L'«École de l'ETH» dans l'œuvre de Gaston Bachelard

We retrace here spectral presence in the work of Gaston Bachelard which we call «The School of the ETH». We have chosen three fundamental figures: hermann Weyl, Wolfgang Pauli and Gustave Juvet. For the first one, we consider his central and permanent place in the Bachelardian constitution of a philosophy which seeks to be at the height of the new «physical geometry» rigorously constructed in a Riemannian spirit. As for Pauli, we show an unsuspected affinity which is backed up by the remarkable analyses brought to it by philosophy: from the urgent construction of a «quantic metaphysics», founded on the implications of aPauli principle well understood, to the idea of a «metaphysical particle», going on to the decisive and so promising stakes of the «postulate of non-analysis». In the framework of this convergent polyconstruction of the «surrationalist», enterprise, we treat the third figure, less known but equally important, of the mathematician-philosopher Gustave Juvet.     

L'actualité de l'édit de Nantes

Sans résumé Nous remercions Hubert Bost pour l'aide qu'il nous a accordée dans la préparation de cette bibliographie.     

Le principe de circulation et l'échec de la mythologie transeuropéenne

We have sought to identify an aspect of the repression of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism complementary to the creation of national identities in XIX^th-century Europe and the intervening war period. The idea of a common civilization would be maintained by the reciprocal capacity of translating national languages, because of their Indo-European common origins. The utopia of the language would replace the material route of the Enlightenment. It is the failure of the construction of European Indianist myth and not its success which explains the ideological diverting of the relations between language and nation. The missed promotion of the Gypsy language in the academic world illustrates this failure perfectly. After the First World War, the transformation of the principle of nationalities in ethnopolitics removed even the memory of this common ambition.     

Hobbes ou la crise de l'état baroque

Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan presented a paradigm of the social contract that has proven foundational in Western political thought. A proper understanding of the philosopher’s thought is thus of paramount importance. I argue that today’s case for a religiously tolerant Hobbes has missed an important part of the historical record. I first consider an obscure but important document, the second edition of the Humble Proposals. It demonstrates that leading members of a seventeenth century Christian denomination, the Independents, considered a state-enforced confession of faith. Independents are generally seen as tolerant, and one of the arguments for Hobbesian toleration is that Hobbes endorsed them. But the second edition of the Humble Proposals aligns with the possibility in Hobbes that the civil sovereign will impose part III of Leviathan on the Universities and treat its contents as a legally required confession of faith – one that may be necessary for security, and the avoidance of civil war. Hobbes’s endorsement of Independency alone cannot be used to argue that his work leads to religious toleration. The evidence I present reinforces an earlier assessment and alongside other evidence points to the return of the intolerant Hobbes.     

Des porte-parole protestants au chevet de l'édit de Nantes moribond

This article shows how the Edict of Nantes (1598), that had been criticized by French Protestants when it came out, progressively became the symbol of their belonging to the French nation and the acceptance of their religious particularity. But it is finally after its revocation (1685) that this Edict appears to make most sense to the Huguenot spokesmen. Thinking from a theological point of view as well as an historical, juridical and philosophical one, they consider it as a symbol of religious freedom. However, it is only by giving up their former status lost with the Revocation that they manage to develop an original thinking on the relationship between the State and individuals. In order to achieve this, they must distinguish between the subject or the citizen on one hand, and the believer on the other. But this distinction implies the renunciation of the nostalgia for aProtestant body, recognized as such in the kingdom of France.     

Former le citoyen de la république naissante retour sur une controverse aux origines de l’école républicaine

This paper looks at the original conflicting approach of the republican school, understood as a traning ground for citizenship. The separation between those who wish to develop a truly democratic school, and those who do not see in this objective a political priority for the emerging republic, embodies the most profound debate of this moment of political foundation of the Republican school. Behind the two visions of the Republican school (education vs instruction), two visions of Republican society are opposed. Further, in the controversy surrounding the nature of the school an opposition, later amplified, emerges between social Republicans and liberal Republicans     

L'Age de l'Eloquence. Rhétorique et “res literaria” de la Renaissance au seuil de l'époque classique

The Swiss Cantons had no greater admirer in the eighteenth-century than the French political thinker Gabriel Bonnot de Mably. The feeling was mutual, at least to some extent, since the Bernese Patriotic Society awarded its first prize in 1763 to Mably, for his dialogue Entretiens de Phocion. The prize then led to an exchange of letters, stretching across some two decades, with Daniel Fellenberg, founder of the Patriotic society—the most important block of Mably's correspondence to have survived. This essay considers the 1763 prize and the correspondence with Fellenberg for the light they cast both on Mably and on Bernese participation in the wider currents of eighteenth-century thought.     

