Jean Guitton was born in 1901. He taught philosophy in Troyes, Moulins, Lyon and Mountpellier in the 1930s, and was a prisoner of war from 1940 to 1945. In 1955 he was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne, and he was elected to the French Academy in 1961. He was the only layperson authorized by Pope John XXIII to attend the first session of the Second Vatican Council in 1962.