Spectres,monstres et fantômes: Les Chants de Maldoror et le spectacle de la fantasmagorie

As an introduction to his show in the Capucins' convent, Etienne Robertson states, "Gentlemen, the spectacle about to take place under your very eyes is not a frivolous one. It was created for the thinking man, for the philosopher who enjoys wandering among the tombs" (qtd. in Remise 41). The nineteenth century, and Robertson in particular, grant phantasmagoria a large place in history, even though the concept and the technique existed long before.

With such a success, it should not be surprising that phantasmagoria found its home in literature, especially in Isidore Ducasse's (Comte de Lautréamont's) texts. Indeed, Maldoror's Cantos, in which visual effects hold a significant place, seem to occur behind a thick fog that the reader appears to have difficulty escaping. Just as the spectacles of phantasmagoria are not meant for a "frivolous" audience, as Robertson said, the Cantos are not meant for a reader whom Lautréamont defines as "naive." This article will focus on the visual arts that were prevalent at the time and their influence on the Cantos. Using Roland Barthes's theory, the author shows that Maldoror's Cantos can be read as a spectacle of phantasmagoria in writing.     

Eleusinia ‐ les mystères et l'agriculture

In reply to a recent contribution by C. Coppola (AFLN 21 [N.S. 9], 1978–79, 73–82), the authors discuss the reading and restoration of Cod. Marc. gr. 450, fol. l^r, col. II, lines 1–10, with apo‐graphs. Corrections and modifications to Coppola's text and critical apparatus are offered and a new restoration and translation of col. I, line 29, through col. II, line 13 (=Bibl. p. 1.8–14 Bekker), attempted.     

Les frontières de la philosophie Européenne

Massimo Cacciari, Geofilosofia dell'Europa, Milan, Adelphi, 1994, 170 p., ISBN 97–88–84591031–9.     

Hobbes et le Républicanisme

Hobbes criticizes the theory of mixed government without presenting this mixed government as republican. For him criticizing republicanism means criticizing the definition of freedom as the participation of citizens in the debate on matters concerning them all. We can find the main points of this criticism in theElements of law natural and politic and in theDe cive. InLeviathan Hobbes summarizes this criticism and makes it more dogmatic, while developing in a new way the idea that in all regimes there is an identity of essence in sovereignty. This idea is at variance with the republican thesis stating a difference of nature between free regimes and those that are not and makes it possible to take the Roman republic or the Athenian democracy as models.     

La "paix perpétuelle" et l'Europe dans le discours des Lumières

L'article analyse la fac¸on dont les écrivains politiques et les philosophes du siècle des Lumières se sont représenté l'institutionnalisation d'un système de paix en Europe. Le XVIII e siècle voit le devenir-hégémonique d'une pensée qui conc¸oit la paix comme une entiténaturelle et, en tant que telle, catégoriquement opposée à la guerre. La paix, qui sera désormais dotée de l'attribut de justice, est fondée sur la puissance intégratrice spontanée de la société . Ainsi, les projets de paix comme établissement d'un ordre d'une paix juste s'inscrivent dans un triangle théorique unissant la pax , l' ordo et la iustitia qui a été développé par la théologie politique médiévale. Mais alors que pour cette dernière, Dieu était le centre spirituel d'oùémane l'ordre de la paix juste, une certaine conception de la nature humaine prend désormais la place de Dieu.     

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.     

Diffusion et Réception de la Dynamique La Correspondance Entre Leibniz et Wolff

By analysing the correspondence between Leibniz and Wolff, this article aims to present the expository modalities used by Leibniz to transmit his dynamics and the metaphysical system underpinning it. The point is here to study the ambivalence of the vocabulary of action, both as object of the conservation principle and as the essence of substance. By examining the way Wolff receives the dynamics of action, it is possible to highlight, as early as 1705, the uniqueness of his metaphysical framework. While publicizing the dynamics, he propounds a meaning of substance that is unequivocally different.     

Rationalité Contextuelle et Présupposé Cognitif le cas Lombroso

This article proposes an epistemological reflexion about the posture of the historian of human sciences towards his objects. Cesare Lombroso's theory of criminal anthropology was taken here as an example of the discussion because it seemed to be caricatural case. Considering that normative or whiggish perspectives cannot account for the logic of Lombroso's discourse, we attempt to develop here an alternative posture from which extrapolations could be made to other fields. This alternate is found in the introduction of the concepts of contextual rationality and cognitive presupposition and in a reconsideration of the time duration.     

Le Métier de Juriste Entre Règle de Droit et Expérience de l’Histoire

The activities of jurists, they may be judges, lawyers or university teachers, occupy a central role in the maintenance of the political and social order of modern societies. In Germany the confrontation of the recent past provoked in the early 1960’s a large debate about the real foundations of the modern state and his role in the crisis of the modernity which have been pursuit in the course of the eighties issuing in the beginning of the century in the discussions about integration and a general order of values to be recognized by everybody.     

Relativité et réalité Nottale, Simondon et le réalisme des relations

The exhaustion of the controversy about realism in physics, which is an epistemological consequence of the radical discrepancy between quantum mechanics and relativity, indicates the irrelevance of the traditional opposition between realism and antirealism. Since its purpose is the reunification of microphysics and macrophysics by the means of fractal space-time and scale relativity, Laurent Nottale's theory of Scale Relativity gets over this opposition by postulating the ontological value of the physical relations. The physicist's relational realism hence confirms spontaneously the intuitions of Gilbert Simondon's philosophy of nucleation, which considers the necessary recognition of the ontological value of relations in order to establish the «great synthesis of relativity and quantum physics».