Descartes est, dans le fait, le vrai fondateur de la philosophie moderne, en tant qu'elle prend la pensée pour principe. L'action de cet homme sur son siècle et sur les temps nouveaux ne sera jamais exagérée. C'est un héros ; il a repris les choses par les commencements, et il a retrouvé de nouveau le vrai sol de la philosophie, auquel elle est revenue après un égarement de mille ans. 1637, c'est la date de la publication du Discours de la (...) méthode, de René Descartes - véritable déclaration des droits et des pouvoirs de la Raison sur un monde qu'elle domine et organise. Toute la pensée moderne est née de cet ouvrage dont la langue, dense mais toujours claire, n'a pas vieilli. (shrink)

This article sets down the foundations of a research project on Health and Physical Education (HPE) teachers’ job satisfaction and job embededness. According to the literature, HPE teachers has a weak status inside and outside school which may conduct to professional marginalization. After describing the situation of the teaching profession in the province of Québec, the focus is directed toward HPE as a teaching specialty. A conceptual framework that articulates job satisfaction and job embededness models is then proposed. In conclusion (...) of this theoretical reflexion, considering the actual teacher shortage, school organizations are invited to adhere to a more sustainable approach of teaching resources management. (shrink)

According to a broadly accepted interpretation, the doubt of the First Meditation gets stronger due to an increasing effectiveness of the reasons for said doubt. I defend a deflationary reading of the doubt of the Meditations insofar as the sceptical arguments used by René Descartes gradually lose power. This reading is obviously not without consequences, which will be mentioned in the conclusion, for the interpretation of the exercise of doubt and, more fundamentally, of the Cartesian doctrine of knowledge.

This article reports on a historical investigation carried out on the conical object MIN000-3519 preserved in the mineralogy collections of the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle at Paris (France). The mineralogist René-Just Haüy (1743-1822) included this object, cut in a single pyrite (FeS2) crystal, in his working collection with the references ‘Sulphured iron, mirror of the Incas, of Peru, M. de Jussieu’. All of the research lines followed lead the author to Joseph de Jussieu (1704-1779) and his shipments of botanical (...) specimens and various other samples from South America. As a member of the Godin-La Condamine-Bouguer geodesic expedition on the equator (1735-1743), he returned to France only after 36 years (1771), ill, exhausted and dispossessed of the scientific product of his Andean collections. This pyrite mirror is important because, in addition to appearing to be the only archaeological object that can be linked to Joseph's peregrinations in America, it resembles other specimens found at sites of the Cañaris culture (500-1500 AD) in Ecuador. Preserved within the de Jussieu family, this object would presumably have been given to Haüy by Joseph's heirs, his nephews Antoine-Laurent (1748-1836) or Laurent-Pierre (1792-1866), with whom he had close ties. (shrink)

François Nault | Résumé : Dans cet article, je vais aborder la question de l’identité du théologien : qui est théologien dans l’Église ? Je vais aborder les positions du dernier Concile, de Jean-Luc Marion, d’Yves Congar, de Karl Barth et enfin de René-Michel Roberge. |: In this paper, I will address the question of the identity of the theologian : who may pretend to be theologian in the Church ? I will present the positions of Vatican II, (...) Jean-Luc Marion, Yves Congar, Karl Barth and René-Michel Roberge. (shrink)

The article aims to understand the notion underlying the term “revolution” in René de Chateaubriand’s Essay on Revolutions, making particular reference not only to the substantial notes of the 1826 re-edition, provided by the author himself, but also to the conceptual constellation surrounding the nascent concept of revolution, in particular “history” and “revolutionary rupture”.

