Marie de la Trinité est une mystique contemporaine dont Jacques Lacan fut l’analyste. Cette trajectoire est paradigmatique de la manière dont une mystique rencontre la souffrance psychique dans le paysage culturel du milieu du xxe siècle. La pensée de Jacques Lacan concernant la mystique, ainsi que des considérations psychanalytiques plus générales à propos de la paternité, sont mises en relation avec la logique apophatique de cette spirituelle. Cette mystique « antinaturelle » se déploie en une sécheresse vertigineuse, à (...) la lisière du Symbolique, et dans une fascination vis-à-vis de l’attraction du Père, impérieuse et contrariée. L’article analyse en particulier, à travers la figure de Marie de la Trinité, la manière dont la mystique contemporaine se confronte, dans le champ chrétien, à la question de la mort de Dieu, et du déclin du Père. Marie de la Trinité was a contemporary mystic who was analyzed by Jacques Lacan. The trajectory of her life is a paradigmatic example of the way in which a mystic encountered psychic suffering in the cultural landscape of the mid-20th century. Jacques Lacan’s thinking about mysticism, as well as broader psychoanalytical considerations about fatherhood, are associated here with the apophatic path of Marie. As her counter-natural mysticism unfolds she draws ever closer to the symbolic, fascinated by the dual nature of the attraction, at once imperious and impeded, exerted by the Father. This article uses the figure of Marie de la Trinité as the specific vantage point to examine how contemporary Christian mysticism is faced with the question of the death of God and the decline of the Father. (shrink)

Ce livre est le fruit d'un travail mené par Jacques Arènes depuis plusieurs années sur les conditions psychiques du fait religieux dans le monde contemporain. La démarche de l'ouvrage réfute l'approche fonctionnaliste du fait religieux - étudié dans le contexte chrétien -, et cherche à mettre en tension mutuelle les discours laïcs, "scientifiques", concernant l'intériorité et ceux, plus anciens, issus du christianisme. L'auteur soutient l'hypothèse que la "laïcisation" du psychisme, induite par les nouvelles théories de l'intériorité, s'est traduite en (...) un travail psychique inédit, sur le plan individuel autant que collectif. L'intuition fondamentale de l'ouvrage est que la religion est aujourd'hui en relation forte avec le processus de subjectivation : dans un cadre historique où les institutions productrices de sens sont devenues incertaines, le sujet contemporain "utilise" ainsi la religion comme lieu de construction personnelle. L'ouvrage aborde les configurations, hautement individuelles, de la spiritualité d'aujourd'hui, et analyse la manière dont la quête de sens s'articule avec des démarches religieuses plus classiques. Le fait spirituel contemporain se saisit ainsi des méthodes et des démarches psychothérapiques pour les intégrer dans une problématique croyante. La confrontation des paradigmes utilisés par les théories religieuses de l'intériorité et par les sciences du psychisme conduit à une discussion approfondie sur les articulations du psychique et du spirituel. Cette tension entre les différents discours sur l'intériorité joue à l'intérieur d'une nouvelle donne anthropologique où le sujet coupable des temps freudiens, hanté par la faute, laisse progressivement la place au sujet blessé, peinant à porter sa destinée. Plus largement qu'une approche de la sphère religieuse, cette étude donne donc des éléments de compréhension sur le sujet contemporain en recherche de sens et en quête de soi. Un ouvrage du même auteur, à paraître prochainement aux Editions du Cerf, explorera plus précisément le positionnement du sujet croyant affronté au "trauma" d'une culture commune remettant en cause les racines de sa foi. (shrink)

