We present in this paper an abstract categorical logic based on an abstraction of quantifier. More precisely, the proposed logic is abstract because no structural constraints are imposed on models (semantics free). By contrast, formulas are inductively defined from an abstraction both of atomic formulas and of quantifiers. In this sense, the proposed approach differs from other works interested in formalizing the notion of abstract logic and of which the closest to our approach are the institutions, which in addition to (...) be semantics free do not also impose any syntactic contingencies on the structure of formulas. To define the semantical framework in which formulas will be interpreted, we propose to follow the idea from categorical logic which defines the semantical interpretation of formulas from context and as subobjects of an object of a given category. In the spirit of Lawvere’s hyperdoctrines, we use a more abstract notion which generalizes the notion of subobject, standard in category theory: Pitt’s prop-categories. Always in the spirit of categorical logic, we propose a sequent calculus of which we show correctness and completeness for all semantical frameworks defined over any prop-categories. We then study some conditions which allow us to get this completeness result for particular classes of prop-categories. (shrink)

Several logical operators are defined as dual pairs, in different types of logics. Such dual pairs of operators also occur in other algebraic theories, such as mathematical morphology. Based on this observation, this paper proposes to define, at the abstract level of institutions, a pair of abstract dual and logical operators as morphological erosion and dilation. Standard quantifiers and modalities are then derived from these two abstract logical operators. These operators are studied both on sets of states and sets of (...) models. To cope with the lack of explicit set of states in institutions, the proposed abstract logical dual operators are defined in an extension of institutions, the stratified institutions, which take into account the notion of open sentences, whose satisfaction is parametrised by sets of states. A hint on the potential interest of the proposed framework for spatial reasoning is also provided. (shrink)

Les detracteurs du materialisme le donnent pour poussiereux, triste, deplace, ennuyeux. C'est aussi la reputation de la philosophie. Que dire de leur histoire! L'auteur, qui, en trente annees de philosophie, n'a pas trouve matiere a s'ennuyer, propose au lecteur quelques elements pour en juger: du materialisme de l'Antiquite a celui du dix-septieme siecle, de celui des Lumieres aux materialismes historiques, il l'invite a decouvrir des lieux inapercus ou de nouvelles perspectives dans l'histoire de la philosophie. Ceux qui veulent rester philosophes (...) pourront savoir gre aux materialistes de ce que la philosophie leur doit. En compagnie d'Epicure et de Hobbes, de Marc-Aurele et de Cyrano, de Gassendi et de Marx, et d'autres plus clandestins, il y a encore matiere a s'instruire, a se divertir, a s'etonner. (shrink)

