L’articulation du scepticisme religieux et du scepticisme profane dans l’Histoire du scepticisme d’Érasme à Spinoza, de Richard H. Popkin

The History of scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza by Richard H. Popkin is not just an account of various sceptical doctrines of the 16th and 17th centuries: a thread gives the whole a coherence. In fact, a general conception of modern philosophy underlies his analyses. According to Popkin, philosophy, from the Renaissance to the Englightenment, was faced with the difficulty of overcoming the sceptical crisis which was born in the context of a religious quarrel and which quickly spread to all other intellectual fields. Thus, Popkins gives an original interpretation of modernity, an interpretation that can be questionned nevertheless in so far as he does not make a clear enough distinction between modern and ancient scepticism and does not take into account the specificity of fideism.     

Épistémologie, histoire et histoire des sciences dans les années 1930

During the 1930’s epistemology, history and history of science reciprocally and importantly influenced each other, even if indirectly. Philosophers and historians discussed the epistemological concepts emerging from the crisis of the exact sciences. They rejected Empirism and Idealism for an «experimental Rationalism» that connected theory and experience. It all caused a dialectical conception of science, fundamentally historical, but for which historians were still reluctant from a theoretical point of view. History was nevertheless the centre of philosophical and epistemological reflexions.     

Autres sources,autre histoire?

This paper describes the process of creation of the local repositories in France and particularly in England, where an efficient network of county record offices was not established until the second half of the twentieth century. The ways of constitution of the collections have directly shaped the writing of social history and explain especially the great divergence between the English and French historiographies during the 1960s and the 1970s. The present attention to the history of individuals—easier to do in same ways in France and in England thank to the nominal sources—allows an unexpected reconciliation of the French and English historiographies.     

Walter Benjamin: Quel matérialisme? Quelle histoire?

Cet article est consacré à l'étude de quelques uns des aspects de la philosophie de l'histoire de Walter Benjamin qui, aujourd'hui, suscitent le plus d'intérêt. En pratique, il analyse la notion de progrès, le rôle joué par l'écoulement du temps et l'interruption messianique. Il insiste aussi sur la critique du marxisme vulgaire entreprise par W. Benjamin et met en évidence ses apports les plus personnels ; enfin, il attire l'attention sur le risque encouru par les historiens qui orientent leur travail vers le futur et se montrent aveugles en ce qui concerne le passé.