Contenu du sommaire : Spinoza et le corps

The contractualist theories of the Classical Age are grounded on the conception of a state of nature which becomes, because of its internal contradictions, a state of war to which the only remedy is a rational artifice : the pact. Although these contradictions arise from human passions, passions seem to be unthinkable in the strictly juridical frame of these theories, where neither the passional mechanisms of political adhesion, nor the menace of the dissolution of the State, are analysed. We will strive to compare the role that Hobbes and Spinoza attribute to passions in their respective political doctrines. Whereas Hobbes shows a constant interest in passions, but puts them to the side when it comes to thinking the construction and functioning of the political system, Spinoza allows us to distinguish between two types of passions – those which are necessarily in contradiction with the political body, and those which only occasionally obstruct it. The latter are a factor of decomposition as well as recomposition of the collective body. This approach of the problem of politics, analysing the causes of the dissolution of the political community, brings a new light on the signification of modern natural Law as it is elaborate in the works of Hobbes and Spinoza.

The aim of this paper is to understand how the body can be active. With the proposition 49 of the fourth part of Ethics, two ways of conceiving of the body are distinguished : like an organic body or like an affective body. The ethics question of becoming active is about the affective body. This becoming active must be understood as increasing of the ability to affect, as well as to be affected. To be affected is different from to be passive. On the contrary, the more the body is able to be affected, the more he becomes active.

One of the last proposals of Spinoza's Ethica (the 39th of the fifth part) says this : « Who has a body able to the greatest number of acts, has a mind whom the greatest part is eternal ». In relation with what was said about the unit of body and mind since the second part, that proposal seems obvious : who has a powerful body will get some affects suitable to the mind's order, hence will get a mind as powerful, that is to say eternal. However, such a proposal becomes curious when it is analysed from the point of view of salvation which, in The Ethica, as Beatitude or third kind's knowledge, follows a only intellectual way. Would it be an other kind of salvation, a salvation by the body, what Spinoza doesn't describe but what would get a spinozistic meaning ? And if we answer positively, how to obtain such a salvation by changing his body's acts before his mind ? Here is the mean question of this issue.

The principle of inertia, despite the fact that it cannot be proven by any kind of experimental observation, is one of those principles that during the seventeenth century formed the foundations of a new physics. Both Descartes and Spinoza have tried however to demonstrate this principle and integrate it in their philosophical systems. Spinoza even proposes in his work Descartes' Principles of Philosophy, while presenting Descartes' view on that matter, a critical appraisal of some of the metaphysical presuppositions of the cartesian demonstration. An analysis of Spinoza's arguments leads us to a study of the relation of the principle of inertia and the conatus theory of the Ethics, and subsequently to an interrogation concerning the status of Spinoza's physics and the place that this science occupies in Spinoza's philosophy.

The dynamic complexity of the dispositions (or arrangements) of a body [dispositiones corporis] is cleared up from examining the question of contraries (E3p5 and E5ax1). The reasoning behind this is the same as that behind the causality of each thing's effort to persevere in and through itself [in suo esse] (Spinoza wrote, « dispositio seu conatus »). « Prudence », which implies the principles of union and resistance, is studied under the theme of habituation and according to bodies' self-organizing principle.

Contrary to Descartes, Spinoza refuses to human mind and therefore to man the status of substance : man is defined as the union of two modes, body and mind. We can't distinguish, as in Descartes, a substantial identity, conferred to the body by the mind, and a modal identity, determined by the relation between human body and other bodies. Both identities form an essential identity. This paper explains the problematical character of this identity in Spinoza's Ethic. Human mind is indeed deduced and defined as the idea of human body, namely the concept of human body formed by God. But sometimes Spinoza identifies the idea of human body with the essence of human body, sometimes he makes a distinction between both. In the same way, sometimes he identifies the idea of human body with the idea of human mind, in accordance with parallelism of attributes, sometimes he distinguishes both. We can see, therefore, internal tensions in the system.

The present paper does not aim to investigate socinian arguments, but rather to describe the use that has been made of the referent to the socinianism through the theological controversies in France during the 17th century. Through these controversies, references to the socinianism were almost exclusively polemic and used principally to throw discredit on the opponents. In fact Socininism was not recognized wrong with regard to its conception of the nature of the Christ, but to its use of rationalism when reading the Bible. This question became the axis of the catholic/reformed controversy and the lecture of the Bible, more than the Jesus Christ nature, became the central point of the theological problem at the end of the Grand Siècle.

The article of Luisa Simonutti deals with the criticism and the use of some key concepts of Socin (liberty, will, responsibility) by some Dutch Arminians. This complex inheritance is not only a part of the important reaction against the works and the thought of Socin that took place from the end of the Sixteenth Century to the end of the Seventeenth Century. It is also to be interpreted as a moment of the debate for the defence of the libertas prophetandi and of the free will of man in front of the laws and the will of God.

In spite of his mistrust of theories, scientific research for Goethe could not have been effective without a special care for the method that it was to follow. Precisely because it was necessary to encompass the phenomenon in its diversity and in its totality, it was of importance to consider the means that would allow the success of such proceedings. The harmonious cooperation of the faculties of the human mind was required for Goethe, and was to be put in practice as the only way to answer to the riches of reality as it reveals itself to us, and so as the only way to adequately establish experimental proceedings in science.

Omnipresent and crucial already from the thirties, the thematic of conflict finds a deeper treatment by Heidegger in a real thought of alterity, irreducible to the unity of the metaphysical logos. Initially bound to the question of the genesis of a community, such a theme goes far beyond its own enrolment in « warideologie » extolled by the conservative revolution. As the destruction of ontology leads in a polemology, it concerns, beyond any conflict of power and universal domination, our own capacity of deployment, that is the question of our own possible.

The problematical point is the relations between the State and war with respect to the notion of « machine of war ». Based on this concept, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari intend : to analyse the way state machines « capture » social forces in order to produce and reproduce their own strength of administration, control and repression in the immanent social praxis ; to connect this « heterogenesis » of State power with a genealogy of war ; to reform marxist concepts of State power, State apparatus, primitive accumulation and State capitalism in the light of the leading role of the economy of war in the development of capitalism.

This article argues that the « art of prudence » recommended by Baltasar Gracián in his Oráculo manual revives the methods of the ancient Greeks and Romans who had been advocating an ars vitae and a tactical prudentia, which they often expressed as striking slogans, maxims and adages. Gracián's « aphorisms » draw on the rich treasure of this pragmatic wisdom, adopting the features of a certain stoicism but also the cunning counsel praising « adaptation » and « dissimulation ». The components of this « art of prudence » belong to four different fields : philosophical works, in particular Seneca, Epictetus and Plutarch ; gnomic literature, such as the maxims of the Seven Sages or those of Publilius Syrus ; satirical writings, especially Martial and Persius ; and Tacitus' political and moral thought.

Yves-Charles Zarka and Cynthia Fleury's Difficile tolérance seeks to study the question of tolerance within Western societies, and the position occupied by Arab Muslim communities within those societies. The authors stress the incompatibility of Western and Islamic values ; they argue that it is impossible for tolerance to develop within Islamic culture, and assert the need to react against communitarian claims, which they see as increasingly dangerous for the institutions of the French Republic. In this article, the main postulates, assumptions and historical examples put forward by Y. Zarka and C. Fleury are subjected to analysis and critique. The article points out the misreadings, errors of interpretation and distortions on which the two authors rely as they set out their hypothesis of the absence of tolerance within Islamic culture.