Cet article explore les fondements contemporains d’une éthique du lien familial, et plus largement du lien humain, dans la perspective d’une réflexion pluridisciplinaire. Il commente les questions posées par la montée en puissance des éthiques du care et par la fragilisation du lien dans la culture occidentale. Est explorée notamment la difficulté posée par le défaut d’étayage et de « portance » du monde adulte, renvoyant les adolescents à négocier dans une forme de solitude des rites initiatiques qui prennent une (...) configuration autarcique. Ce défaut de portance concernerait aussi la culture dans son ensemble, soutenant faiblement les acteurs de la scène familiale et éducative dans l’espace de légitimité qu’ils ont sans cesse à créer. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage cherche à cerner les contours du travail de deuil que suscite aujourd'hui ce que Marcel Gauchet a appelé la sortie du religieux. Dans la lignée de son livre précédent, La Quête spirituelle hier e! aujourd'hui, Jacques Arènes analyse le travail psychique qu'impose au sujet croyant une culture remettant en cause les racines de sa foi. Il explore la manière dont le sujet supporte, ou non, ce déficit de sens. Ce traumatisme peut-il néanmoins constituer une chance? Jacques (...) Arènes se penche sur la notion de " trauma ", clans ses risques et ses fruits incertains. Il décrit " l'assèchement " de l'espace psychique du croyant, débarrassé des fioritures du langage religieux et " amaigri " de ses représentations. Au coeur du désert des images, le modèle créatif devient essentiel. Le religieux prend sans cesse le chemin qui borde le gouffre de la " non-foi ". Bien au-delà du seul registre de la foi, cet ouvrage interroge les voies d'une créativité possible dans un contexte de deuil. Existe-t-il un " gain " dans les pertes inéluctables de la vie Si la pensée psychanalytique joue un rôle essentiel dans la " purification " de l'imaginaire religieux, le savoir religieux apporterait alors les ressources d'une pensée de l'émergence, du surgissement de la nouveauté à travers les failles et les épreuves de nos existences, qui sont plus qu'avant complexes et diffuses. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Wilhelm Griesinger: Psychiatry between Philosophy and PraxisKatherine Arens (bio)AbstractThis essay discusses Wilhelm Griesinger’s seminal work on mental illness, Mental Pathology and Therapeutics (1867, trans. 1882), in the context of transcendental idealism, as an outgrowth of the work of Kant, Herbart, and Hegel. Griesinger drew on an adaptation of Hegel’s dialectical model of history and science to offer both a new way to interpret mental illness as a product of (...) an individual’s long-term interactions with both nature and culture and a new norm for therapeutic practice based on the patient’s role in his community and history.Mental Pathology and Therapeutics rests on Griesinger’s adaptation of the Hegelian dialectic to the context of pragmatic science, first by adopting its model of the mind, then by describing the etiology of mental disease and a taxonomy of its forms. Griesinger’s work thus stands in a largely unacknowledged tradition alive as late as Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.KeywordsGriesinger, history of psychiatry/psychology, idealism, Hegel, dialecticIn the nineteenth century, Wilhelm Griesinger (1817–68) emerged as a leader in a range of fields: modern-day psychiatric clinical practice, neuropathology, and diagnostics of mental diseases. 1 Griesinger was a theoretician, a clinician, a textbook author, and the founding editor of major professional organs in his field during the political and social ferment in the German-speaking world that allowed new, more socially responsible institutional practices to be considered by intellectual communities. As a consequence of 1849 German civil reforms, theory and practice became mutually enlightening, actually allowing Griesinger to implement his theories into concrete institutional reforms in the German mental health system.Wilhelm Griesinger’s education and career were in many ways typical for his generation. He enrolled at the University of Tübingen in 1834 as a medical student; there, he became politically active (as a member of a forbidden fraternity), and, like many of his contemporaries, became familiar with Hegelian philosophy. After holding several private positions, he was appointed an associate professor (ausserordentlicher Professor) for pathology, “materia medica” and history of medicine at Tübingen in 1847. In 1848, he was called to Kiel; in 1850, to Egypt. Tübingen reappointed him as a full professor for clinical medicine and head of the university clinic in 1854. By 1860, he had moved to Zurich in a professorship for the medical clinic, where, starting in 1863, he was a key person in the planning of a new clinic for mental diseases—the Burghölzli, where Jung later worked. By 1865, he went to Berlin, as director of the Charité (mental institution), among other positions, and he wrote extensively about reform in asylum practice until his premature death in 1868.To a degree, the eminence of this career is contradicted today by his reputation. Contemporary wisdom describes Griesinger as a synthesizer [End Page 147] rather than an innovator, a man who mixed medical psychology with psychology and psychiatric practice, allowing neurology to take a major role in the treatment of mental disease. 2 In one version, Griesinger simply pulled the clinic and the laboratory together, and so bridged Romanticism (i.e., speculative natural philosophy) and materialism (i.e., empirical science) while failing to effect crucial modern reforms. 3 In other descriptions, Griesinger is identified as an activist (Doerner 1981), a key player in the debates between the Hegelian left and right about the reformulation of public institutions (cf. Verwey 1985), 4 or a typical (but effective) member of the intellectual elite of his age. 5 None of these options explains the attractive or threatening aspects of his clinical practice, or suggests why a psychiatrist of his rank could have been so thoroughly refuted after his death. 6The discussion which follows will try to remedy this lack by setting Griesinger’s approach to mental illness in the context of a transformation of a model from philosophy into medical practice. Griesinger’s scientific context strongly combined philosophical theorizing and empirical practice, a synthesis that later generations tended to denigrate as a “speculative” approach to a branch of medicine that required a more empirical foundation. Drawing on an adaptation of Hegel’s dialectical model of history and... (shrink)

