This paper proposes a new approach to Augustine’s illumination theory, understanding illumination as resulting from an act of the human being as much as from an action of God. Regardless of God’s ever present light, the human intellect is not constantly and indiscriminately illuminated. In order to explain how the human intellect attains knowledge to different degrees, and how it can resist the divine light without being actually able to deny it, I will make use of two concepts Augustine himself did not employ : the first one is relationship, the second, referring to God, is being-for-others. As being-for-others, God gives the human being not the gift of knowledge, but that of the relationship with Him (as Truth and Wisdom), by means of which the human being can attain knowledge. By placing Himself in relationship with the human being, God grants it the freedom and power to cooperate in divine actions : re-creation after the fall (formatio), illumination and salvation. If passive, the human intellect does not receive knowledge, it is only in its turning towards the ever present light of Truth that it sees the intelligible truths in the divine light, and it is able to do so to the extent of one’s good will, or one’s love (caritas). Augustine sees illumination as a joint action of God and human being, depending on human being no less than on God. The concept of relationship and the understanding of God as being-for-others explain why no illumination will take place without the active role of the human intellect, why the divine light is not coercive, and why Augustine considers the necessity of both human freedom and God’s power in the act of knowledge.

Dans un fragment de son commentaire perdu sur les Catégories d’Aristote, adressé à Gédalios et transmis par Simplicius dans son propre Commentaire surles Catégories, Porphyre évoque la distinction, à première vue énigmatique, entre les termes techniques grecs huparxis et hupostasis. On avance dans laprésente contribution que des passages tirés d’une source inattendue – le De Incarnatione du moine Théodore de Raithu (VIᵉ-VIIᵉ siècle) – peuvent illuminerle sens de ce texte porphyrien. Ce résultat fournit l’occasion de quelques réflexions sur l’influence de Porphyre sur la pensée patristique.

One of the major difficulties that the Neoplatonic tradition had to face concerns the relationship between the transcendence and the causality of the first principle. As transcendent, the One – or the absolute Good – must be above the intelligible being, completely different from its nature. As the first cause of the whole reality, the One is still conceived in a certain connection to the intellect. In this article, I discuss the philosophical background of this problem and Proclus’ attempt to solve the apparent contradiction between causality and transcendence. Proclus puts these two aspects in agreement, by stressing the superiority of the principle and by making of it a non-being par excellence.

La réflexion de Thomas d’Aquin sur les régimes de la cité présente l’inconvénient que ses oeuvres politiques sont restées inachevées. Significative pour pouvoir décider de l’appartenance de Thomas d’Aquin au côté de la doctrine gélasienne ou à celle du pape Grégoire VII, la comparaison du Super Sententiisavec le traité De regno, telle qu’elle a été faite par I.T. Eschmann, n’est pas bien riche en conclusions pour la question du consentement politique. Selon la position que nous avons assumée dans notre investigation au sein des deux oeuvres de Thomas, il est possible d’affirmer que la notion de consentement n’introduit pas de fausses discontinuités entre des textes écrits à des périodes distinctes. En fin de compte, ce qui unit le Super Sententiis au De regno c’est, à notre avis, une sorte de prudence politique, issue de la lecture que Thomas d’Aquin fait des livres sapientiels de l’Ancien Testament. Sans avoir l’intention de nier les différences qui existent entre les deux textes thomasiens, il nous semble évident qu’ils dégagent plutôt la perspective d’une science politique attentive aux pratiques du temps, mais encore réservée quant aux concepts liés au consentement exprimé par le principe quod omnes tangit, principe que la prudence politique n’a pas encore assimilé.

The objective of this article is to analyze some of the ambiguities of the Thomistic theory related to the agent intellect. Precisely, it is about those contradictionsor confusions that appeared as a consequence of Saint Thomas necessity to prove the existence and continuity of intellectual human activity after the death. These ideas are mainly found in Quaestiones disputatae de anima, where they generate two doctrines relatively opposed with regards to agent intellect, but they do not completely vanish in Summa theologica.

After a brief biography of Thomas Aquinas, the article follows up the work of Leonard Boyle to show how the Summa serves to meet the requirements of a pedagogical project in the Dominican Order and more generally in the medieval Church. Intended for the initial and continuing formation of Dominican friars and students of conventual schools, the Summa is composed in a literary genre perfectly suited to this purpose, which governs its structure. The detailed presentation of the notion of sacra doctrina elaborated in q. 1 provides the occasion to show how this notion itself determines the organization of the material. Finally, the presentation of the contents of the Summa’s three parts brings out the internal organization of the work and stimulates the reading of it.