The roles of small and great books, and passionate yet well-considered writings in the general education of a “college” or “university” trained teacher are questions which should be turned back upon the historian as teacher and writer. Where resides the historian's classroom? Who are the students and how do teachers come to be? What subject matter should be used to prod and provoke an often dormant humanity awake? Professor Marc Bloch's work, his passion for history's rôles and its (...) voices from the past speaking to the present, had a Renaissance in the cauldron of World War II. Bloch's commitment to teaching and writing history, teaching about the forceful, or surprising and shocking, “presences” of history's supposed past-tense experiences, remains seminal to the historian's craft. Bloch's own voice from the past was forged in an intensity of present-time experience. Reflection was searing experience. Memory was “now” and remembrance was an accident of preservation for futures then unknown. These futures need to know of the experiences of former, fragile, personal and generational memories if the very same futures were to be lived more surely and securely. Marc Bloch's The Historian's Craft, remains a vindication of the human-centred, purposive roles of history in a general education. Moreover, this general education can now be said to cover the broad sweep of “secondary schooling” experiences. This sweep of schooling and post-schooling experiences is beginning, however tentatively and problematically, to extend itself into worlds of work, the futures of work and the academic futures or courses of higher education: the arena of tertiary and university education. In a not dissimilar fashion but in an even more intense spirit, Bloch's work, L’étrange défaite, examines the explosion and implosion of France and, in effect, Western Europe in the years, months and days leading up to the German offensive in the West of 10 May 1940. Bloch recognized that education and the failures to harness intellect, true intellectual freedom and innovative teaching weighed heavily upon the disastrous course of events in 1940. Professor Bloch's texts can serve two complementary purposes. First, his works, Strange Defeat and The Historian's Craft remain as significant, contemporary records of personal thoughts, argumentative methodologies, and recollections of world-shattering events. They constitute, quite literally, an historian's craft in action. Second, Bloch's texts can serve an equally valuable role where the writer seeks to take his reader through and beyond the immediate historical question, methodology or series of unravelling events into an intellectual duel which stands upon the historian's engagement with worlds, past and present. Questions and actions, makings and doings matter in this world. Understanding is not only a prime responsibility of the historian; it is a duty which might well prove dangerous. Given the above observations, this essay will seek to emphasize that world history and the teaching of broad histories of humanity recognizes few, if any, borders which seek to block or hold at bay the presentation of the “passport” known as understanding. Teaching history is much more than teaching civics or recognizing civilizational variety and its barbarous opposites. Teaching history is an act, however imperfect, of recognizing ourselves in time. My brother “schoolmasters”—when it came to the point, you did, for the most part, put up a magnificent fight. It was your goodwill which managed to create in many a sleepy secondary school, in many universities—prisoners of the worse routines the only form of education of which, perhaps, we can feel genuinely proud. I only hope that a day will come, and come soon, a day of glory and of happiness for France, when, liberated from the enemy, and freer than ever in our intellectual life, we may meet again for the mutual discussion of ideas. And when that happens, do you not think that, having learned from an experience so dearly purchased, you will find much to alter in the things you were teaching only a few years back? Strange Defeat, 142).1 What was at stake was a geological upheaval of thought …2. (shrink)

“History is the most dangerous compound yet contrived by the chemistry of intellect”: it was in response to these words by Paul Valéry that Marc Bloch, professor of economic history at the Sorbonne, after the defeat of 1940, began writing a book on “how and why history is studied.” He gave it the provisional title Apologie pour l'Histoire ou Métier d'historien translated into English as The Historian's Craft. In the spring of 1944, he was killed by a German (...) firing squad for his clandestine activity in the Resistance. The manuscript of his book remained incomplete. Having entered the world at the same time as the research organization of Annales in 1949, Bloch's book on history, posthumously published by Lucien Febvre, was read and used as a product of that organization, which did not yet exist, even as a project, at the time the book was written. The Historian's Craft was read mostly by historians, history professors, and history students. Despite its readership, Bloch had written it for a different public: persons of culture and action, that same audience that Annales had tried in vain to conquer in the thirties—Paul Valéry's public. The study of the genesis of the interrupted manuscript reveals the richness of the content of Bloch's book, so far underrated. This example of the two pages missing from the 1949 edition, can today be the start of a deeper meditation on history, historians, and philology (and on the documents that refer to them). (shrink)

Discussions on Marc Bloch usually focus on The Annales School, his comparative method, or his defence of a distinct historical science. In contrast, I emphasise his seldom-investigated ideas of what historical understanding should involve. I contend that Bloch distinguishes between three different ethical attitudes in studying people and ways of life from the past: scientific passivity; critical judgements; understanding. The task of the historian amounts to understanding other worlds in their own terms. This essay is an exploration (...) of Bloch’s methodology and what historical understanding is needed to do justice to cultures that belong to the past, both conceptually and practically. (shrink)

Dans un procès qui eut lieu à la fin du XVIIe siècle en Livonie (aujourd’hui Latvia) un homme surnommé « le vieux Thiess » avoua être un loup garou. Les anomalies qui marquent ses aveux ont été l’objet d’interprétations différentes, qui soulèvent le problème des ambitions, et des limites, de la comparaison. L’essai explore, à travers le cas du « vieux Thiess », la possibilité d’utiliser a) la notion d’anomalies conjonctives, inspirée par la critique textuelle, b) la notion de « (...) ressemblances de famille » proposée par Francis Galton, en tant qu’instruments de comparaison dans le domaine de l’histoire des religions. (shrink)

