The present article is an attempt at a closer reading of Ivan Ilyin’s relationship to fascism. This is explored primarily through a selection of articles in which Ilyin wrote in positive terms of Italian fascism, and in one case also of German National Socialism. The author of this article first presents a summary of relevant historical and biographical information, revealing that although Ilyin praised fascism in his articles, his personal experience of German Nazism was negative. This is followed by an (...) examination of Ilyin’s own concept of fascism, concluding that it in fact derived from his understanding of the Russian White Movement. The examination focuses on three selected aspects, key notions for both fascism and Ilyin’s philosophy: the principle of the leader, the idea of the elite and the notion of chivalry, and nationalism and anti-Semitism. This analysis demonstrates that Ilyin drew upon idealized versions of these concepts, as integral parts of his projected utopian vision of a future Russia. (shrink)

The article discusses Masaryk’s work The Spirit of Russia. In terms of methodology, The Spirit of Russia is based in Positivism, in a faith in progress and a forward-looking orientation of European development. At the same time, however, it also displays certain axiological positions that condemn conservative, monarchist or religious ideas present in Russian thought. Masaryk is critical of Russian spirituality and traditional elements of Orthodox devotion. The Orthodox faith in his view represents an antipode to progress, being non-European in (...) character. Russia itself is presented as split internally into a progressive, European tendency, and a stagnant traditionalist segment. Masaryk’s view of Russia bears some traits of Orientalism, in particular the notion of the superiority of the European West over traditionalist Russia and the negative aspects of its traditional cultural and religious forms. He also anticipates the notion of internal colonialism within Russia itself. (shrink)

Publikace představuje první a jediný zcela dokončený díl pamětí českého Američana, orientalisty a polyglota Aloise Richarda Nykla (1885–1958). Velmi čtivou formou se v nich věnuje svému mládí v Rakousku-Uhersku a pozdější pouti světem, např. ve Švýcarsku, Německu, USA, Mexiku, Egyptě a Japonsku. Po svém návratu do USA v roce 1916 nastoupil dráhu univerzitního profesora a později se stal světově proslulým specialistou na andaluské a srovnávací literatury. V pamětech, napsaných na počátku třicátých let minulého století, se snaží zhodnotit jak svůj život (...) i způsob, kterým nabyl své pozoruhodné jazykové znalosti přímým i teoretickým studiem po celém světě. Edice je doplněna úvodními studiemi, v nichž editor Josef Ženka zpracoval životní osudy autora. Text bohatě ilustrují unikátní fotografické a archivní materiály pocházející z pozůstalosti A. R. Nykla. (shrink)

Les textes de Benny Lévy restent méconnus, car l'image que l'on a de lui fait obstacle à leur lecture. Ecartant cette image, nous nous en tiendrons à sa manière si singulière de lire les textes, quels qu'ils fussent, de leur donner vie. Qu'un texte puisse, grâce à la voix qui le porte et le déplie, grâce au travail, acharné et patient, de la lecture qui en explore les articulations les plus manifestes mais aussi les plus secrètes, parler à chacun en (...) propre, l'atteindre en son point sensible : telle est la vie dont nous parlons, plus forte que la mort qui menace tous les textes. Car la voix risque de disparaître dans l'épaisseur même des lettres ; les textes réifiés de perdre leur pouvoir de dire. Re-susciter la voix au coeur de la lettre, faire retentir son grain, son souffle, son amplitude et ses nuances : telle doit être l'ambition d'une véritable lecture. Pour Benny Lévy, la pensée fut indissociable d'un tel travail de lecture, l'amenant à reprendre à neuf les textes, à en renouveler la compréhension. Cette puissance de lecture produisit dans son geste de pensée cinq exigences qui guideront notre réflexion : réformer la pensée, sortir du politique, penser l'universel autrement, faire retour au Nom, produire, enfin, des événements de lecture. (shrink)

Introduction. Exister, c'est être seul -- 1. Conformisme et aristocratisme -- 2. Penser et lire -- 3. Communauté et économie -- 4. De la politique à l'enseignement -- 5. Des degrés de communauté -- 6. L'épreuve du collectif -- 7. Du "je" au "nous" -- 8. Une communauté à deux? -- 9. Le collectif en conflit -- 10. Ennemis et adversaires -- Conclusion. Quelques-uns.