Dans le plan de la première partie de la Somme Théologique de Thomas d’Aquin, les questions 12 et 13, dédiées aux noms divins, occupent une place privilégiée et confèrent une perspective inédite au discours théologique grâce à leur double fonction. D’une part, leur fonction est normale dans l’ordre du discours : après avoir établi les principaux attributs de Dieu, dont on a justement affirmé dans la 2e question qu’il est, les deux questions fixent les limites dans lesquelles il peut être connu. D’autre part, les deux questions jouent le rôle de clivage dans l’ordre du discours qui établit comment est Dieu. Ainsi les deux interrogations fondent la connaissance de l’intellect humain par rapport à l’objet véritablement transcendant à toute expérience et questionnent, par conséquent, les conditions de possibilité de la connaissance intellectuelle générique de Dieu sur l’objet. Ce dernier aspect se réfléchit y compris chez les tenants de cette connaissance de telle façon que la légitimation des noms divins ait le rôle d’une légitimation de la théologie comme science, dont l’existence était annoncée et débattue au début de la Somme.

En tant que modèle cosmologique, les structures mises en place par le platonisme s’apparentent formellement à celles de la cosmologie biblique. C’est laraison pour laquelle le christianisme n’a pas hésité à y trouver un moyen propice pour exprimer son propre mystère. Malgré ces similitudes extérieures, un planplus rapproché permet de constater que les deux ensembles appréhendent l’existence de manière dissemblable. Sur la toile de fond de la création biblique, les mystères connexes de l’Incarnation et de l’Ascension, tels qu’ils sont compris par l’intelligence dogmatique chrétienne, s’écartent radicalement de l’approche métaphysique qui avait présidé à l’élaboration du système de Platon – et ce en dépit des tentations à teinte «platonicienne» qui se font jour dans le christianisme avec l’émergence des doctrines ascétiques. Sans aborder les complexités de cette dernière problématique, cet article entend revisiter, comme en négatif, la valeur positive du corps dans le christianisme.

Origène réplique point par point aux arguments que Celse avait invoqués pour rejeter la caricature du culte des images composée par la polémique chrétienne. Il taxe les philosophes d’inconséquence. Au-delà du pamphlet de Celse, il pourfend une thèse que l’adversaire n’exploitait pas, mais qui était fortrépandue: le culte des statues et des images des dieux aurait une valeur symbolique. Ce symbolisme est attesté chez Plutarque, Dion Chrysostome, Maxime de Tyr, plus tard chez Porphyre. Sa diversité a pour origine la complexité des propos de Platon sur la manière de représenter les dieux. Origène veut dénoncer comme illusoire la signification attribuée à de tels «symboles». Ses propres réflexions dans le Contre Celse leur opposent une conception du «symbole» qui, tout en insistant sur sa matérialité, sa visibilité, son historicité, le distingue de l’«image» mimétique, pour l’orienter vers autre chose que lui. Cette distinction est peut-être à méditer, aux sources de la doctrine ultérieure de l’icône, dont ce «symbole»-là serait un précurseur.

The investigation of the famous riddle of the «boneless one» (WD 524) gives a new solution: the «boneless one» is man, placed in the conditions of hisorigins, when he belonged to the silver race and woman was just being created. The «boneless» occurs in a long passage about winter, a cosmic deluge that reproduces the conditions in which mankind fell from the golden age. This happens when Zeus fights the Titans, in a war that almost causes a return to the original Chaos. Fire is the instrument of this war, red is its colour, and similarly : winter has water as its protagonist and white as its colour. Prometheus, son of the Titan Iapetus, has challenged Zeus’ newly gained maturity, a challenge that results, for mankind, in a temporary privation of fire and the creation of the first woman – Pandora. The young woman who lays confortably in her house during winter can be identified with Pandora, in the process of being created, not yet dressed nor educated. Prometheus’ challenge consists in the division of an ox in two shares: on the one hand, the bones covered in shining grease, on the other, the flesh, hidden under the skin. Zeus picks the bony share. The young woman from the winter section, who oints her body with shining grease, represents the divine share, while man gets the other one, the boneless portion, the flesh that involves a new form of mortality: men from the silver race no longer vanish into eternal sleep, like the golden men did. Man in winter, remembering his origins prior to the creation of woman, is condemned to masturbation, the self-caring of his so-called «foot», a quotation from the famous Delphic oracle given to Aegeus when he failed to procreate. So the answer to the hesiodic riddle is the same as the answer to the Sphinx riddle, a riddle which Hesiod happens to quote in the same section (WD 533): man.