Les hommes sont-ils sujets ou assujettis à la structure objective du monde naturel et social ? Est-ce l’idéologie ou la critique de l’idéologie qui les fait sujets ? Les deux, selon Marx, car les hommes ne sont pas libres mais le deviennent à travers l’histoire, dialectiquement, en se libérant de la nécessité qui les conditionne. Depuis, le marxisme s’est scindé, un matérialisme objectif y affrontant un idéalisme subjectif, et aujourd’hui Althusser retourne le socialisme scientifique contre l’utopie communiste, à l’inverse d’Habermas. (...) Une critique scientiste de l’humanisme idéologique s’oppose alors à une critique humaniste de l’idéologie scientiste. Et s’il fallait plutôt critiquer ensemble humanisme et scientisme comme les deux versants contraires mais complémentaires d’un même rationalisme métaphysique et idéologique ?Are men subjects or are they subjected to objective structure of natural and social world ? Is it ideology or criticism of ideology which makes them subjects ? Both, according to Marx, because men aren’t but become free throught history, dialectically, being liberated from necessity which determines them. Since, marxism has been splitting up into an objective materialism fronting a subjective idealism, and today Althusser, at the opposite of Habermas, returns scientific socialism against communist Utopia. Then, a scienticist criticism of ideological humanism is opposed to a humanist criticism of scienticist ideology. So, shouldn’t we criticize both humanism and scienticism as two contrary but complementary sides of a single metaphysical - and ideological - rationalism ? (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 129-135. Introduction Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Successions of words are so agreeable. It is about this. —Gertrude Stein Nachoem Wijnberg (1961) is a Dutch poet and novelist. He also a professor of cultural entrepreneurship and management at the Business School of the University of Amsterdam. Since 1989, he has published thirteen volumes of poetry and four novels, which, in my opinion mark a high point in Dutch contemporary literature. His novels even more than his poetry are (...) criticized for being inaccessible, which I generally take to be a compliment. It would be like saying that Fernando Pessoa is inaccessible, which he is not. Neither is Wijnberg. When we think of the combination economist-poet we are immediately reminded of the American poet Wallace Stevens, who, as the story goes, had two stacks of paper on his desk, one for contracts, one for poems. We also know that Stevens wrote on the economy and that questions of economy and insurance surface at multiple points in his poems. The following text is a very preliminary attempt to point at the intersections between poems, novels, business, and poetry in Wijnberg’s work. On the back cover of his novel De opvolging ( The Succession , 2005), Wijnberg states the following: “[This is] a novel for whomever is interested in the workings of a company as much as in the workings of a poem.” Wijnberg thus claims that the way in which a company “works” may be similar to the way in which a poem “works.” The question is the obvious one, what does this similarity consist in? De opvolging tells the story of company in which bosses and company doctors, secretaries, children, clowns, and beggars have tons of meetings, recite poems, perform plays, tell jokes, and succeed each other, climbing up and down in the company’s hierarchy. De opvolging is a novel in which the career of people follows the career of words. It resonates with Gertrude Stein's sentences, "Grammar. What is it. Who was it" (1975, 50). The words in Wijnberg's poems are like he characters in his novel. And if we keep in mind this allegorical reading of De opvolging , which is obviously only one of the possible readings, we may be able to understand some aspects of Wijnberg’s poetry. A repetition is already a pun. Look, that word is trying it again, as if it is afraid that by not doing it it would give up the hope that it will ever be able to do something. A pun is the opposite of the first word coming to the mind of someone who shouts it when he suddenly discovers something. (104) The repetition, the succession of the same word, is already a pun, a joke. The succession of the father by the son after the revolution is a joke. "Look he's trying it again!" The essence of a joke is a repetition. Archimedes’ “Eureka!” is its opposite. Poems can easily become jokes, depending on the way the words follow and repeat each other. In De opvolging , the careers of the bosses, good and bad secretaries, and company doctors easily become jokes, as they are “afraid that by not doing it [they] would give up the hope that [they] will ever be able to do something.” Not only the repetition, but also the distance and difference between the words in a poem, their cause and effect relations can be read as company relations. This becomes clear when we, for example, read the first lines of the poem “Cause, sign” from Het leven van ( The Life Of , 2009). A sign lets know what is going to happen, a cause lets it happen. If the sign also lets happen there is no reason to isolate it, because then I would isolate some- thing only because it’s different for me. If I didn’t have to write this myself, but would have secretaries to whom I could dictate it, I would be able to say more about it. (49) Upon reading the first two lines we can already conclude that any word may be cause or sign or both. If a sign is also a cause there is no reason to discriminate it, yet to the poet they are still different. This difference only becomes expressible the moment he would have a secretary. Just like in De opvolging , the secretary