Tocqueville se montre préoccupé par le fait religieux dans l’ensemble de son œuvre. Il ne se contente pas d’observer le rapport de la religion au politique, il cherche ce qu’elle doit être pour s’ouvrir un avenir, et cela justifie une étude théologique de son concept de religion.Dans la 1ère partie de la Démocratie en Amérique , il souligne l’influence des croyances religieuses sur les mœurs politiques des Américains et la particulière inclination du christianisme aux institutions démocratiques. Sa pensée s’élève toutefois (...) à la conception d’un rapport générique entre la religion et la société politique, conception qu’il développera dans la 2e partie du même ouvrage , puis dans l’Ancien Régime et la Révolution . Il croit remarquer une évolution continue du xvie au xviiie siècle, qui tend à établir l’égalité et la ressemblance des citoyens et à substituer le libre examen des croyances dogmatiques au principe d’autorité. Il en conclut que l’opinion commune est appelée à jouer un rôle prépondérant dans les sociétés égalitaires, et il y voit un danger pour l’avenir de la religion, si elle se referme sur son dogmatisme, mais aussi pour l’avenir des sociétés démocratiques, qui ont plus qu’aucune autre besoin de la religion. Mais il juge que la religion chrétienne est mieux armée que les autres pour relever ce défi, pourvu que les chrétiens ne s’érigent pas en adversaires de la liberté.La religion occupe donc une place centrale dans la réflexion politique de Tocqueville, lui-même tourmenté depuis son adolescence par les questions religieuses. Son penchant croissant au doute le prédisposait à recueillir l’héritage des Lumières, mais n’a jamais entamé son espérance dans l’avenir du christianisme.Throughout his writings, Tocqueville shows that he was preoccupied by the religious phenomenon. He not only observed the relation to politics, but he looked for what religion should be in order to open itself to the future. This justifies a theological study of his concept of religion.In the first part of la Démocratie en Amérique , he pointed out the influence of religious beliefs on the political morals of Americans and the particular inclination of Christianity to democratic institutions. His thought, nevertheless, developed towards a conception of the generic rapport between religion and political society, an idea that he develops in the second part of the same work , and then in l’Ancien Régime et la Révolution . He thought that he saw a continual evolution from the 16th to the 18th century, which tended to establish equality and a similarity of citizens and to substitute the free examine of dogmatic beliefs for the principle of authority. He concluded from this that common opinion is called to play a preponderant role in egalitarian societies. He saw there a danger for the future of religion, if it closed itself on its dogmatism, but also for the future of democratic societies, which would need for religion more than any other type of society. But he judged that the Christian religion was better armed than others to take up the challenge, as long as Christians did not set themselves up as adversaries of freedom.Religion, then, occupies a central place in the political reflection of Tocqueville, who was tormented by religious questions from the time of his adolescence. His growing inclination to doubt predisposed him to welcome the heritage of the Enlightenment, but not so far as to weaken his hope in the future of Christianity. (shrink)

Learned men of the twelfth century, especially the first half, frequently wrote about themselves and each other. Well-known examples of autobiographical writing include Guibert of Nogent's De vita sua or Monodiae, Rupert of Deutz's defense of his theological career in his Apologia attached to his commentary on the Benedictine rule, Peter Abelard's Historia calamitatum, and Gerald of Wales's De rebus a se gestis. Examples of biographical narrative are easily found: the life of St. Goswin included an account of Goswin (...) defeating Abelard in disputation; Baudri of Bourgueil wrote a poem about famous schools and scholars; the anonymous Metamorphosis Goliae provided characterizations of many masters; John of Salisbury's Metalogicon described the teaching methods of Bernard of Chartres and, in an autobiographical account of his own education, offered sketches of many of the leading masters in northern France, while Otto of Freising's Gesta Friderici I Imperatoris recounted parts of the academic careers of Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers. It is therefore possible to read about twelfth-century scholars in their own words: the way they taught, their personalities, their ambitions, their disappointments; in short, their lives, or representations of their lives. Moving toward the end of the twelfth century and into the thirteenth century, however, there is very little comparable material, perhaps even none. In the thirteenth century, scholars wrote a great deal about being a scholar, but they preferred always to stress their collective identity, so that narrative accounts of particular scholarly lives did not find a place within the emerging universities. Why was there a change in the way in which scholars chose to represent themselves and each other, a change that involved obscuring their lives, both from themselves and from us? Answering that question will reveal the long-term significance of conflict between Schoolmen and monks and the impact of monastic ideals upon universities. It will show how the need for support from parties outside the university and internal debates about the true nature and purpose of learning came together, how ideas developed within the world of learning mattered when conflict led to the grant of privileges, and how specific ways of thinking became politically significant when particular events generated a certain kind of document in which those ways of thinking were embedded. (shrink)