Este artículo propone recorrer las diferentes perspectivas desde las que históricamente se ha pensado la utopía. En este recorrido Miguel Abensour subraya dos giros fundamentales. El primero sería la asignación de la utopía al tiempo por medio de su transferencia a una ontología dialéctica, operación llevada a cabo por Marx e identificada por Marc Bloch. El segundo, aún más importante en cuanto se trata de una tarea presente, sería la superación de los límites que la previsión dialéctica impone (...) a la utopía a partir de un pensamiento de la alteridad, aspecto en el que la filosofía de Emmanuel Levinas juega un papel exploratorio pionero.  . (shrink)

L’unité des disciplines théologiques n’est pas toujours facile à percevoir. L’étude des textes bibliques, d’une part, et la réflexion sys­tématique, d’autre part, suivent chacune leur logique et leurs méthodes, pour ne rien dire des disciplines historiques et pratiques ! Afin de répondre à la demande toujours grandissante d’une approche interdisciplinaire, les soussignés, tous deux enseignants à la Faculté de théologie protestante de l’Université Marc Bloch, l’un bibliste, l’autre éthicien, a..

In the history of war thinking, a transhistorical approach has emerged, with the value of not subjecting the theory to circumstances, particularly those fuelled by technical factors. This ambition was closely linked to Clausewitz’s theory, which was based on the difference between the historical character of “real war” and the transhistorical character of “absolute war”. Prior to Clausewitz’s theory, the transhistorical character had crept into the thinking on warfare in the modern era, which had developed a great deal around the (...) use of firearms, a character to which some theorists did not want to submit. During the First World War, the French army produced new weapons, such as tanks and aerial bombardment. It was therefore the ability to adapt to the historical circumstances of this war that was later considered to be the cause of victory, as the historian Marc Bloch later emphasised when he defined history as a “science of change”. After the Second World War, the major changes in warfare fuelled a tendency to refer to Clausewitz’s transhistorical theory in order to continue to think about war despite its major changes. The transhistorical approach was therefore a historical phenomenon. (shrink)

O intuito deste texto será problematizar, à maneira preconizada por Marc Bloch (Apologia da História ou Ofício de Historiador,1944) – vale dizer, à luz de uma questão-problema – a produção filosófica, físico-matemática e teológica do jansenita francês Blaise Pascal (1623-1662). A indagação de fundo visa a desvelar a arqueologia das aporias e dilemas hodiernos da Razão dos modernos, por conseguinte se propondo um exercício crítico presente-passado-presente. Ensaiamos, neste lastro, a interpretação de que a singularidade filosófica de Pascal instaura, (...) na primeira Modernidade, um ceticismo filosófico de matriz agostiniana, que poderia hoje nos ensejar uma desejável reconfiguração da função da razão na História e na história. A dúvida de Pascal quanto à Razão Natural decantada por Descartes se permite descortinar com a ideia de um Deus Absconditus. Para tanto, o texto propõe uma interface analítica entre História Social e História Intelectual (História da Filosofia Moderna), procurando apresentar a pluralidade de vertentes teológico-filosóficas no seio do Catolicismo Romano e suas potencialidades para reconfigurar as trajetórias da razão hodierna para fora do labirinto pós-moderno. (shrink)

In the first part of my paper I will try to reconstruct a series of attempts at dialogue between history and the social sciences made by historians connected with the ?Annales? (Marc Bloch, Ernest Labrousse, Giovanni Levi, Bernard Lepetit). What these attempts have in common is the idea that in history, as in the natural sciences, it is to some extent possible to carry out forms of experimentation on the sources, and that the inclusion of history among the (...) human sciences, and even the scientific future of the discipline itself, ultimately depend on the adoption of this method. In the second part I will discuss the relationship that links historical experimentation with lived experience, and I will conclude by discussing the possible meaning of the idea of experimenting with the sources of history. (shrink)