introduces a distance; not in a company but in a poem. Hence the difference between “good” and “bad” secretaries in a company, where the good secretary of one boss may be the bad secretary of another one. The more we can say about the bosses of the company, or signifiers of the poem, the greater the distance we introduce between them and us. We should take serious the relation between Wijnberg’s novels and poems. Although they operate on different scales, they explain and converse with each other. Another example may be the novel Politiek en liefde ( Politics and Love , 2002), which deals with the relation, precisely, between politics and love. In the novel, Nicolai, a lieutenant in the Dutch army, is sent to Africa on a military mission. Upon leaving a receives a letter from his father. Dear son, Don’t do anything stupid before your father has advised you to do so. Your mother asked me to write a wise letter. I have been looking for wisdom for half a day and haven’t found much. If you borrow a small amount from a bank you become the bank’s slave, but if you borrow a couple of millions and spend them as quickly as possible the bank becomes your slave. What I want to say is that you have to return from Africa in good health, and before you know it the world will be your slave [....] Signed with a kiss from your father. (88) The line, “If you borrow a small amount from a bank you become the bank’s slave, but if you borrow a couple of millions and spend them as quickly as possible the bank becomes your slave,” returns as the title of poem in Het leven van: “If I borrow enough money the bank becomes my slave” (12-3), which elaborates this theme. So both in the way that these poems are structured and in their subject matter, they refer to the structures of our economy, to the ever-continuing line of CEOs succeeding each other like words, to the distance between them introduced by bureaucracy, and giving and receiving as economical and poetical acts. Poem and economy map onto each other, as in another episode from De opvolging : Edward reads two of the beggar’s poems about presents. Of a holiday nothing remains, except for memories, and if some of them are bad I’d rather forget them all; if I get a present I’d rather get something that’s useful to me for a long time. If I may choose, I choose what I can use longest, long enough to partially forget that this was the present, because it feels bad when nothing is left of it. […] Giving away becomes destruction in the stock destruction economy [ voorraadvernie -tigings-economie ], that is a gift economy [ geschenkeneconomie ], encountering for the first time an economy in which there’s selling and buying on markets. Instead of destroying supplies someone can also quickly say that they aren’t worth anything anymore; if someone wants to take them I’d gladly give him something extra. In a stock destruction economy he is someone who each day wants to work more hours than his colleagues. If around a company there is a gift economy in which someone’s rank is determined and made visible by the gifts someone can give someone else, a company will be more often character- ized by an invisible or unclear system of ranks. (152) Two poems about gifts present two different economical models, described by Wijnberg with the terms “stock destruction economy” and “gift economy.” Here we immediately recall the opposition introduced by George Bataille’s work on the concept of expenditure in The Accursed Share , where a “general economy” would surpass the stock destruction economy based on scarcity (capitalism) and become a gift economy (potlatch) and an egalitarian (communist) society. These claims are made both on the level of the poems and in their discursive explanation. They follow each other and on each other. I would like to finish this introduction to Wijnberg’s writing with a translation from his novel De joden ( The Jews , 1999), which develops the story of Hitler abdicating as chancellor of the Third Reich, appointing philosopher Martin Heidegger as his successor. In a conversation with two Russian actor-spies, sent by Stalin to figure out the situation, philosopher Walter Benjamin describes the abdication scene. Maimon: You were there when Hitler resigned? Benjamin: In the room we’re right now. The desk and the chairs are new. After his resignation Hitler would like to take his furniture to his new house. Martin naturally agrees. It is a sunny day. Martin is very nervous and complains about the heat. Martin is wearing his best dark blue suit, not his professor’s robe. Hitler is wearing his uniform. We enter the room and Hitler gets up and embraces Martin. Martin is not very good at embracing. Hitler shakes his hand. Hitler’s cap is on the desk. The cap has a metal lining. Hitler has strong neck muscles. Hitler says: A man is unclean. He takes a bath. Does he make the bath water unclean? I say: a man is unclean. He steps into a river. A little further a man steps into the river; does he become unclean? Hitler nods. I say: a man is standing in music. Another man hears the music but also sees the first man moving on the beat of the music in a way that he is certain that the music would excite different feelings in him if he wouldn’t to see the first man. Hitler says: a man is clean, listens to music, is suddenly touched and he doesn’t know by what. The conversation ends in the way you know it ends. Hitler picks up his cap from the desk and puts it on Martin’s head. (73-4) Aware of the never ending debate on the question of Heidegger’s involvement in the Nazi regime, Wijnberg has the audacity to present the arguments of complicity in the religious terminology of cleanliness and uncleanliness, while at the same time recalling