: This paper addresses the need to examine teaching practices from the observation that they are beyond what they should be. This task devolved to scientists of education is to learn about teaching practices in their relationship to student learning in order to build the database useful to teacher educators and reflexivity necessary for any teacher about their own practice. The concepts of competence, pattern and are useful instrument in this endeavor of explanation and understanding of the practices. The proposed (...) theoretical framework is illustrated by a perspective of teaching practices of teachers in schools and colleges. These differ in many aspects and this requires the testing of new hypotheses to explain -/- La présente contribution traite de la nécessité d’étudier les pratiques d’enseignement à partir du constat de ce qu’elles sont au delà de ce qu’elles devraient être. Cette tâche dévolue aux chercheurs en sciences de l’éducation vise à mieux connaître les pratiques d’enseignement dans leurs relations aux apprentissages des élèves afin de constituer la base de données utiles aux formateurs d’enseignants et nécessaire à toute réflexivité des enseignants à propos de leur propre pratique. Les notions de compétence, de schème et d’instrument sont utiles à cette entreprise d’explication et de compréhension des pratiques. La proposition de cadrage théorique est illustrée par une mise en perspective des pratiques d’enseignement de professeurs des écoles et de collèges. Celles-ci se distinguent sur bien des aspects ce qui réclame la mise à l’épreuve de nouvelles hypothèses explicatives. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics describes a universe with physical properties that run completely contrary to everyday experience and intuition. These strange properties cause some people to seek equally strange philosophical theories to explain them. Talbot attempts to link the physical theories with some non-physical experimental results. The latter are, if true, disturbing and fascinating. Among the subjects explored are poltergeists, the possibility of instantaneous communication across great distances, and the nature of the mind and consciousness. This is an interesting combination of (...) physics, metaphysics, and parapsychology. Harold D. Shane, Mathematics Dept., Baruch Coll., CUNY. (shrink)

La photographie, dès sa naissance, entretint des relations tout à la fois difficiles et opaques avec l’art. En France notamment, et cela jusqu’à l’aube du xxe siècle, nombre d’écrivains et artistes se liguèrent pour affirmer qu’entre les deux, seuls prévalaient des rapports de subordination de la première au second. L’intérêt et la possible reconnaissance de la photographie en tant qu’art ne se manifesta donc qu’assez tardivement, une fois marginalisées les productions du premier « pictorialisme » visant à aligner l’esthétique du (...) nouveau médium sur celle de la peinture. Au cours de la première moitié du xxe siècle, en partie grâce au surréalisme, la photographie entra progressivement dans le champ de l’art avant qu’au cours des années 1970, un emballement se produise, autorisant des légitimations rétrospectives rehaussées de justifications théoriques et esthétiques. L’entrée en scène du numérique contribua à l’accélération de ce mouvement de fusion – absorption par l’art contemporain, dont il n’est pas inutile de se demander s’il n’est pas une autre manière de soumettre la photographie à une identité rétrécie et réductrice. (shrink)

Ancien fleuron de l’industrie horlogère, Lip est une manufacture bisontine connue pour les conflits sociaux retentissants dont elle fut le théâtre en 1973-1974 puis en 1976-1977, et se dota très vite d’une aura légendaire à laquelle participèrent de nombreuses productions culturelles et artistiques contemporaines des événements. Le temps passant, l’intervention fit place à la rétrospection : de nouvelles œuvres s’employèrent à revisiter cette histoire, tendues entre le mythe et ses angles morts, la commémoration et le souvenir. Publiée en 1998, Les (...) Yeux rouges de Dominique Féret est l’une des premières à s’inscrire dans cet après-coup. Composée de quatre entretiens avec d’anciens protagonistes des luttes de Lip, cette pièce en dit au moins tout autant sur le passé que sur le présent qui se tourne vers lui et traduit l’inflexion que connaît tout un pan du théâtre européen des années 2000, marqué par la résurgence de la question sociale mais aussi par des modulations pathétiques qui tendent à sa dépolitisation. (shrink)

