Gisèle Halimi entre plainte et plaidoyer: ‘On naît avocate,on ne le devient pas’

This intellectual portrait of defence lawyer and feminist activist Gisèle Halimi tests the hypothesis that her writings function like one long closing argument in a courtroom, where a passionate ‘I’ fights for Justice not only by making sure that the Law is upheld but, when necessary, trying to change the Law with the weapons authorised by the judicial system—narratives and stories. Each word is at the service of the overall agenda. One of the unexpected textual consequences of this ethical position is that it becomes radically impossible to separate autobiography from history, or the voice of the renowned public figure of Maître Halimi from Gisèle's ‘I’.     

L'urne et le pot de chambre

Résumé  En 1931, Ludwig Wittgenstein a identifié l'architecte et le critique culturel Adolf Loos comme une des dix personnes qui ont exercé la plus grande influence sur son développement intellectuel. Dans cet article est examinée l'influence de Loos sur Wittgenstein, en particulier son importance dans le projet de Wittgenstein pour la maison de sa sœur, ainsi que celle exercée sur les idées concernant la langue et l'éthique exprimées dans leTractacus. In 1931, Ludwig Wittgenstein identified the architect and cultural critic Adolf Loos as one of the ten people who had exerted the greatest influence on his intellectual development. In this article, I examine Loos's influence on Wittgenstein's design for his sister's house and also on the ideas about language and ethics set out by Wittgenstein in theTractatus. JohnHyman, né en 1960, estfellow au Queen's College d'Oxford. Il a publié de nombreux articles concernant l'épistémologie, la philosophie de l'esprit, l'esthétique et la philosophie de Wittgenstein. Son prochain livre, intituléThe Objective Eye. Colour, form and reality in the theory of art (L'Œil objectif. La couleur, la forme et la réalité dans la théorie de l'art), sera publié par les Presses de l'université de Chicago en 2006.     

Henry VIII et le schisme anglais

For the philosopher of Rotterdam, religious coercion has two essential sources of illegitimacy: the linking of religious and ecclesiastical belief and the use of politics for religious purposes. Bayle responds to it, with his doctrine of freedom of conscience, on one hand and by means of the essential distinction between voluntary religious affiliation and political obligation, on the other hand. From my perspective, his doctrine of tolerance does not involve an atheist state, nor does it mean the rejection of the presence of religion in the public space or its displacement to the intimate sphere of the conscience. This paper proposes a reading of Baylean tolerance as a political doctrine that allows the articulation between freedom of conscience (individual), minority confessions (private associations), and official religion (established church). Thus, the Baylean theoretical model could be considered a proposal to provide a normative form to the practice of toleration present in the seventeenth -century Netherlands.     

Fanuensis ergo mercator ou le petit monde d'un homme d'affaires génois,le juge Guarnerius (1210–1221)

Analysis of thirteenth-century Genoese minute-books frequently offers precise details about Genoese society and the economy of Genoa at that time. By re-grouping the entries relating to a single personage, the judge Guarnerius, one realises that the famous dictum Januensis ergo mercator, “Genoese therefore merchant”, needs reconsideration in the light of the fact that, though all the Genoese were effectively involved in commercial transactions, some were much more engaged than others. Thus Guarnerius, because of the scale of his investments and the role played around him by members of his family or household, appears in the years 1212–1220 as an early example of the Genoese professional merchant. The question arises whether, from the start of the thirteenth century, there was not already at Genoa a group of specialised businessmen from which a truly professional class of merchants was about to evolve. If such a hypothesis is confirmed, some reflections on the origins of Genoese capitalism are called for.