overtones of Hitler’s supposed love for Wagner, suggesting a relation between Benjamin and Hitler, and so on. The space of this introduction is to small to treat a novel like De joden , a reading of which together with passages from Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's Heidegger, Art, and Politics: The Fiction of the Political , Jacques Derrida's Of Spirit , Christopher Fynsk's Heidegger: Thought and Historicity , and Avital Ronell's The Telephone Book would be extremely elucidating and potentially open new avenues in thinking Heidegger's emphasis on poetry after the fall of the Nazi empire. But at this point we will have to curb our curiosity and follow the poet himself. The themes of the relation between business and poetry, but also Chinese landscape painting, love, Indian and Japanese poetry, and Western philosophy are analyzed and assimilated in Wijnberg’s work without ever losing the clarity of expression. It may be that, according to Alain Badiou, the “Age of the Poets” is over, but its end (Paul Celan) has exactly brought a new balance between philosophy and poetry, and it is this playful, but nonetheless serious balance that makes one hope that one day Wijnberg’s complete oeuvre might become available to readers across the planet. Tiranë, Albania February 15, 2011 English translations (all of them translated by David Colmer, who is preparing an English collection of Wijnberg’s poems entitled Advanced Payment ): Poetry International Words Without Borders Green Integer Review from Het leven van ( The Life of ) THE LIFE OF KANT, OF HEGEL As if every day he takes a decision that is as good as when he’d been able to think about it all his life. The life of Kant, of Hegel, the days of the life of, select three or four of them. Tell what he has discovered during those days as if he were the last one who knew so little. Give me something that I can cancel against then I can prepare myself for it. The reward is that I may continue with what I’m doing, it doesn’t matter how long it takes. This has nothing to do with everything remaining the same if I say that I no longer want anything else. I wouldn’t be able to say in which one and the other occur in a way that I if I knew something to cancel that one against it wouldn’t be possible now. The stars above my head and being able to say what belongs to what if I’ve let them in. FOLLOWING MY HEART WITHOUT BREAKING THE RULES Observing the rules without observing the rules by going where the rules no longer apply. I could also observe the rules there by applying them to what at great distance may resemble what the rules are about. But why would I do that, not to confuse someone who is seeing me from a great distance? Behind this morning the morning prepares itself when the rules are everything I have. IF I BORROW ENOUGH MONEY THE BANK BECOMES MY SLAVE A bank lends me money, if I don’t pay it back they tell my boss that he has to pay them my salary. But they have to leave me enough to eat and sleep and an umbrella when it’s raining. They can also empty my house, the furniture isn’t worth a lot, but every little helps. Each morning I leave for work, if I don’t start early they’ll soon get someone else, no bank will lend me money when the sun is shining. My boss has given me a cat to raise as a dog. Of course I know that it won’t work out, but I’ve asked for a week—maybe the cat gets lucky, maybe I get lucky. My hands around a cup of coffee, before I leave for work, warm-empty, cold-empty, as if hidden in the mist over a lawn. What I make when there’s no work left for me, I’m ashamed to say how little it is. Once I’m outside I check it, if they watch out of the window they can see me doing it. Suppose it is so much that I’d stay counting for hours, it’s getting dark and I’m still there. They stay watching for a while once they’ve finished their work, but have to go home, I get that, sure, I could also go home and continue counting there. If it’s too little running back immediately won’t help, because nobody’s there anymore, and if I come back tomorrow I may have spent what’s missing tonight. Going somewhere where it’s warm enough to walk around without clothes during daytime, it helps me to know that something’s more there than here. For someone like me there’s work anywhere, it shouldn’t take a week to find work for me there. Three times work and a home close to work, I may choose one and try for a week whether I want to stay there. If at the end of the week I don’t want to stay I’m back on the next day, then it was a week’s holiday. RULES If that’s against a rule, it’s yet another one that I cannot observe, or only so briefly that I cannot re- member it later. Anyways the rules are only there to help me remember what I need in order to do better what I do. In that respect there’s no difference between the rules that I find in a book and the rules that I think of early in the morning. I know that because I’ve made a rule just now nothing has yet to observe it. CAUSE, SIGN A sign lets know what is going to happen, a cause lets it happen. If the sign also lets happen there is no reason to isolate it, because then I would isolate something only because it’s different for me. If I didn’t have to write this down myself, but would have secretaries to whom I could dictate it, I could to say more about it. If something is taken away from me I consider how it would be if the opposite had been taken from me. That is what causes or signifies what is farthest away from what is caused or signified by what has been taken away from me. note: For the translations of “The life of Kant, of Hegel” and “If I borrow enough money the bank becomes my slave” I was able to consult David Colmer’s wonderful translations. (shrink)