This paper presents the results of qualitative research on academic inbreeding in Czech higher education, the first of its kind. Its focus is on exploring the significance of academic inbreeding, its types, practices, and possible solutions. The research for this paper was done among academic staff at eight institutions of higher education in the Czech Republic. It was conceptually informed by ideas about different types of inbred employees (immobile, mobile, silver-corded, and adherent) and available policy tools. The results show that (...) academic inbreeding has long flown under the radar as an issue. Its impact is perceived ambivalently, as both positive and negative, by academics and experts alike. Generally, its avoidance has not been taken into account in staff recruitment, which has allowed it to become widespread among Czech higher education institutions. The policy tools for combatting academic inbreeding include nodality (open recruitment), reorganization of recruitment procedures, capacity-building (including stays abroad), and hortatory proclamations (paying attention to the issue). Overall, the evidence gathered in the course of research suggests that some progress has been made in limiting academic inbreeding at some workplaces, and that what we would call purely immobile inbred employees are giving way to mobile and “silver-corded” inbred academic staff. Finally, Czech higher education institutions register few cases of pseudo-inbreeding, combining work at the same institution where a PhD was taken with an academically relevant position in a state research institute or the Academy of Sciences. (shrink)

B. Lévy procède à la lecture de "Visage continu" de Levinas et met en lumière l'arrière-fond d'intuitions préphilosophiques qui est nécessaire au déploiement de sa philosophie. La philosophie implique autre chose qu'elle-même, c'est là que réside toute la tension de la pensée lévinassienne.

Hanus, Gilles (2021)Relief de la mémoire: Théorie des trous de mémoireMontreal: Liber, 216 p.ISBN 978-2-89578-752-5.

Cet ouvrage est le fruit d’une rencontre scientifique organisée en mai 2016 sur le sauvetage des enfants et adultes juifs pendant l’Occupation. Issue d’un partenariat entre l’association « Moissac, ville de Justes oubliée » et le Réseau Mémorha, son originalité tient en une focale axée sur trois études de cas : le Chambon-sur-Lignon, Dieulefit et Moissac. Cet éclairage permet d’appréhender de manière conjointe trois petites villes synonymes de survie des Juifs, mais aux caractéristiques très...