The question of intellectual intuition in medieval philosophy is generally associated with names like John Duns Scotus and William Ockham whose majorcontributions to the development of the theory of intuition are well established. Nevertheless the way they approached this philosophical question is strongly related to the Franciscan tradition to which they both belonged so that an extensive comprehension of their theories of intuition requires the inquiry of their sources. As this paper means to show, Matthew of Aquasparta is one of John Duns Scotus’s most important sources in this matter and his treatment of both thequestions of direct intellectual knowledge of the material individual and of the self-knowledge of the soul are important in order to understand the role of theintelligible species and the immediate character of intuitive cognition. While for Matthew of Aquasparta there is no contradiction between the implication of thespecies in intuitive cognition and its immediacy, John Duns Scotus and William Ockham both find a contradiction between these aspects of knowledge andtherefore they both reject the presence of the species in intuitive cognition which is immediate. This paper will show the background of Matthew’s theory and theway he demonstrated that the presence of a species does not always qualify as mediation in knowledge and does not as such hinder the intuitive cognition.

L’article analyse les témoignages stoïciens qui définissent la divinité comme «intellect» et comme «âme du monde», et qui permettent de déterminer les contenus de la pensée divine comme logoi, c’est-à-dire certains «discours» ou «raisonnements». En premier lieu, on examine les mots νοερόν, et νοητόν pour établir à quelles réalités les Stoïciens confèrent les caractères d’intelligence et d’intelligibilité et comment ils décrivent la pensée scientifique à laquelle ils comparent la pensée divine. En second lieu, on examine la théorie des raisons séminales et ses relations historiques avec le problème des objets de la pensée divine. Enfin, on tente de montrer que les Stoïciens, tout en suivant la théologie démiurgique du Timée, unifient ce que Platon a tenu bien séparé : le Démiurge lui-même, l’âme du monde, le «vivant intelligible».

L’article pose pour la première fois la question de la réception d’un texte essentiel pour l’histoire de la pensée européenne, le Liber de causis, en Transylvanie, aux confins de l’aire culturelle latine. Cette première tentative d’exploration se penche plus précisément sur un commentaire bien connu, appartenant à Thomas d’Aquin. Le commentaire, transmis sous une forme imprimée datant du 24 mai 1493, fait partie d’un volume composite qui se trouvait, aux alentours de 1500, dans la bibliothèque des frères dominicains de Sibiu/Hermannstadt (en Roumanie), volume qui comprenait en outre un traité aristotélicien de Walter Burley, également imprimé (daté 8 juillet 1488), et un exemplaire manuscrit de la Métaphysique. Les auteurs s’intéressent au contexte de la transmission du commentaire au Liber de causis et à la signification à donner à la note marginale manuscrite placée en début du commentaire de Thomas d’Aquin : «hic liber est incorrectissime impressus». Ce détail témoignerait d’une connaissance et d’une réception actives de ce texte par les dominicains transylvains de la fin du Moyen Âge.

Les derniers théorèmes des Éléments de Théologie de Proclus portent sur les âmes. La question que nous posons peut se dire ainsi : comment Proclus a-t-il pu, contrairement aux indications platoniciennes, insérer dans un écrit inspiré par la méthode mathématique, un développement sur les âmes? À quel prix cette méthode peut-elle être compatible avec l’espace du divin? On s’interrogera aussi bien sur les traits de l’essence des âmes qui peuvent être posés que sur ceux qui ne peuvent être atteints. Ce sont les limites de toute démarche processive qui seront ainsi soulignées.

It is somehow usual to grant that Augustine has given a former presentation of the famous argument of Descartes named the Cogito, and we ordinary think that the difference between the two authors is that the first one thinks of the inhabitation of Truth or Verbum, which transcends the ego. The paper is an attempt to think in a different way the sources of interiority in Augustine and Descartes. Based on Confessions and on De Trinitate, I trace the Greek sources of the scheme of the movement of return and elevation, which defines the reflection and the access to the interior through verbum mentis. The distance that Descartes takes with the notion of reflection, in his definition of the thought, indicates an important difference in their conceptions of the interiority.