A leading philosopher presents a radical manifesto for the future of art andfilm.

In his Confessions Jean-Jacques Rousseau tells the story of his life, from the formative experience of his humble childhood in Geneva, through the achievement of international fame as novelist and philosopher in Paris, to his wanderings as an exile, persecuted by governments and alienated from the world of modern civilization. In trying to explain who he was and how he came to be the object of others' admiration and abuse, Rousseau analyses with unique insight the relationship between an elusive (...) but essential inner self and the variety of social identities he was led to adopt. The book vividly illustrates the mixture of moods and motives that underlie the writing of autobiography: defiance and vulnerability, self-exploration and denial, passion, puzzlement, and detachment. Above all, Confessions is Rousseau's search, through every resource of language, to convey what he despairs of putting into words: the personal quality of one's own existence. (shrink)

A group of essays prepared for publication by Maritain in the year before his death. The first series of articles consists of 10 philosophical essays, while second is made up of mainly theological articles. A meditation closes the volume.

Toutes les idéologies recouvrent-elles une égale meéonnais-sance de la réalité?Le terme d' «idéologie », brandi comme arme idéologique, vise « une doctrine fondée sur des idées sans rapport avec les faits réels ». Ce système transmissible de rapports ne se rapporte plus lui-même à la réalité: celle-ci peut être subsumée sous ses concepts organisés en dogmes, elle ne peut plus ou n'a jamais pu être reconnue. L'adversaire de l'idéologie se donne pour tâche de faire reconnaître «la » réalité en découvrant (...) les réalités qu'il estime essentielles, en même temps qu'il en dénonce la mécon-naissance chez l'idéologue. L'idéologie attaquée constituant l'idéolo-gie typique, toutes les idéologies ne font à ses yeux que reproduire cette méconnaissance radicale: l'une n'a pas plus de valeur de vérité qu'une autre, elles recouvrent toutes une égale absence de rapports avec le réel. Elles sont toutes aveugles au même titre et ne reconnaissent pas davantage cet aveuglement que la réalité qu'elles ignorent. (shrink)

Face aux sommes colossales investies par les Etats, à l'augmentation des débris dans les orbites autour de la Terre, aux risques pris par les spationautes, et à l'exploitation commerciale de l'espace, cet ouvrage propose une réflexion critique sur les stratégies mises en oeuvre par les hommes dans leur conquête des étoiles.