Carlos Marx y el aporte todavía vigente del marxismo para las ciencias sociales del siglo XXI -- Walter Benjamin y las lecciones de una historia vista a "contrapelo" -- Norbert Elias : historiador y crítico de la modernidad -- El itenerario intelectual de Marc Bloch y el compromiso del intelectual con su propio presente -- (Re) construyendo la biografía intelectual de Fernand Braudel -- Michel Foucault en el espejo de Clío -- Carlo Ginzburg y el modelo de una (...) historia crítica para el análisis de las culturas subalternas -- Immanuel Wallerstein y la perspectiva crítica del "análisis de los sitemas-mundo" -- Edward Palmer Thompson y la "economía moral de la multitud" en el mundo del siglo XXI. (shrink)

La question se pose de savoir si la Justice est capable de réparer le tragique de l’histoire. François Dosse situe son analyse sur l’axe pragmatique de la préoccupation citoyenne exprimée par Ricœur, dès les premières lignes de La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, lorsqu’il se dit troublé par le trop de mémoire ici et le trop d’oubli ailleurs. On assiste en effet à une judiciarisation progressive de la discipline historique. Elle se traduit par une inquiétante inflation mémorielle depuis la loi Gayssot de (...) 1990. La fonction du juge et de l’historien a certes des points communs, comme l’a montré Marc Bloch dans Apologie pour l’histoire ou Carlo Ginzburg dans Le juge et l’historien. Le juge d’instruction peut s’apparenter à l’historien, mais pas celui du siège qui doit rendre un jugement. Cette emprise progressive de la justice sur le passé a pour effet pervers une tentative de sanctuarisation des questions historiques. Ricœur nous aide à repenser les relations entre justice, histoire et mémoire en distinguant et en articulant ces diverses dimensions par un travail de clarification des concepts. Il permet de mieux articuler la fonction judiciaire, le travail de mémoire et l’opération historiographique en respectant la validité de chacune de ces dimensions. (shrink)

Le livre refermé on ne peut s’empêcher de ressentir une sorte d’accablement. Car l’histoire est terrible. Cette « étrange défaite » que Christine Bard constate, reprenant le titre du livre écrit par Marc Bloch dans la clandestinité, est celle de notre société et d’abord la nôtre, celle des féministes. Défaite des féministes qui se sont dépensées dans cet entre-deux-guerres et n’ont remporté que de maigres succès dans leur lutte pour l’égalité civile et civique. Défaite de l’histoire aussi, si...