Ghost Image is made up of sixty-three short essays—meditations, memories, fantasies, and stories bordering on prose poems—and not a single image. Hervé Guibert’s brief, literary rumination on photography was written in response to Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida, but its deeply personal contents go far beyond that canonical text. Some essays talk of Guibert’s parents and friends, some describe old family photographs and films, and spinning through them all are reflections on remembrance, narcissism, seduction, deception, death, and the phantom (...) images that have been missed. Both a memoir and an exploration of the artistic process, Ghost Image not only reveals Guibert’s particular experience as a gay artist captivated by the transience and physicality of his media and his life, but also his thoughts on the more technical aspects of his vocation. In one essay, Guibert searches through a cardboard box of family portraits for clues—answers, or even questions—about the lives of his parents and more distant relatives. Rifling through vacation snapshots and the autographed images of long-forgotten film stars, Guibert muses, “I don’t even recognize the faces, except occasionally that of an aunt or great-aunt, or the thin, fair face of my mother as a young girl.” In other essays, he explains how he composes his photographs, and how—in writing—he seeks to escape and correct the inherent limits of his technique, to preserve those images lost to his technical failings as a photographer. With strains of Jean Genet and recurring themes that speak to the work of contemporary artists across a range of media, Guibert’s Ghost Image is a beautifully written, melancholic ode to existence and art forms both fleeting and powerful—a unique memoir at the nexus of family, memory, desire, and photography. (shrink)

For the economist Bernard Guibert it is necessary to find the justification for basic social income- one that he places at the centre of an ecological social policy - in a rehabilitation of the relationship of unearned income. Not a parasitic income but one based on its own social and productive qualities, on its own body. The regulation of this income, like that of durable development is an act of a political nature.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guibert of Tournai's Letter to Lady Isabelle:An Introduction and English TranslationLarry F. Field, Jacques Dalarun, Sean L. Field, and Guibert of TournaiIntroductionGuibert, from the noble family of As-Piès, was born near Tournai around 1200. From his hometown he traveled to Paris for his art degree, and completed the curriculum in theology there before entering the Franciscan Order around 1240. He may have participated in Louis IX's crusade (...) of 1248, but, if so, was surely back in Paris by 1254 at the latest, since he preached a cycle of sermons de dominicis et de sanctis to the university community before summer 1255.1 His regency as Franciscan master of theology at Paris was probably around 1259–1261,2 about the time he [End Page 31] completed his Eruditio regum et principum for Louis IX,3 and began his most substantial work, the Erudimentum doctrinae.4 Other significant treatises include his De pace et animi tranquillitate (ca. 1275)5 written for Marie de Dampierre, and the Collectio de scandalis ecclesiae, prepared for the Second Council of Lyon.6 Guibert died in Tournai on 7 October 1284.7Sometime around 1254, Guibert wrote a long letter of spiritual advice to Isabelle (1225–70), the sister of King Louis IX.8 Isabelle was herself a remarkable figure. She had rejected several proposals of marriage, including that with Conrad, the heir to Emperor Frederick II, in 1243, in spite of pressure from her family and Pope Innocent IV. But following a bout of serious illness at about that time,9 her family accepted her [End Page 32] decision to remain unwed. There is no evidence, however, that Isabelle ever pronounced a formal vow of virginity. Through the 1250s she simply remained at the Capetian court as a virgin princess with an increasing reputation for piety and indeed holiness, praised in lavish terms by Innocent IV in 1253 and Alexander IV in 1256.10 This piety took a distinctly Franciscan turn by 1254, when Pope Innocent IV granted her request for Franciscan confessors,11 which would ultimately result in her foundation of Longchamp, a house of Sorores minores just west of Paris, by 1260.12 Guibert's letter shows no awareness of such a project, indicating that it must have been written before spring 1255, by which time the land for Longchamp was being purchased on Isabelle's behalf.13 Guibert thus wrote at the moment when Isabelle was forming her first ties to the Franciscans, but well before her move to Longchamp, where she lived out the 1260s as resident lay patron (but never a nun).Guibert's Letter is really a short treatise of spiritual and moral advice, tailored to a celibate princess. It is organized around Psalm 44:14–15, All the glory of the king's daughter is within in golden fringes, clothed around with varieties. In a five-part structure, the king's daughter stands for a heavenly inheritance; glory within represents internal purity; gold indicates virginity; the fringes are a sign of humility; and clothed around with varieties points to honest comportment. The resulting "royal garment," however, is rather unequally woven together, with section one on the "heavenly inheritance" and the intertwined sections three and four on virginity and humility receiving by far the most space. In fact, section one forms a sort of treatise-within-a-treatise, organized as a ten-step ascent to the heavenly inheritance awaiting the daughter of the king. [End Page 33]The Letter to Lady Isabelle was first edited by Alphonse de Poorter in 1931, from a manuscript which contained only part of the text.14 The full text was brought into print by Sean Field in 2003,15 and translated into French by Jacques Dalarun in 2014.16 Yet in spite of these advances, the Letter has remained little noticed by scholars. Anne-Hélène Allirot offered several perceptive pages in 2010, stressing the way Guibert's treatment of hereditas implies that female members of the royal family might be particularly able to embody Capetian claims to holiness.17 That same year, in the only recent article dedicated specifically to this Letter, Rina Lahav... (shrink)

