates himself in reference to a past experience--, nor by the intersubjective formula "I am speaking to you"--a subject designates himself and his listener in the synchrony of the word addressing the other. What is also necessary to consider, in order to capture the structure of testimony, is that "there is language"--the testimony transcends diachronically the speaker and the hearer by inscribing them inseparably in the symbolic register that they share, namely language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Unity of the philosophical experience paints in an overall view going through various historical doctrines, the progress of the human spirit itself taken in the unity of its relation to philosophy. This book, which has no French equivalent, was published in 1937, and is one of the major witnesses to the philosophical -- and not only historical as is sometimes supposed -- work of Gilson. The remarkable recent translation has revived interest for it in the French speaking world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]