Robert Rees Davies, a Fellow of the British Academy, was a highly original historian who offered compelling new insights into medieval society through a body of work focused on Britain and Ireland and, above all, Wales. He deployed his formidable public skills as a chair of committees and eloquent promoter and advocate of the cause of history. To a considerable extent, Rees Davies' work as a historian was influenced by his higher education at University College London and the University of (...) Oxford, as well as by the example of Marc Bloch and of other French historians. He was born at Glanddwynant, Caletwr, near Llandderfel in Merioneth, the fourth and youngest son of William Edward and Sarah Margaret Davies. The publication in 1987 of Conquest, Coexistence, and Change: Wales 1063–1415, which won the Wolfson Literary Award for History, further enhanced Rees Davies' reputation as a scholar. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in the same year. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Breaking the Revolutionary Deadlock?Volney's Leçons and the Debate on the Value of HistoryNiccolò ValmoriThis article explores the crucial contribution of Constantin-François de Chasseboeuf, better known by his pen name, Volney, to the eighteenth-century debate on the nature of history as a discipline.1 My claim is that Volney's Leçons d'histoire is the result of a complex dynamic between two forces: on the one hand, a century-long debate on how history (...) should be both written and taught; on the other, the revolutionary calls for a thoroughgoing revision of the past amid concurrent references to the virtuous moral examples of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Volney had a very narrow gap to "save" history from deadlock between these opposite perspectives. His history course at the École normale supérieure showed how the eventful years of the French Revolution had changed his own understanding of the discipline of history.I argue that Volney's supposed distrust toward the importance of the study of history was not an attempt to devalue history itself.2 On the contrary, the French author approached history as a discipline based on the principle [End Page 773] of investigative doubt and on dialogue with other scientific domains such as geography, geology, and meteorology. As Jean Gaulmier puts it: "The true heirs of Volney's dream of a total history were Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch."3 However, if Volney's proposal for a new historiography is set within the eighteenth-century debate on how to write and teach history, it appears neither original nor new. Nonetheless, I argue, Volney attempted a synthesis between divergent positions on the role of history, as they emerged and were debated during the eighteenth century in the light of the first years of the French Revolution. The context of the French Revolution left Volney with more doubts than certainty on the value of the discipline, given the manifold and controversial uses of historical examples proposed in those years. As Minchul Kim has pointed out, Volney's Leçons are a "work in history rather than a work on history."4 While Kim is right to point out the importance of the revolutionary context for understanding Volney's skepticism toward the value of history, I argue that while Volney's personal understanding of how history should be written matured through the revolutionary experience, it was also the fruit of a dialogue with Enlightenment historiography.In the first part of the article, I present the main features of the eighteenth-century debate on the limits and meaning of writing history, with a particular focus on its relationship with ancient history and on the stature of history among the other disciplines. In the second part, I analyze how Volney dealt with this debate in some of his works that preceded his appointment to the chair of history at the École normale. Three of Volney's pre-1795 works are considered here: Voyages en Syrie et en Égypte (1787), Considérations sur la guerre actuelle des Turcs (1788), and Les Ruines (which was published during the Revolution). In the last section of the article I delve into the Leçons to highlight how this work represented Volney's provisional resolution of the long debate over the role of history as a scientific endeavor as well as a subject that could be taught. [End Page 774]ENLIGHTENMENT HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE TEACHING OF HISTORY: THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY QUESTIn this section I review the main contributors to the Enlightenment historiographical debate on the status of history as a discipline and on its relationship with antiquity. I do not claim to cover all aspects of Enlightenment historiography; rather I aim to set Volney's contribution to these two aspects of the debate in a broader context. His open skepticism toward the heuristic value of history cannot be reduced simply to a reaction to the political uses and misuses of history during the French Revolution. Volney's Leçons addressed a larger audience than the select group of French teachers attending his class. The philosopher-traveler, as his contemporaries called him, joined a conversation about history that had started at... (shrink)

Le présent numéro de la Revue des sciences religieuses publie la majeure partie des conférences d’un colloque consacré aux Pratiques de formation des adultes dans le tissu social et l’espace ecclésial. Ce colloque a clos la mise en œuvre du projet défini par le Groupe de Recherche de l’Institut de Pédagogie Religieuse (GRIPR) dans le contrat quadriennal de recherche 1998-2003 (Université Marc Bloch). La réflexion sur la formation des adultes en Église est l’une des problématiques majeures de ..

Christopher Dawson identified with sociology, wrote extensively for the original Sociological Review, was a stalwart of the Sociological Society in the interwar years, achieved international recognition as a sociologist, engaged with Karl Mannheim and the Moot, and in the postwar period defended meta-history and the sociologically oriented historical work of people like Marc Bloch. He ultimately became regarded as the greatest Catholic historian of the twentieth century, and became a Harvard Professor and a cult figure for American and (...) European Catholics. This paper describes this remarkable trajectory, his absence from the later self-understanding of British sociology, and his key ideas, including his Bellah-like account of the axial age and his extensive response to Weber’s Protestant Ethic and to the extension of these ideas in Ernst Troetlsch. (shrink)

