The Evolutionary Vision of Teilhard de Chardin

Abstract

The posthumous publication of the Works of Père Teilhard de Chardin has created a flurry on both sides of the Atlantic. The fIrst volume to appear, Le Phénomène Humain (1955), was a best-seller in his native France. Four years later the English translation, The Phenomenon of Man, attracted wide attention in the United Kingdom and North America. Popular interest was evoked by the fact that the author had been a paleoanthropologist of considerable reputation, a fervent evolutionist, and a priest of the Jesuit Order forbidden by ecclesiastical superiors to publish his evolutionary ideas. In academic circles interest was centred upon the arresting character of those ideas, especially as presented in The Phenomenon of Man. Yet the evaluation of this book has been befogged by the strong emotions which it has tended to arouse. Some critics have praised it extravagantly. Others have condemned it as worthless or pernicious. Very few have been prepared to give Teilhard's ideas a detached examination. This is what I shall try to do on a modest scale in the following pages.