This article examines humanist works written in the immediate aftermath of Stefano Porcari's failed conspiracy against Pope Nicholas V. While they were designed to flatter the pope and support papal claims to temporal power, these works use images and adopt rhetorical startegies that are republican and not, as one would expect, imperial in origin. The humanists were so devoted not only to classical form, but also to Roman republican ideals that they sometimes present Porcari positively, have heroes of the Roman (...) republic comment on the modern papacy, and construct a strained theory of papal liberty. (shrink)

Les Theoremata d'esse et essentia (ca 1278-1285), qui, en depit d'une edition critique deja ancienne (Hocedez, 1930), n'avaient pas encore ete traduits integralement en francais a ce jour, apparaissent comme l'uvre majeure pour bien saisir la genese doctrinale et conceptuelle de la theorie de la distinction reelle. Peu de temps avant les Questions disputees sur l'etre et l'essence (1286-1287), qui sont au cur du debat entre Gilles de Rome (ca 1245-1316), partisan d'une distinction reelle entre l'etre et l'essence, et (...) Henri de Gand (ca 1217-1293), promoteur d'une theorie de la distinction " intentionnelle ", les Theoremes apparaissent comme un essai de synthese, dans lequel le maitre augustin donne un expose d'ensemble des arguments qui le conduisent a faire de l'etre une res (" chose " au sens de " realite ") a part entiere. Dans ces conditions, les disciples de Thomas d'Aquin (ca 1224-1274) n'ont pas manque de voir, en Gilles, l'un des partisans d'une these qu'ils revendiquaient comme un heritage de l'Aquinate. Les Theoremes revelent cependant une pensee incontestablement personnelle, et manifestent le caractere resolument original de Gilles de Rome, metaphysicien incontournable du XIIIe siecle finissant. (shrink)

Innocent I (402-417) addressed Epistula 38 to two Bruttian bishops, Maximus and Severus, in response to a complaint from Maximilianus, an agens in rebus,that these southern Italian bishops had failed to take action against presbyters who fathered children contrary to the requirements of celibacy after ordination and claimed to be ignorant of any policy on this matter. Innocent reminded the two bishops that they needed to attend to their duties. This letter is among the earliest evidence for how the Roman (...) bishop operated in practice as metropolitan of Suburbicarian (and possibly Annonarian) Italy and so this article examines the growth of Rome’s metropolitan authority and concludes from an examination of both context and content of the letter that Innocent did not refer to any formal authority,which grew over time but seems to have been limited to presiding over synods, approving the election and ordination of new bishops, and hearing appeals from deposed bishops outside his province, but was exercising a practical authority as the leading bishop of the area, which he expressed in surprised tones, to direct them to do their duty. (shrink)

Thomas Aquinas holds that the existence of God is self-evident in itself (because God’s essence is his existence) but not to us (since we do not know the divine essence). Giles of Rome agrees with the first part of Thomas’s claim, but he parts company with Aquinas by maintaining that God’s existence is self-evident to the wise. Since the wise can know that God is his existence, they cannot think of him as not existing. This paper reexamines Thomas’s teaching (...) in the light of Giles’s criticisms. By examining closely what is involved in the claim that God’s essence is his existence, and how one’s knowledge of this claim is related to the knowledge that God exists, it argues that Thomas’s position has the resources to withstand Giles’s objections. (shrink)

Burned at the stake for heresy in Rome in 1600, the Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno was the first modern thinker to propose that the universe contained an infinite number of planetary systems revolving around individual stars. He announced his startling propositions at the moment when European explorers were beginning to reveal the real size and complexity of earth itself (indeed, Bruno also spoke forcefully against the violence and profiteering of Spanish colonial efforts) and when natural philosophers had begun to (...) dispute about the very structure of the universe. It may not be a coincidence that the religious troubles of sixteenth-century Europe arose at a time when humanity's very place in the world and the cosmos no longer seemed certain. In Bruno's case, pursuit of his ideas compelled him to leave behind not only the security of his Dominican convent in Naples, but also, and more radically, the security of a traditional sense of who and where he was. His infinite universe terrified a thinker as unconventional as Johannes Kepler, and still more it terrified the Inquisition. For Bruno himself, the excitement of this infinitely expanded vision of the cosmos was usually enough to overrule any doubt, but when Kepler compared living in Bruno's universe to permanent exile, he captured an essential quality of the Italian philosopher: an intense solitude, a solitude for which his philosophy was only ever a partial cure. (shrink)