This reply aims both to respond to Gregory and to move forward the debate about God’s place in historiography. The first section is devoted to the nature of science and God. Whereas Gregory thinks science is based on metaphysical naturalism with a methodological corollary of critical-realist empiricism, I see critical, empiricist methodology as basic, and naturalism as a consequence. Gregory’s exposition of his apophatic theology, in which univocity is eschewed, illustrates the fissure between religious and scientific worldviews—no matter which basic (...) scientific theory one subscribes to. The second section is allotted to miracles. As I do, Gregory thinks no miracle occurred on Fox Lakes in 1652, but he restricts himself to understanding the actors and explaining change over time, and refuses to explain past or contemporary actions and events. Marc Bloch, in his book The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France, is willing to go much further than Gregory. Using his superior medical knowledge to substitute his own explanation of the phenomenon for that of the actors, Bloch dismisses the actors’ beliefs that they or others had been miraculously cured, and explains that they believed they saw miraculous healing because they were expecting to see it. In the third section, on historical explanation, I rephrase the question whether historians can accommodate both believers in God and naturalist scientists, asking whether God, acting miraculously or not, can be part of the ideal explanatory text. I reply in the negative, and explicate how the concept of a plural subject suggests how scientists can also be believers. This approach may be compatible with two options presented by Peter Lipton for resolving the tension between religion and science. The first is to see the truth claims of religious texts as untranslatable into scientific language ; the other is to immerse oneself in religious texts by accepting them as a guide but not believing in their truth claims when these contradict science. (shrink)

Anyone familiar with contemporary French culture could not fail to notice that, in the field of ideas, history and the philosophy of history occupy in France a more central place than in England or North America. The work and concerns—including the methodological concerns—of historians like Marc Bloch, Fernand Braudel and the Annalistes, Georges Lefebvre, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Michel de Certeau, Jacques Le Goff and Francois Furet, are known, discussed and taken on board by most French intellectuals and (...) academics. (shrink)

The "history of mentalities" considers the attitudes of ordinary people to everyday life. The approach is closely identified with the work of the Annales school. However, whereas the Annales historians refer to the material factors which condition human life, historians investigating mentalities examine psychological underpinnings. Historians who first developed guidelines for the history of mentalities were Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch, who were both concerned with collective systems of belief. Later, Philippe Ariès and Norbert Elias identified and developed (...) theories on early childhood. Finally, Michel Foucault considered the psychology of social deviants and nonconformists. This mode of interpretation provides a means of examining those aspects of life which the linear approach cannot address, such as the pressure of conformity, the sense of accelerating time, and the preoccupation with self. (shrink)

A remarkable amount of the most innovative, significant, and lasting historical writing of the twentieth century has been produced in France, much of it the work of a group of historians associated with the journal Annales. Founded in 1929, Annales promoted a new kind of history based on three central aims: to substitute a problem-orientated analytical history for a traditional narrative of events; to embrace the history of the whole range of human activities rather than concentrate on political history; and, (...) in order to achieve the first two aims, to collaborate fully with other disciplines - notably geography, sociology, psychology, economics, linguistics, and anthropology. The critical history describes, analyzes, and evaluates the achievements of the Annales school, combining chronological and thematic approaches. The author distinguishes three generations in the history of the Annales movement. In the first phase, from the 1920's to 1945, the movement was small, radical, and subverse, fighting a guerrilla action against traditional political history and the history of events. Its leaders, and the founders of Annales, were Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch. After the Second World War, the movement's rebels took over the historical establishment. During this second phase, which lasted until about 1968, the movement was most nearly a school, with distinctive concepts and methods, and was presided over by the towering figure of Fernand Braudel. The third phase of the movement, which continues today, is marked by fragmentation. Its influence in France had become so great that it lost much of its distinctiveness, and no strong figures appeared to give the movement the inspiration and direction that Febvre, Bloch, and Braudel had provided. Some members of the group even returned to political history and to the narrative of events. The cycle was complete - the rebels became the establishment and were in turn rebelled against. (shrink)