Volume 46, Issue 1, February 2025, Page 200-201.

By modifying the Education Code and the definition of «handicap», the French law passed in February 2005 in favour of disabled people has doubled the number of students classified as disabled in mainstream secondary schools. Nine years after the enactment of this act, the field practice continues to be an ordeal that teachers can relate to in terms of experience. How does this law impact on the teaching practices of mainstream secondary school teachers? Using an interactionist approach, this paper explains (...) how the 2005 law calls into question the «mandate» and the «license» (Hughes, 1996) of the teaching profession. It also shows to what extent implementing inclusion encourages mainstream teachers to develop new professional skills and knowledge. (shrink)

This article is a study on the current challenges of Jesuit universities in terms of their Identity and Mission. It analyzes the aims of a Jesuit university, which, according to Fr. Ledesma are: utilitas, justitia, humanitas and fides. The relevance of each of the goals today is also considered. Two areas are added in this reflection: communitas and universitas. At the beginning, as an introduction, the author presents some historical data on Jesuit and Church universities in Europe. A brief description (...) of the current European context of higher education is also included. (shrink)

The book is a collection of lectures given during the spring colloquia between 2011 and 2019 at the Sorbonne. During these colloquia, a total of ten questions, such as ‘Should Logic be Mathematical...

Las universidades se enfrentan a múltiples retos que tienen ver con la misión que llevan a cabo en la sociedad en que se encuentran. La Compañía de Jesús en las últimas décadas ha renovado y reformulado de manera actualizada su misión. Es titular de casi doscientas instituciones de educación superior. Ha renovado también el entronque de dichas instituciones en la misión de la misma Compañía. El concepto de liderazgo ignaciano surge estos años como eje de renovación de personas e instituciones. (...) Puede ser también, para las universidades jesuitas, ocasión de profundización en su identidad y de mejora en su servicio apostólico. (shrink)

Los escasos trabajos dedicados a la memoria en Nietzsche se han detenido especialmente en la relación existente con el resentimiento, partiendo de GM I. El objetivo de este artículo es doble: demostrar la relación anterior, entre la mala conciencia y la memoria, que aparece de modo implícito en GM II. Para ello se seguirá el hilo conductor del desarrollo de la mala conciencia en la religión.

Religioso incluso en su ateísmo, Nietzsche no solamente da que pensar en materia de religión, sino que constituye un momento crítico en la tradición filosófica que se apodera de la cuestión. Las contribuciones a este monográfico pretenden dar una aproximación perspectivista, si no exhaustiva, de lo que la filosofía de Nietzsche debe a la religión como tal, del lugar que ocupa en su pensamiento, así como de la actualidad de estas reflexiones para el lector contemporáneo que, más que nunca, vive (...) a la sombra de Dios. (shrink)

La présente contribution montre l’importance nouvelle de la prise en compte des risques, en particulier en Europe. Si le principe de précaution est indispensable, son utilisation à tort et à travers dans le débat public pose questions. La crise sanitaire met ainsi la lumière sur la nécessité de mieux organiser la gouvernance de ce principe, y compris en associant davantage les citoyens.