La Découverte de L’Amérique

This article examines the significance accorded to the discovery of America in the period between 1492 and the publication of Alexander von Humboldt’s Kosmos in 1855. It argues that, the « discovery » of America was perceived as the « uncovering » of not merely a place, but of an epistemological challenge which both transformed, Europe’s intellectual dependence on Antiquity, and shaped its evolving perception of both space and time. It argues that, after the discovery, human history came to be seen, in terms of as series of inventions all of them related to human movement, which were projected, as more and more of the globe was « discovered » into an unpredictable future.     

Monnaie et richesse chez John Locke une politique de l'économie

Locke's works on money are not the clumsy outline of the liberal economic theories that developed later on but they are part and parcel of his philosophy. This study will then show that Locke's works on money are at the crossroads of three distinct lines of research. Firstly, inspired by the mercantilist analysis of wealth and its circulation, Locke endeavours to define the categories proper to monetary analysis. Secondly, metallic money being defined both as commodity and symbol, the problem then stands on the ground of a philosophical analysis of the notion of representation which brings into play the distinction, established in theEssay concerning human understanding, between substance, mixed mode and relation. Lastly, money provides the link between private activity and the whole of social life; so Locke examines its role from the point of view of property, labour and the collective aims both must fulfil. On the whole, money does appear to be a crucial issue in the thought of Locke, not a subsidiary theme due to circumstances.     

Frank H. Knight le risque comme critique de l'économie politique

In this paper we try to throw some light on the Knightian distinction between risk anduncertainty attending to a number of previous contributions to philosophy and economics. On the economists' side, we propose to read Knight's distinction in the light of the distribution controversy that took place in theQuarterly Journal of Economics at the end of the xix^th century. On the philosophers' side, the pair risk/uncertainty can be analysed in view of Knight's epistemological sources, as opposing a sort ofprobabilistic positivism to anagnostic variety of positivism. His philosophical commitments can be of use in explaining why Frank Knight closes down the distribution controversy, proposing instead a reconstruction of economics as a rational choice science.     

Le marché dans l'économie de la grèce antique

The market constitutes the crucial point in the debate which prevailed since the xviii^th century in the history of antique economy. Became particularly complex for the Greek world because many historians and anthropologists (like Karl Polanyi) place there the liberty of the market economy as a break with the previous period. History must abandon too dogmatic a position on this emergence of the market and consider first the levels of the constitution of a market place, the agora, beginning with the end of the archaic period. The Greek city intervenes in the way in the exchanges. In this article, we study these interventions on the conditions of the sale and purchase, the practices, the values and the prices, the supplies, so as to understand the real innovation which that represents.     

Le grand mal de l'époque: Tocqueville on French Political Corruption

During the years he was involved in French parliamentary politics, Alexis de Tocqueville was obsessed with the issue of political corruption. This article presents the first sustained analysis of Tocqueville’s speeches and writings on French corruption. It examines Tocqueville’s initial encounter with corruption during his run for parliamentary office, his sophisticated account of the sources of corruption, and his strategies for reforming French politics. The article contends that taking seriously Tocqueville’s struggle against corruption has the effect of complicating several conventional interpretations of his thought. In his speeches and writings on corruption Tocqueville shows himself remarkably willing to compromise with, even to work with, centralisation. And he argues that in a nation like France which lacks substantial local self-government, a vibrant parliamentary politics could be an effective means for promoting energetic civic participation.     

Histoires de Lectrices en Italie au Début de L’époque Moderne

The connection between the history of reading and gender is made using a range of methodological perspectives, each illustrated by analysing concrete examples from the early modern Italian area. The significance of the circulation and reception of texts as well as the various attempts to control knowledge and behaviour via censorship and availability of reading material will be considered. In fact, since the XVI ^th century, written texts seem to play an increasingly influential role in defining the relationship between men and women. The figure of the early modern woman reader appears in literature sources as both a consciously constructed and easily influenced addressee, who nevertheless may still behave in a way different to that intended by the authors. This double approach facilitates the reading of normative texts from a new perspective that takes into account the possibility of creative adaptation and enables the question of interdependence between the production and reception of the written word to be reconsidered.     

La parité à l'épreuve des élections municipales de mars 2001

On 6 June 2000, France adopted a law concerning 'women and men's equal access to elected office'. This gender parity law was first implemented in the municipal elections of 11 and 18 March 2001 which resulted in the proportion of women town councillors more than doubling from 21.9 per cent to 47.5 per cent in municipalities with more than 3500 residents. In other words, the law reached its quantitative goal. However, it did not have the effect of widening women's access to the most prestigious posts: those of mayors, deputy mayors, inter-town concillors ( conseillers inter-communaux ), and general councillors ( conseillers généraux ). While political parties did respect the law, they also shied away from promoting women to truly strategic positions.