Studie recenzuje díla: Richard DAWKINS, Boží blud: Přináší náboženství útěchu, nebo bolest? Praha: Academia 2009, 480 s. ; HANUŠ, J. - VYBÍRAL, J., Dawkins pod mikroskopem: Diskuse nad knihou Richarda Dawkinse Boží blud. Brno: Centrum pro studium demokracie a kultury 2010. Cílem textu je poukázat na debatu vyvolanou českým vydáním Dawkinsova díla Boží blud, jejímž nejdůkladnějším příspěvkem je vydání knihy Dawkins pod mikroskopem.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toward a Political Economy of the Libro De AlexandreSimone Pinet (bio)The carefully composed and craftily pronounced stanzas of the thirteenth-century Libro de Alexandre, if mostly a (free) translation of Gautier de Châtillon’s Alexandreis, provide readers with glimpses of northern Iberia in descriptions and comparisons, but especially through curious formulations and eloquent rewritings.1 These incite the reader to reflect upon the emergence of the vernacular regime of literary composition by (...) clerics that developed in the thirteenth century, a corpus known to us as the mester de clerecía. In this corpus, the use of the vernacular, in particular, brings with it an unproblematized sense of transparency of the context in which the works of mester de clerecía were produced, a genre of which the Libro de Alexandre is a key poetic point of origin. Next to an emphasis on a Latinate syntax and recitation techniques that underline the corpus’s clerical production, the irruption of quotidian phrases, vocabulary, figures of medievalization, and especially of Iberization, make these texts a privileged site to study the articulation of the varied phenomena that from economics to the grammatical, from Aristotle to technology, come to revolutionize medieval culture from the twelfth century onward. Of the many peculiar uses of the vernacular in the Libro de Alexandre, references that connote a sense of worthlessness through the repeated structure “not worth an X, ” especially those that express the comparison with minted coinage of little value: dinero, meaja, pepión, or sueldo, as in “not worth a penny,”2 will serve here as a point of entry. These hyperbolic [End Page 44] expressions, common to Romance languages, underline not only the moral and economic ambivalence of terms such as preçio, valor, honor, pagar(se), dar crédito, and so forth, but also the incorporation of a monetary economy within this ambivalence. These types of expressions, moreover, produce a linguistic marker for such ambiguity, as Louis F. Sas noted when he underlined the “affect” which marks, at the level of speech, the reference to abstract terms such as infinity, nothing, and zero in these types of constructions [469, 471].3Sas notes that the vast majority of the occurrences of these phrases in the Libro de Alexandre happen “in combination with the word valer, with its synonyms, or with dar por, that is, in contexts of exchange” [475]. Many years before Sas exhaustively documented these expressions, Alois Richard Nykl had interpreted their presence as related to barter and a supposed clerical contact with local markets, which to some extent could explain their frequent use in the poem, and he especially mentioned the use of fruits and vegetables in these expressions. Nykl also suggested these were “rustic” similes, favored by men of the clergy such as Berceo, Juan Ruiz, and the authors of the Alexandre and the Fernán González, showing, in his opinion, these men’s contact with a certain world in which fruits and vegetables could serve as payment for the church or diezmo, bringing in through this curious interpretation not only a historical economic context but also its [End Page 45] qualification as something “rustic” or at least foreign to the cleric [311].4In 1929, a couple of years after Nykl’s article appeared, George Irving Dale would correct his affirmations, noting that the expressions called “rustic” by Nykl belonged to a well-studied figure called figurative negation. Dale remarked that figurative negation appeared already in the Poema de mio Cid, and he directed the reader to the bibliography offered by Menéndez Pidal in his edition of the Poema under the title of “Refuerzo de la Negación” [Cantar de Mio Cid 1: 376 and glossary]. In his article, Dale wrote in passing that the type of adjectives used with these expressions “increases the insignificance or lack of value” [324]. Later, agreeing with Dale, Sas wrote that the emphasis added to these phrases through the use of adjectives such as vile or rotten did not point to any medieval particular practice beyond that of a peculiar affect, which has been interpreted in terms of “simplicity.” In the next pages I want to suggest some lines of... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toward a Political Economy of the Libro De AlexandreSimone Pinet (bio)The carefully composed and craftily pronounced stanzas of the thirteenth-century Libro de Alexandre, if mostly a (free) translation of Gautier de Châtillon’s Alexandreis, provide readers with glimpses of northern Iberia in descriptions and comparisons, but especially through curious formulations and eloquent rewritings.1 These incite the reader to reflect upon the emergence of the vernacular regime of literary composition by (...) clerics that developed in the thirteenth century, a corpus known to us as the mester de clerecía. In this corpus, the use of the vernacular, in particular, brings with it an unproblematized sense of transparency of the context in which the works of mester de clerecía were produced, a genre of which the Libro de Alexandre is a key poetic point of origin. Next to an emphasis on a Latinate syntax and recitation techniques that underline the corpus’s clerical production, the irruption of quotidian phrases, vocabulary, figures of medievalization, and especially of Iberization, make these texts a privileged site to study the articulation of the varied phenomena that from economics to the grammatical, from Aristotle to technology, come to revolutionize medieval culture from the twelfth century onward. Of the many peculiar uses of the vernacular in the Libro de Alexandre, references that connote a sense of worthlessness through the repeated structure “not worth an X, ” especially those that express the comparison with minted coinage of little value: dinero, meaja, pepión, or sueldo, as in “not worth a penny,”2 will serve here as a point of entry. These hyperbolic [End Page 44] expressions, common to Romance languages, underline not only the moral and economic ambivalence of terms such as preçio, valor, honor, pagar(se), dar crédito, and so forth, but also the incorporation of a monetary economy within this ambivalence. These types of expressions, moreover, produce a linguistic marker for such ambiguity, as Louis F. Sas noted when he underlined the “affect” which marks, at the level of speech, the reference to abstract terms such as infinity, nothing, and zero in these types of constructions [469, 471].3Sas notes that the vast majority of the occurrences of these phrases in the Libro de Alexandre happen “in combination with the word valer, with its synonyms, or with dar por, that is, in contexts of exchange” [475]. Many years before Sas exhaustively documented these expressions, Alois Richard Nykl had interpreted their presence as related to barter and a supposed clerical contact with local markets, which to some extent could explain their frequent use in the poem, and he especially mentioned the use of fruits and vegetables in these expressions. Nykl also suggested these were “rustic” similes, favored by men of the clergy such as Berceo, Juan Ruiz, and the authors of the Alexandre and the Fernán González, showing, in his opinion, these men’s contact with a certain world in which fruits and vegetables could serve as payment for the church or diezmo, bringing in through this curious interpretation not only a historical economic context but also its [End Page 45] qualification as something “rustic” or at least foreign to the cleric [311].4In 1929, a couple of years after Nykl’s article appeared, George Irving Dale would correct his affirmations, noting that the expressions called “rustic” by Nykl belonged to a well-studied figure called figurative negation. Dale remarked that figurative negation appeared already in the Poema de mio Cid, and he directed the reader to the bibliography offered by Menéndez Pidal in his edition of the Poema under the title of “Refuerzo de la Negación” [Cantar de Mio Cid 1: 376 and glossary]. In his article, Dale wrote in passing that the type of adjectives used with these expressions “increases the insignificance or lack of value” [324]. Later, agreeing with Dale, Sas wrote that the emphasis added to these phrases through the use of adjectives such as vile or rotten did not point to any medieval particular practice beyond that of a peculiar affect, which has been interpreted in terms of “simplicity.” In the next pages I want to suggest some lines of... (shrink)