The paper focuses on Nominalism in history, its application, and its historiographical implications. By engaging with recent scholarship as well as classic works, a survey of Nominalism’s role in the discipline of history is made; such examination is timely, since it has been done but scantily in a purely historical context. In the light of recent theoretical works, which often display aporias over the nature and method of historical enquiry, the paper offers new considerations on historical theory, which in the (...) author’s view may solve some of the contradictions that have surfaced in recent times. The Nominalistic stance is argued against by disputing theorists such as Paul Veyne, who has made a case for Nominalism in history. A brief philosophical section introduces Nominalism in its metaphysical dimension and the discussion is speedily brought to its significance for history. The paper also proposes a solution to the misconstrued yet too often vague application of scientism in history, and offers theoretical grounds that might solve some of the ‘stormy grounds’ historiography finds itself today. Articles by Marcel Gauchet and History and Theory’s Anton Froeyman and Bert Leuridan are engaged with, as well as Murray Murphy’s books on the philosophy of history. Works by Georg Gadamer, Marc Bloch, Benedetto Croce, Hyppolite Taine, and Anthony Grafton crucially inform the discussion and brace the consequential conclusion. (shrink)

Par ses livres, Le Sens du mouvement et La Décision, Alain Berthoz a largement renouvelé notre conception de la physiologie de la perception et de l’action. Il confronte ici ses idées avec celles d’un grand philosophe du xxe siècle, Edmund Husserl, dont Jean-Luc Petit, l’un de nos meilleurs phénoménologues, est spécialiste. Ses expériences et ses analyses du mouvement, de la posture, de la décision, de la perception nous font comprendre l’importance et la pertinence des approches qui sont celles de Husserl. (...) La pensée n’est pas avant l’action ni l’action avant la pensée. Pour Alain Berthoz et Edmund Husserl, l’action contient toute la pensée. Alain Berthoz, neurophysiologiste, est professeur au Collège de France. Jean-Luc Petit, philosophe, est professeur à l’université Marc-Bloch de Strasbourg. (shrink)

La question se pose de savoir si la Justice est capable de réparer le tragique de l’histoire. François Dosse situe son analyse sur l’axe pragmatique de la préoccupation citoyenne exprimée par Ricœur, dès les premières lignes de La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, lorsqu’il se dit troublé par le trop de mémoire ici et le trop d’oubli ailleurs. On assiste en effet à une judiciarisation progressive de la discipline historique. Elle se traduit par une inquiétante inflation mémorielle depuis la loi Gayssot de (...) 1990. La fonction du juge et de l’historien a certes des points communs, comme l’a montré Marc Bloch dans Apologie pour l’histoire ou Carlo Ginzburg dans Le juge et l’historien. Le juge d’instruction peut s’apparenter à l’historien, mais pas celui du siège qui doit rendre un jugement. Cette emprise progressive de la justice sur le passé a pour effet pervers une tentative de sanctuarisation des questions historiques. Ricœur nous aide à repenser les relations entre justice, histoire et mémoire en distinguant et en articulant ces diverses dimensions par un travail de clarification des concepts. Il permet de mieux articuler la fonction judiciaire, le travail de mémoire et l’opération historiographique en respectant la validité de chacune de ces dimensions. (shrink)

This article deals with the genesis of the Bilderatlas Mnemosyne, composed by Aby Warburg between 1927 and 1929 as a response to the Great War. His reaction to the war was both pathetic (even pathological) and epistemic (which is to say, methodological). If the history of culture amounted to a great psychomachia of the astra (concepts) and the monstra (chaos), as Warburg said, the war was for him a direct test of his theory (or Kulturwissenschaft). It should be no surprise, (...) then, that between 1914 and 1918 he should assemble a large iconographic collection of materials from and about the war. This essay compares that collection and its theoretical foundations with similar projects of Warburg's contemporaries in France and Germany (notably those of the historians Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch). (shrink)

