More than a parallelism or a simple relation of influence, I emphasize a genuine spiritual filiation between the author of the Ethics and Vauvenargues, the young French moralist of the eighteenth century, by following trains of thought in both thinkers from the common principle of conatus to their theory of glory. By isolating (in their mutual notion of time) a shared inspiration which has its roots in ancient philosophy, and particularly in Stoicism, a stiII better understanding of this affinity emerges.

L’enjeu de cette analyse de la signification de l’expression sub quadam specie aeternitatis est double: projeter un éclairage nouveau, d’une part sur la nature des rapports entre raison et science intuitive, d’autre part sur l’articulation entre durée et éternité. Que les formules sub specie et sub quadam specie aeternitatis soient équivalentes ou non, il s’agit dans les deux cas de figure, de déterminer les raisons de la présence, puis de la disparition de l’adjectif quadam. Enfin on examine les occurrences de l’expression sub quadam specie aeternitatis et des deux autres variantes pour mieux cerner leur signification et leur portée.

The aim of this article is to show that the “attestation of evil and testimony of hope” are characterized by the genitive that accompanies them. This places them both, each no less than the other, in two different horizons: while the horizon of attestation is Heideggerian, the horizon of testimony is a legacy of Jean Nabert. Both of these horizons are present in the thought of Ricoeur, and characterize the entire spectrum of his work. However, we are not dealing here with a syncretism resulting from the co-presence of a hermeneutic source and of the philosophy of reflection. On the contrary, I attempt to show that the copresence of attestation and testimony results from the fact that Ricoeur never stopped “walking on two legs,” given what he writes in a conversation published in the Critique and Conviction, and that this presence is rooted in Ricoeur’s formation, which is at the same time philosophical, literary and biblical, as he never renounced either the former one, or the latter ones.