Open peer commentary on the article “Designing Academic Conferences as a Learning Environment: How to Stimulate Active Learning at Academic Conferences?” by Johan Verbeke. Upshot: This commentary supports the author’s statement of the value of the design of a loose and solid timeframework for conferences in order to facilitate the collective development and consolidation of knowledge. It also points out the importance of the selection of a diverse range of attendees for the formation of communities of research. The main aspect (...) that is added is the fundamental role of fostering a culture of generosity and trust to allow for honest and in-depth discussions. This is done through the encouragement of an etiquette of constructive behaviour during these events. (shrink)

L’abbaye du Mont-César a célébré lors de diverses manifestations religieuses et culturelles le premier centenaire de sa fondation. C’est le 13 avril 1899 que des moines, venus de l’abbaye de Maredsous, prenaient possession de la première aile d’un nouveau monastère bénédictin, édifié sur une butte historique, au nord de la ville de Louvain. Autrefois s’y était dressé, face à la ville, un château des ducs de Brabant. Nul doute que la proximité de l’université de Louvain avec ses multiples facultés n’ait (...) largement contribué à cette fondation bénédictine. (shrink)

Franz Overbeck associates the eternal return with Nietzsche's passion for the ideal of the extreme (Ideals des ‘Extremen’), a drive for the ultimate that is related to the notion of the Nietzschean overhuman. The aim of this paper is to bring to light and analyze the Nietzschean understanding of the ultimate, starting from Overbeck and bringing to light the conception of Christian eschatology presupposed in Nietzsche’s analysis of ressentiment and the ascetic ideal. Explaining the eschatology from which Nietzsche starts will (...) help to have a better understanding of the doctrine of the eternal return, exploring how the Christian heritage from which Nietzsche drank weighs on it. (shrink)

Los escasos trabajos que abordan la fuerza plástica (plastische Kraft) en Nietzsche se centran especialmente en la definición de la Segunda Consideración Intempestiva (1874). El objetivo de este artículo es doble: demostrar A) que, más allá de la Segunda Consideración Intempestiva, este concepto tiene un largo recorrido en el pensamiento de Nietzsche que todavía no ha sido descubierto y que, como reflejo de este último, B) el concepto de la fuerza plástica sufre una evolución, por la que pasa de ser (...) la apropiación de un concepto estético de los siglos XVIII y XIX, a ser una característica propia del espíritu libre y, por tanto, del superhombre. (shrink)

Volume 46, Issue 1, February 2025, Page 200-201.

Philosophy & Public Affairs, Volume 50, Issue 1, Page 6-49, Winter 2022.

I develop an account of predictive similarity that allows even Antirealists who accept a correspondence conception of truth to answer the Realist demand (recently given sophisticated reformulations by Musgrave and Leplin) to explain the success of particular scientific theories by appeal to some intrinsic feature of those theories (notwithstanding the failure of past efforts by van Fraassen, Fine, and Laudan). I conclude by arguing that we have no reason to find truth a better (i.e., more plausible) explanation of a theory's (...) success than predictive similarity, even of its success in making novel predictions. (shrink)

Realists have responded to challenges from the historical record of successful but ultimately rejected theories with what I call the selective confirmation strategy: arguing that only idle parts of past theories have been rejected, while truly success‐generating features have been confirmed by further inquiry. I argue first, that this strategy is unconvincing without some prospectively applicable criterion of idleness for theoretical posits, and second, that existing efforts to provide one either convict all theoretical posits of idleness (Kitcher) or stand refuted (...) by detailed consideration of the very examples (optical/electromagnetic ether, caloric fluid) to which they appeal (Psillos). I also argue that available avenues for improving on these proposals are unpromising. (shrink)