Au début du XXIe siècle, qu'en est-il de la compréhension de la réalité du Monde Chinois? Pourquoi l'analyse de l'antiquité chinoise est-elle essentielle à cette perspective? Une connaissance réelle de la culture chinoise offre au lecteur l'accès aux débats internes, aux tensions entre les points de vue. Pourquoi évoquer la Grèce, la rationalité et non Delphes et la Pythie et pour la Chine, le mandat du ciel et non la mesure des angles d'un triangle? Depuis Marc Bloch, le (...) sens de l'histoire ne s'inscrit-il pas entre les " explications légendaires " et " les premiers essais d'interprétation rationaliste "? Il existe une dimension critique dans la culture chinoise. Ne serait-il pas plus créatif de comprendre comment tel fait ou telle question a été compris, discuté, voire réfuté au lieu de privilégier un consensus obligé? Pour explorer cette dimension critique, il faut lire les textes de la Chine ancienne qui n'appartiennent pas au corpus officiel et en chercher le sens. (shrink)

Adam Lucas has written another excellent book on medieval history and technology. His approach follows in many ways those of John Langdon and Richard Holt, whose influence he graciously acknowledges. Lucas also continues their challenge to older theories about water-powered mills. What his study adds to theirs is a considerable additional number of medieval monastic and ecclesiastical communities and their mills, most of these located in parts of England much less studied earlier. Thus, he adds considerably to our overall knowledge (...) of milling resources available in England after Domesday and the varied costs of using water- and wind-powered mills. There is much that is good, useful, and innovative in this study.Lucas argues that the conclusions of Marc Bloch’s 1935 article on the advent and triumph of the medieval water mill as a tool of seigneurial oppression cannot be wholly sustained for all of Europe; in many places, including in parts of England and in the holdings of particular r .. (shrink)

The representation of history continues to evolve in the domain of museum exhibitions. This evolution is informed in part by the creation of new display methods—many of which depart from the traditional conventions used to achieve the “museum effect”—in part by an increased attention to the museum–visitor relationship. In this context the ethical force of bearing witness, at times a crucial aspect of the museum experience, has emerged as a particularly compelling issue. In seeking to represent and address atrocity, injustice, (...) and the abrogation of human rights, museums have the potential to become “sites of conscience” and to encourage “historical consciousness.” Through a series of three exhibitions devoted to slavery, the New-York Historical Society demonstrated how such sites can be constructed and how objects can be deployed to represent extreme or “limit cases.” In this review/essay I investigate and interrogate these exhibitions, looking closely at the use of objects as a source of “indirect testimony” and at the “dialogical situation” that might arise in an encounter among objects, exhibit narratives, and visitors. Thinking in terms of point of view, I look at the variety of rhetorical platforms from which objects speak in these exhibitions; thinking in terms of syntax, I look at the effects of ordering and of the radical juxtaposition of objects; thinking in terms of irony, I look at the provocations of double-voiced narratives and at how objects are used to support those historical sentences. (shrink)

Historians of Science and Technology as Time‐eaters. Historians for long mainly focussed on the last couple of millenia. Recently, they have reached out to colonize different temporal worlds. While Deep History seeks to get a better understanding of the development of anatomically modern humans and their culture, Big History integrates cosmological, geological and human temporalities to develop new narratives on the big picture. Hence, historians are time‐eaters. They share their foremost prey, however, with other disciplines such as anthropology and archaeology, (...) paleontology and primatology, linguistics and molecular genetics, with which they collaborate and at the same time compete when reaching out for new temporal concepts such as the Anthropocene. This article understands the both rich and controversial debate on the Anthropocene, the epoch of the humans, as a positive provocation. For historians of science and technology, it offers a welcome opportunity to critically re‐assess their established sets of narratives by interlinking geological and human time‐scales. Newly developed terms such as the “technosphere” and the “technocene” force them to (1) re‐think their concept of technology, (2) better integrate history of technology and environmental history, and (3) replace linear temporalities by layered models of historical change. (shrink)