Les Théoriciens Italiens de la Raison D’État Carrières et Motivations

The article tries to shed light on the careers and the motivations of Italian authors who wrote on reason of State in the period of 1550 to 1650. Half of them were clergymen in very different positions, joined by lawyers, physicians and men of letters. Especially many clergymen were teaching at universities in the hope of getting a position at a court. Apart from this endeavour to become a secretary or councillor of a prince or a cardinal, the main motivations of writing the treatises were the refutation of the machiavellian ideas and the desire to open new areas of action for the prince, but also the defence of republican liberties. As the treatises and collections of maxims were to a great extent literary, the influence on rationalisation of the State is judged with scepticism.     

Le déplacement des pôles du théâtre francophone: Malcolm de Chazal et l’arrière-scène tibétaine

Acclaimed by the Parisian Surrealist circles in 1948, Malcolm de Chazal, the French-speaking Mauritian writer and painter, opted for unchartered literary territories in his subsequent works. In the 1950s, he wrote a collection of dramas that tended to decentre his writing practice towards Asian perspectives. References to Indo-Mauritian culture assuredly provided him with a major source of inspiration to deliver a culturally hybrid theatre. Yet Tibet may seem at first a rather unlikely referent in his work. One can nevertheless demonstrate by comparing the author’s numerous references to Tibet that it is not only meaningful in his entire work but also that it is a central and neglected aspect of his geo-literary agenda.     

“Mourir au monde”. Les ordines de séparation des lépreux en France aux XVe et XVIe siècles

Since the recent publication of a catalogue of the printed rituals in French dioceses, we can list seven ordines of seclusion of lepers existing in France around 1490–1550. In fact, for two of them, the most common, two distinct versions having the same incipit are found. Most of these ceremonies are parodies, some closer than others, of funerals and tell the sick: Sis mortuus mundo. As far as France is concerned, these rites were only followed in one diocese out of ten, but they represent a common liturgical habit in the northeast part of the country. They may have originated in 1400–1450 from the same inclination towards a grim mood as the Dances of Death. They probably exorcised other fears than that of the leper — then dying out-, and were only to disappear slowly and gradually at the time of the Counter-Reformation, after about 1560.     

Des Considérations inactuelles au coeur de l'Occupation: Le Cogito à rebours d'Hélène Berr

Written in Paris during the darkest moments of the German Occupation, but only published in 2008, Hélène Berr's Journal was immediately hailed for its dramatic testimony and striking insights. With precision and lucidity, the young Jewish student at the Sorbonne records the human tragedies unfolding all around her in the wake of the Holocaust, while at the same time reviewing her own manner of experiencing these traumatic events through her personal reflections and emotions. The present article analyses her astute and poignant observations in the light of Emmanuel Lévinas's notion of the ethically grounded subject. Beyond its documentary value, Hélène Berr's Journal thus takes on significant philosophical dimensions. At the same time, Lévinas's concept of the Other's incursion into the realm of the self proves to be firmly anchored in the firsthand experience of the twentieth century's greatest historical catastrophe.

Écrit aux jours les plus sombres de l'Occupation de Paris, mais publié en 2008 seulement, le Journal d'Hélène Berr s'est tout de suite présenté comme un insigne témoignage. De manière aussi précise que perspicace, Hélène note les drames qui se déroulent tout autour d'elle tout en revenant sur tout ce qu'elle parvient à vivre et à penser au jour le jour. Nous nous proposons de lire ce Journal à la lumière d'Emmanuel Lévinas et de découvrir ainsi la profondeur non seulement humaine mais aussi philosophique de ce carnet intime tout en confirmant l'ancrage de la pensée de l'Autre dans le vécu historique de la plus grande catastrophe du XXième siècle.     

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.     

Histoire des idées, sociologie des croyances et processus argumentatifs scepticisme et modernité d’après Richard H. Popkin

This paper claims to show the relevance of the classical book by Richard H. Popkin from the point of view of a sociological and anthropological analysis of the collective processes of doubt and assent. This examination implies, however, that we analyse the fine differences between the history of ideas, the sociology of knowledge, the ethnology of beliefs and epistemology. The examination deserves to be carried out as well for the understanding of the increase of scepticism in the 17th century as for the spread of the wave of contemporary relativism. The latter certainly has to be distinguished, as Popkin suggests, from a form of moderate scepticism close to critical rationalism.     

Les «Faits scientifiques» et leur public: l’histoire de la détection de la syphilis

In the 1910's and 1920', thanks to the conjunction of scientific views concerning the specificity of anti-bacterial antibodies, of lay ideas about the existence of anti-bacterial antibodies and of the perceived importance of developing a syphilis test for public health officials, the community of serologists collectively transformed a relatively inefficient diagnostic test described by Wassermann in 1906 into an "incontestable scientific fact". This "scientific fact" established the equivalence: Wassermann positive individual=person infected with the germ Treponema pallidum, the etiological agent of syphilis. It modified the boundaries of the nosologic entity "syphilis", medical practices, professional attitudes, lay perceptions of syphilis, and health policies. In the 1950's, however, discrepancies between Wassermann test data and epidemiological data and, on the other hand, the development of specific anti-treponemal tests, destabilized the previously stabilized "scientific fact". A high percentage of Wassermann positive individuals were redefined as "biological false positifs", that is persons who suffered from chronic affections able to induce positive results of the Wassermann test. The equivalence Wassermann positive person=individual infected by Treponema pallidum was replaced by the equation: Wassermann positive person=individual infected by Treponema pallidum or biological false positive. The new perception of the Wassermann test again changed scientific views, professional practices and lay beliefs. The history of the Wassermann reaction illustrates the complicated interaction between "scientific facts" and "social facts", and the mutual shaping of both.