The article calls in question the widely held opinion that Epicurus developed his concept of prolepsis as an empirical “alternative response” to the Platonic Forms. One tries to show that in fact the prolepsis and the Form produce two different types of knowledge and that their difference goes beyond the fact that the former is empirical while the latter is not: the prolepsis is based on recognition and strives to ascertain the identity of the perceived things, while the Form is based on recollection and seeks to know what their essence or nature is. Recognition and recollection are phenomenologically quite different. However, it is still possible that the Epicurean prolepsis was indebted to Plato, but it was the Plato of the Theaetetus and Philebus rather than that of the Meno and Phaedo. So one holds that Epicurus developed a somehow marginal Platonic epistemology to which he assigned a central and basic role in his own epistemology (the Canon).

‘The Science of the Soul is Surer than every other Science’. An Eckhartian Interpretation of Bearing Witness (John 8 :17). Why does the knowledge of the soul constitute the surest science, according to the thesis that Meister Eckhart takes from Aristotle ? Here is the reason he gives : «Concerning what is within us, we are not seeking the testimony and approval of anyone else». But the argument of the uselessness of the testimony of another seems paradoxical in the context in which it appears : the commentary on the verse in John 8 :17 which is precisely about basing the certainty of the testimony as knowledge through the mediation of another. How are we to understand this paradox? My assumption is that it is necessary to consider the point at which the doctrinal aspect of this commentary about bearing witness and its hermeneutical aspect in relation to the interpretation of Scripture are in agreement. From the perspective of doctrine, Meister Eckhart, reinterpreting John Chrysostom, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, aims to overturn the conception of noetic mediation into one of immediacy, basing this on the Trinitarian theory of the begetting of the Son by the Father in consubstantiality. Therefore otherness and exteriority are led back towards unity of nature and inwardness. And certain knowledge coincides with the knowledge of the principle of one’s own being. From a hermeneutical perspective, the exegesis of the verse according to its latent meaning suggested by Eckhart becomes for him a model of metaphysical and noetic interpretation : to understand in what way the one who is testifying to the principle that has engendered him delivers the most certain knowledge, it is necessary to move from the patent meaning of being and of knowledge to their latent meaning. To this extent, all knowledge through mediation that is demonstrated as external knowledge is revealed to be, in a latent sense, a manifestation of truth as an act of engendering.

The rhetorical and demonstrative function of images and comparisons in Gregory of Nyssa’s De anima et resurrectione is well known. They aim at warranting the faith in resurrection and making it desirable. The prospect of this study is to show that they belong to the progress of the debate such as Gregory has composed it. Their quality changes while the author moves from the philosophical likelihood to the truth of the Scriptures. He opposes one secular image to a biblical one : at the beginning of the dialogue he refuses the comparison which reduces man to a bubble ; in the last part he chooses the solid composition (pukasmos) of the skènopègia (Ps. 117, 27). Other pictures are partly accepted, specially those which are borrowed from the sphere of tekhnè, whereas Macrina dismisses the Platonic myth of the soul’s chariot. Nevertheless, the end of the dialogue becomes pregnant with images derived from the Bible, when Macrina and his brother are discussing resurrection itself. Then by the means of the comparisons which they select, the biblical revelation and the facts of the phusis finally unite. Nature in some way supplants tekhnè, which has been honoured in the first half of the dialogue.

The thought of the ancient atomists about the activity of the soul in the body is an important chapter in the history of reflection on the soul in ancient philosophy. A review of testimonies and fragments attributed to Democritus of Abdera shows its singular conception of the soul as a complex network of transactions through which it exercises, inside compound bodies, its role in driving principle of beings animated. These texts show the tension and dynamism that characterize the activity of the soul and especially the close relationship between the activities of perceiving and thinking, essential activities to the economy of living beings, now for what is the management of biological life, now in terms of knowledge and human action. What we propose here is to examine how Democritus conceived the activity of the soul in its complexity and the various operations through which it accomplishes its function in the animation and the maintenance of life of animate beings, and particularly of human life. To do this, we will take as a basis the testimonies referred to the nature of the soul – especially the testimony of Aristotle and his disciples and commentators – and then examine the activities through which proceeds its role of motor principle, namely the sensations and the intellection. And, finally, we intend to demonstrate that these operations should not be considered, in the context of atomist thought, as two independent and opposed faculties or activities, but as two different levels or degree, contiguous and complementary, of one and the same activity.