La question des services publics, dans son idée de mise en commun des biens sociaux, suscite aujourd’hui une réflexion sur les mutations du politique. Les transformations des services publics, leur diminution voire leur abolition correspondent, selon l’auteur, au recul d’un certain projet politique de mise en commun. Le partage des biens sociaux découle, de plus en plus, du jeu des rapports de force au détriment d’un projet de mise en commun conforme à un projet politique plus vaste qui définirait les (...) paramètres d’un « vivre ensemble de solidarité ». (shrink)

L’environnement intellectuel contemporain est partagé entre deux positionnements, moderne et postmoderne. Ces positionnements jouent sur la question du réalisme et de son rapport à la théologie. L’article présente la démarche théologique de J. Wentzel van Huyssteen selon ce contexte.

Londres, 1945. Giles est declare heritier du titre et de la fortune de son pere Hugo Barrington. Au detriment de son ami - et peut-etre demi-frere - Harry Clifton, mais aussi au grand soulagement de celui-ci qui peut dorenavant epouser Emma, la soeur de Giles. Tandis que Harry et Emma s'installent a Bristol avec Sebastian, leur fils, et Jessica, une petite fille qu'ils adoptent, Giles, devenu membre de la chambre des Lords, se retrouve pris au piege de haines ancestrales dans (...) sa lutte pour le pouvoir. Une decennie plus tard, c'est Sebastian, representant de la nouvelle generation, qui fera basculer la carriere politique de son oncle. Secrets trop longtemps enfouis, vengeances longuement meditees, amours enfin possibles ou alliances interessees, une saga qui se devore d'une traite. Tout est reuni pour rendre cette lecture totalement addictive. Un excellent page-turner. Version Femina. (shrink)

L’article est un essai qui propose de faire trois additions à la théorie évolutionniste hayékienne.La première pour éclairer l’émergence des règles, sociales, zone d’ombre chez Hayek, en introduisant le concept “ d’espaces relationnels ”, embryons des espaces institutionnels.La seconde pour faire apparaître le rôle de l’action humaine dans l’évolution des règles sociales : des individus ou groupes d’individus jouent un rôle “ entrepreneurial ” et cherchent à changer des institutions qui ne conviennent pas à leurs exigences éthiques.La dernière pour réintroduire (...) une référence à l’ordre naturel qu’Hayek avait voulu éliminer, mais qui valide le processus hayékien à condition de retenir une approche subjective du droit naturel par opposition aux approches objectives courantes.This paper tries to add three elements to Hayek’s theory of evolution.The first element sheds light on a moot point in Hayek’s thought, the emergence of social rules. It does so by introducing the concept of “relational spheres”, deemed as incipient institutional spheres.The second element tries to make the role of human action conspicuous in the evolution of social rules: individuals or groups of individuals play an “entrepreneurial” role and seek to alter institutions which are no longer in harmony with their ethical moorings.The last element introduces a reference to natural order which Hayek discarded in his thought. This reference validates the Hayekian process as long as a subjective approach to natural law is retained in contrast to contemporary objective approaches. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to show that in the present world a renewal of Christianity is more likely to take place through interreligious dialogue than in opposition to the other religious traditions. Religious pluralism must not be viewed as a mere fact of life to be reckoned with, much less as an impediment to Christian mission and identity, but as a divine grace to be thankful for and an opportunity to be seized – a gift and a task. (...) Religious pluralism in principle is based on God’s initiative in searching for people throughout history in order to share with them, “in many and diverse ways” , God’s own life, even before human beings could ever search for God. It follows that the other religious traditions play a positive role in God’s plan for humankind; it also follows that Christianity may be enriched – or even renewed – through contact with them. The paper first addresses the demands of openness to the other that a sincere practice of dialogue with another religious faith makes on those who earnestly enter into the practice. The second part discusses the question of mutual enrichment that the traditions may derive from a sincere practice of dialogue. The third part addresses the problem of the complementarity and convergence that may be affirmed between Christianity and the other traditions. (shrink)

