L’Invention du Spectateur au XVIIIe Siècle L’Art Est Usage

18^th century philosophers analyzed art through the aesthetic experience of the audience. By contrast, Adam Smith was interested in the moral judgment that an impartial audience may formulate. How can art and morality, the beautiful and the good, be combined into one analytical framework? Art and morality convey non-transcendental values that are intrinsic to human experience. With the aesthetic experience of the audience, art is used, and ultimately depends on the ways that humans relate to works or art and to the beautiful.     

Machiavélisme et Staats-Raison au XVIIIe siècle d’après L’Universal-Lexikon de Zedler

This article examines the manner in which the Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexikon published by Johann Heinrich Zedler from 1732 to 1750 and considered as the most important german language encyclopedia of its time, welcomes and restructures the classical doctrine of the reason of State. Contrary to the interpretation in which the concept of the State developed by the Lexikon would fit into a pure jusnaturalistic logic, it shows the permanence, parallel to wolffian natural law, of a prudential tradition of political thought. The Lexikon, a contemporary of the Anti-Machiavel of Frederic II, thus appears to be the faithful mirror of the heterogeneous tendencies which then illustrate the field of the problems in the reason of State.     

L’enfance comme figure compassionnelle: étude transversale de l’iconographie de la famine aux dix-neuvième et vingtième siècles

Despite the growing interest in the use of child images in humanitarian contexts in the last few years, there has been no transverse study of the iconography of famines in contemporary times. On the contrary, this iconography has been analysed in a scattered way, in disciplinary boundaries that prevent a more global understanding of the birth and use of these images. By comparing the approaches of the history of humanitarianism and childhood, as well as of social photography and media analysis, the purpose of this article is to show that visuals of starving children eventually find their roots at the end of the nineteenth century, at a time when charitable organisations are using photography as a tool to mobilise civil society and governments as well as to internationalise the humanitarian response. This analysis of Western visual strategies and media mobilisations throughout the twentieth century helps to put into perspective the so-called rupture between a first and a second age of humanitarianism. It shows first how young generations have become a privileged form of representation since the nineteenth century, using an aesthetic universe that is morally compelling; then, later, how the depoliticisation of the victim’s figure engages a political message.     

Ludovico Geymonat le Problème de L’épistémologie Historique

The study of the various inspirations of Ludovico Geymonat's epistemology (positivism and neopositivism, neorationalism, historicism and dialectical materialism) illustrates the way in which for the Italian philosopher the problem of objectivity of knowledge remains inseparable from the historicity of the sciences. Geymonat's epistemological approach associates scientific progress to its objectivity.     

Religion Civique, Religion Civile, Religion Séculière L’ombre d’un doute

Because of its conceptual plasiticity, the term civic religion is now widely used by historians, particularly historians of the Middle Ages. Yet, as this article suggests, historians would do well to interrogate the relationships (which can be hidden) that this term bears to similar concepts such as Greek Roman civic religion, Enlightenment civil religion or even the secular religion that emerged in the work of 20^th century thinkers.     

« Techno-Esthétique » de L’Économie Smithienne Valeur et Fonctionnalité des Objets dans L’Angleterre des Lumières

From The Theory of Moral Sentiments to his essay on The Nature of that Imitation Which Takes Place in What Are Called the Imitative Arts, Adam Smith offered a vision of aesthetics combining beauty and utility. An echo of exchange value as the “ability to buy other goods” — the “power” to organize and achieve one’s goals — his definition of beauty was premised on the “aptness” of things, that is, the fact that they were also useful. Sustained by the commodification of products, a kind of “techno-aesthetics” thus emerged in England in the 18^th century, one that implied designing, adapting, reducing and showcasing the means of production.     

Un « Artiste Connaisseur» ? L’Expertise du Restaurateur Dans L’Institution Muséale à la Fin du XVIIIe Siècle

The conservator's expertise is defined in Paris in the museum at the end of the 18(th) century. On the one hand, this article analyses the competences claimed by the conservator in order to give proof of his expertise and to create a professional identity distinct from other implicated actors. On the other hand, this text shows how this expertise is constructed through the collaboration between the curator and the conservator, and underlines the negotiation and porosity of their respective fields of competence.     

L’ars Dictaminis Entre Enseignement et Pratique (XIIe–XIVe Siècle)

The medieval discipline of the ars dictaminis (or dictamen), which flourished during the 12(th)-14(th) centuries, can be considered as an adaptation of classical Latin rhetoric to the communicational needs of the medieval society. Yet, although the relation between the teaching of the ars and its practice is an important one, it has rarely been addressed because of the persistence of numerous misunderstandings about the various different levels at which the ars was taught. This article offers some suggestions to fill this gap.     

Médecine et Discours sur L’Homme dans la Première Modernité

In the 16^th and 17^th centuries, medical knowledge was anthropological in so much as it produced a discourse on man whose ambition and legitimacy needed no justification. Underwritten by the belief that the body was an object of science, the epistemic horizons of a doctrina de homine emerged from the interaction of medical practice, particularly anatomy, with philosophy and theology in a specific framework - the reorganization of knowledge in Europe over the “long 16^th century”.