Summary At the beginning of the 1730s René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur published two long memoirs on a new type of thermometer equipped with a specially calibrated scale — known ever since as the Réaumur scale. It became one of the most common ‘standardized’ thermometers in Europe until the late nineteenth century. What made this thermometer so successful? What was it specifically? I will first argue that the real Réaumur thermometer as an instrument was a fiction, a ghost — (...) an idealized instrument. On paper, it was theoretically flawless. In reality, the standardized Réaumur thermometer was most likely never achieved. This article shows that its success was essentially due to a recontextualisation from theoretical natural philosophy — Réaumur's principle of uniformity — to: 1) the context of artisanal knowledge and practices and 2) the context of making and reporting in the Mémoires de l'Académie royale des sciences actual measurements done in the field (in Paris at the Observatory, in Provincial France, in the Colonies, and in the rest of Europe). Réaumur's thermometer was essentially a theoretical method to which was associated a particular scale. It was the instrument's reification for market consumption and fieldwork that gave this specific type of thermometer materiality and authority. Although most Réaumur thermometers ever made were strikingly different from one another, over time the thermomètre de Réaumur designation became a brand, a seal of approval born from customary artisanal practices and cultural habitudes. (shrink)

In the concluding pages of his first major book, Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, René Girard asserts that “Toutes les conclusions romanesques sont des conversions. Personne ne peut en douter” (All novelistic conclusions are conversions; it is impossible to doubt this).1 By this he means simply that there comes a moment when both the great novelists whom he studies and their characters recognize a fundamental truth that dramatically changes them: a life founded on human desire alone can end only (...) in misery and failure. Although not necessarily religious in nature, this novelistic conversion, as Robert Doran puts it in his recent edition of Girard’s uncollected writings on literature and literary theory .. (shrink)

The article introduces a special issue on “Rethinking Liberal Multiculturalism: Foundations, Practices and Methodologies.” The contributions presented in this special issue were discussed during the conference « Multicultural Citizenship 25 Years Later », held in Paris in November 2021. Their aim is to take stock of the legacy of Kymlicka’s contribution and to highlight new developments in theories of liberal multiculturalism and minority rights. The contributions do not purport to challenge the legitimacy of theories of multiculturalism and minority rights, they (...) rather aim at deepening our understanding of the foundations of liberal multiculturalism and of its practical implementation, sensitive to social scientific dynamics of diverse societies. Without abandoning the general idea that cultural minorities should be granted special minority rights, the essays presented raise new questions about three dimensions central to liberal multiculturalism: its normative foundations, its practical categories of minorities or groups, and its fact-sensitive methodology. Taken together they shed light on the renewed variety of theories of liberal multiculturalism highlighting their complexity and internal disagreements. To introduce these articles, the article first draws a brief historical overview of the debates on multiculturalism since the 1990s (section 1). It then highlights the distinctive aspects of Kymlicka’s contribution (section 2) and identifies recent research trends (section 3). Doing so, it explains how the articles gathered here both expand on those distinctive aspects and explore those new research avenues. The section 4 summarizes the contributions. (shrink)

Dernier ouvrage publie par Descartes, le Traite des Passions de l'ame (1649) est le fruit de toute sa philosophie. Ce traite, qui s'appuie sur un resume de la biologie cartesienne, s'oriente vers une medecine concrete des affections psycho-physiologiques et s'epanouit en une apologie de la generosite. Aux observations scientifiques, Descartes ne dedaigne pas d'adjoindre des notations psychologiques dont la finesse evoque parfois ces maximes qui fleurissaient dans les salons au XVIIe siecle. Ainsi l'ampleur des conclusions scientifiques, morales et metaphysiques, sources (...) d'etudes toujours renaissantes pour les specialistes, se colore par surcroit d'une richesse vecue qui fait de ce Traite, ecrit pour une princesse et offert a une reine, le modele des ouvrages accessibles au plus grand public. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 7, Issue 2, pp 69 - 90 It is often claimed that, as a result of scientific progress, we now _know_ that the natural world displays no design. Although we have no interest in defending design hypotheses, we will argue that establishing claims to the effect that we know the denials of design hypotheses is more difficult than it seems. We do so by issuing two skeptical challenges to design-deniers. The first challenge draws inspiration from radical skepticism (...) and shows how design claims are at least as compelling as radical skeptical scenarios in undermining knowledge claims, and in fact probably more so. The second challenge takes its cue from skeptical theism and shows how we are typically not in an epistemic position to rule out design. (shrink)