. Fresh evidence from Free Choice Items (FCIs) in French question the current perception of the class. The role of some standard distinctions found in the literature is weakened or put in a new perspective. The distinction between universal and existential is no longer an intrinsic property of FCIs. Similarly, the opposition between variation-based vs intension-based analyses is relativized. We show that the regime of free choiceness can be characterized by an abstract constraint, that we call Non-Individuation (NI), and which (...) can be satisfied in different ways that match current distinctions. NI says that the information conveyed by a sentence containing a FCI should not be reducible to a referential situation, that is a situation in which particular individuals satisfy the sentence in the current world. The widely used resource of modal variation becomes a particular scenario of free-choiceness, not its essence. In fact, we show that under certain conditions, FCIs can occur in episodic, non-modal sentences, a fact that NI can accommodate. We also discuss more fine-grained aspects of the semantics of FCIs, such as their emotional colour. (. . .) the tripod fell spontaneously, because, though it stood on its feet so as to serve for a seat, it did not fall so as to serve for a seat. Aristotle, Physics II,6. (shrink)

“Pedagogics of Unlearning”: this phrase obviously echoes a notion and a figure that I had set up in my own way when I published a book entitled The Ignorant Schoolmaster with the subtitle “Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation”.1 Both entail the idea of a specific form of learning, which is a negative one: learning how to unlearn, teaching as an ignoramus, learning the emancipatory virtue of ignorance. This idea raises two interrelated problems. First, how are we to understand the type (...) of negativity at work in this unlearning or this ignorance? Secondly, what is the exact target of this negative action? What is the positivity that is under attack? In other words, what is at stake in matters of... (shrink)

Seul Jésus dans les Evangiles parle du Fils de l'homme, et si d'autres prononcent ce nom, c'est toujours en s'adressant à lui. Des disciples, des auditeurs, peuvent reprendre sa façon de parler, ils ne font jamais parler que lui, et jamais d'un autre que de lui. Les quatre-vingt textes évangéliques sur le Fils de l'homme ne suffisent pas à caractériser son personnage ni à définir son action. Mais ils expriment souvent de façon très libre ses réactions les plus personnelles. A (...) ce titre, ils sont incomparables. Ils couvrent d'ailleurs assez largement les terrains abordés par les Evangiles. Si les annonces eschatologiques occupent facilement la première place, la présence du Fils de l'homme donne à ces perspectives toute leur ampleur. Même quand Jésus demeure silencieux ou discret, la présence du Fils de l'homme donne au récit et aux événements une portée nouvelle.L'évangile de Jean n'attache pas moins d'importance que les synoptiques au Fils de l'homme. Et s'il transforme l'image en profondeur, il ne la quitte pas. Il n'oublie ni l'ampleur de l'horizon, vaste comme la création de Dieu ni la personnalité du Fils de l'homme. Même s'il concentre le regard sur quelques textes seulement, il développe une vision tout à fait originale et parfaitement cohérente. Il donne ainsi aux perspectives synoptiques, et sans doute au langage original de Jésus, toute leur plénitude.In the Gospels only Jesus speaks of the Son of Man, and if others pronounce that name, it is always to address him. The disciples and listeners can take up his way of speaking ; they only want to hear about him, and no one else but him. The eighty Gospel texts concerning the Son of Man are not enough to characterize his person nor to define his action. But they often express in a very free way his most personal reactions. In this way they are incomparable. They cover fairly completely, in fact, the ground dealt with by the Gospels. If eschatological declarations easily occupy the first place, the presence of the Son of Man g ives all its fullness to these perspectives. Even when Jesus remains silent or discrete, the presence of the Son of Man gives to the story and events a new dimension.The Gospel of John does not give less importance than the Synoptics to the Son of Man. And it transforms the image of a greater depth, it does not leave it. It forgets neither the breadth of the horizon, vast as the creation of God, nor the personality of the Son of Man. Even if John concentrates only on several texts, he develops a vision completely original and perfectly coherent. Thus he gives to the Synoptic perspectives, and without doubt to the original language of Jesus, all their fullness. (shrink)