In recent years philosophers have given much attention to the ‘ontological problem’ of events. Donald Davidson puts the matter thus: ‘the assumption, ontological and metaphysical, that there are events is one without which we cannot make sense of much of our common talk; or so, at any rate, I have been arguing. I do not know of any better, or further, way of showing what there is’. It might be thought bizarre to assign to philosophers the task of ‘showing what (...) there is’. They have not distinguished themselves by the discovery of new elements, new species or new continents, nor even of new categories, although there has often been more dreamt of in their philosophies than can be found in heaven or earth. It might appear even stranger to think that one can show what there actually is by arguing that the existence of something needs to be assumed in order for certain sentences to make sense. More than anything, the sober reader will doubtlessly be amazed that we need to assume, after lengthy argument, ‘that there are events’. (shrink)

The normative significance of proximity in ethics is considered, giving an overview of the contemporary debates about proximity in ethics and focusing on three main perspectives that take proximity to have normative significance. The first perspective is represented by meta-ethical positions, where a basic moral claim is said to originate from an irreducible, particular and unique otherness that shows up in human vulnerability. The second perspective presents a psychologically and philosophically based analysis of human emotions, which is taken to form (...) a basis for rudimentary moral sensitivity and care. The third version of an ethics of proximity claims that personal relationships and partiality overrride impartialist and universalist ethical considerations. On the basis of this analysis, the sources of normativity and the essence of proximity as a normative consideration are elaborated. Finally, the relevance of an ethics of proximity to professional ethics in healthcare is discussed. From an ethics of proximity, it might be argued that institutions must attempt to organise medical care and nursing care so that a certain partiality and patient-centred care might be favoured and trump distributivist considerations of justice in healthcare. (shrink)

Nel XIII sec., il dibattito su Dio come primum cognitum si sviluppò all'interno della tradizione agostiniana anche attraverso la mediazione di Avicenna, per poi essere decisamente attaccato da Tommaso. La prima metà dello studio verte sulla posizione di Guiberto, esposta nel suo Rudimentum doctrinae, dove il problema è inquadrato all'interno della dottrina agostinana dell'illuminazione, e rapportato alla tesi bonaventuriana. La seconda parte è invece centrata sulla confutazione tomista, desunta principalmente dal prologo e dal trattato Super librum Boetii De trinitate. Nelle (...) conclusioni l'A. ribadisce, tra l'altro, la posizione intermedia presente nella Summa fratris Alexandri. (shrink)

This article will examine McCormick's moral epistemology both at the level of how human persons know values and disvalues, which hereinafter will be referred to as synderesis, and at the level of how human persons know the rightness and wrongness of an action, which hereinafter will be referred to as normative moral judgment. On the one hand, from this investigation it appears that McCormick operates with a dual moral epistemology, at least at the level of synderesis. This means that at (...) one point in time it appears that a significant shift may have occurred in his moral epistemology at the level of synderesis. This may also be true at the level of normative moral judgment. On the other hand, McCormick's moral epistemology may in fact be a synthesis, which is the product of development and maturity in his thought process. This article will articulate, examine, and analyse both moral epistemologies. The first moral epistemology is operative in McCormick's writing up until 1983. The second moral epistemology corresponds to McCormick's decision in 1983 to write primarily in the area of bioethics from a theological perspective. Since the year 1983 seems to be the pivotal time when these two moral epistemologies converge, I will refer to the first moral epistemology as “prior to 1983” and I will refer to the second moral epistemology as “after 1983.” Because of the numerous criticisms that surround McCormick's moral epistemology, and the ambiguity that it entails, McCormick needed to articulate his theoretical foundations clearly and develop them systematically and coherently. Numerous moral theologians called for him to do this, yet he never responded. A systematic understanding of McCormick's moral epistemology is not only necessary but crucial in examining various issues in bioethics. It is necessary because it is the basis of moral decision making. It is crucial because the life and death of individuals may hang in the balance. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the metaphysical ethics of Emmanuel Levinas captures some essential moral intuitions that are central to health care. However, there is an ongoing discussion about the relevance of ethical metaphysics for normative ethics and in particular on the question of the relationship between justice and individualized care. In this paper I take part in this debate and I argue that Levinas' idea of an ethics of the Other that guides politics and justice can shed important (...) light on issues that are central to priorities in health care. In fact, the ethics of Levinas in seeking the foundation of normativity itself, captures the ethical coreand central values of health care. (shrink)