This article traces the career path and personality of a chancery official or secretary in the service of the Gonzaga, the ruling dynasty of Mantua, in the middle years of the fifteenth century. It relates Giovanni Arrivabene to the contemporary social, political and cultural context of this secondary northern Italian power or signoria but touches the wider Italian world at many points, particularly the papal court, whether in Rome or other locations, where Giovanni’s talented younger brother served first as (...) the secretary of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga and later as an apostolic secretary. The comparison between the two brothers and their interdependence as property owners is a recurring theme. Giovanni emerges with evident limitations which hampered the succession to his father’s superior role in the chancery, where other privileged families also tended to prevail. Humanist educated and efficient, he seems to have been a bureaucrat of routine abilities, not quite astute enough to outpace certain departmental rivals or to avoid being tainted by association with some possibly corrupt practice which caused loss of favour. His later rehabilitation, first as a provincial magistrate concerned with criminal jurisdiction and later as an estate management official, illustrates that private relationships within the narrow world of a civic quasi despotic government were all important. (shrink)

James V. Schall, S.J. is unquestionably one of the wisest Catholic political thinkers of our time. For more than forty years, Fr. Schall has been an unabashed practitioner of what he does not hesitate to call Roman Catholic political philosophy. A prolific writer and renowned teacher at Georgetown University, Fr. Schall has helped to educate two generations of Catholic thinkers. The present volume brings together seventeen essays by noted scholars in honor of Fr. Schall. It is a testimony to Fr. (...) Schall's erudition and influence that the authors of these essays did not have the privilege of directly studying under him. Rather, they are the indirect but grateful beneficiaries of "Another Sort of Learning," one that Fr. Schall tirelessly defends and practices. An appendix lists all the books Schall has written. Contributors include Marc Guerra, J. Brian Benestad, Francis Canavan, S.J., Kenneth Grasso, Thomas Hibbs, John Hittinger, Mary Keys, Robert Kraynak, Douglas Kries, Rev. Matthew Lamb, Peter Augustine Lawler, Frederick Lawrence, Daniel Mahorky, Graham McAleer, Michael Novak, Tracey Rowland, and Paul Seaton. (shrink)

At Aen. 6.562–627 the Sibyl gives Aeneas a description of the criminals in Tartarus and the punishments to which they are condemned. The criminals are presented to us in several groups. The first consists of mythical figures, the Titans , the sons of Aloeus , Salmoneus , Tityos and Ixion and Pirithous . Next Virgil turns away from mythical figures to particular categories of criminal. He mentions those who hated their brothers, who assaulted a parent, who cheated a cliens, who (...) gloated over wealth they had acquired without setting aside a part for their family, who were put to death for adultery, and those who, breaking their masters' trust, made war on their country . The reference to the contemporary scene is unmistakable. The mention of a cliens indicates that we have moved from Greece to Rome. Moreover, ‘quique ob adulterium caesi’ brings to mind Augustus' concern over moral standards, the subject of legislation in 28 B.c., 18 B.c. and A.d. 9; the lex Iulia de adulteriis coercendis gave to fathers of adulteresses the right to put to death both guilty parties. Thirdly, ‘arma...impia’ is an obvious reference to civil war , which as Servius argues is more narrowly defined by ‘nee veriti dominorum fallere dextras’ so as to exclude Caesar and Octavian: undoubtedly the allusion is to the war against Sextus Pompeius, which Augustan propaganda chose to represent as a war against runaway slaves. Virgil continues by sketching the penalties paid in Tartarus by such men . While doing so, however, he retreats once again into the realm of mythology: the punishments he describes are those more normally associated with Sisyphus and Ixion . This reversion is completed at 617–20 where, confusingly, Virgil denies that he has been alluding to events of contemporary significance by naming two mythical personages, Theseus and Phlegyas . Virgil therefore implies, but then denies, contemporary relevance. It is this kind of protean elusiveness which makes the contemporary allusions in Virgil so difficult to pin down. (shrink)