Contenu du sommaire

First published in Liège from 1746 to 1741, The Cursus Theologiae of the Dominican Charles-René Billuart (1685-1757) gradually attained, over the course of the 19th century, the rank of a French classic on Thomistic theology, notably as a rsult of three significant republications: the Méquignon edition (1827-1831), the Albanel and Martin edition (1839), and especially the Lequette edition (1867-1868). In republishing Fr. Billuart's Cursus Theologiae, the Méquignon bookstore offered the public a theology textbook which was a pedagogical commentary on St. Thomas' Summa, but it also reintrodued, onto the French theological stage of the Romantic period, certain polemical elements which appeared largely dated, and which seemed to have diminisned in interest. From its first edition and right through the end of the 19th century, Billuart's masterpiece, by nurturing the debate between Thomists and Molinists, assisted the long process by which the Catholic dispute over grace would eventually fade out.

The "personal" diary was born at the end of the 18th century, under the influence of Rousseau's Confessions. Its quest is threefold: for one's identity, for a literary form allowing for reflection on existence, and for the spiritual. Three authors serve as good illustrations of these three possibilities: Benjamin Constant, Maine de Biran, and Joseph Joubert – even though there may be some overlap of these three quests among the three authors.

An attempt is made here to see experience as the narrative thread unifying Bergson's entire intellectual itinerary. The philosopher begins with an inner experience of freedom which is solidly opposed to any objective spatialization. He rapidly moves on, determined to explore a more dialectical experience, one whose human reality is tested at the never-stationary intersection of outward and inward focus, of perception and memory. This leads him to transpose these anthropological tensions into a more universal key: the elasticity of time underlies all of creation, where the momentum of life is nonetheless subject to the implications of matter. Thereafter comes a time of transiition and waiting, where the metaphysical target of a universal experience finds itself at odds with the differentiated experiences of science and art, of morality and religion. In the end, the thought process allows itself to be open to an overpowering (mystical) experience, and it seeks to uncover the meaning of this experience which is relevant to humanity, to its history, and to its vocation. Today, this "true empiricism" could doubtless be take up again and taken in other directions.