H.-I. Marrou's Traité de la musique selon l'esprit de Saint Augustin is a useful document about the relationship between 1930s French music and non-conformist culture. His stress on the moral aim of music recalls the claim for a spiritual revolution that informs the spirit of 1930 and Jeune France's manifesto: the reading of Marrou's Traité helps us defining the humanistic poetics of music of the '30s, and the historical context mutually explains and justify most of Marrou's thought (...) .His thought is in fact developed in the wake of Christian Platonism revised by Augustine, subject to a series of small changes in sight of a better and more relevant moral theology. The philosophical outcome isn't very convincing, both for many appeals to the authority principle, and for frequent contradictions clearly emerging in his arguments. The tension between the fidelity to the doctrine, the attempts to re-read the music from an apologetic viewpoint and the aim to suggest a practical philosophy produces a methodological setback so striking that it represents one of the greater limits of the Treaty.Marrou's remarks about the relationship between Christianity and ancient philosophy are certainly as interesting as questionable from the point of view of the history of philosophy. He goes so far to correct Augustine himself, especially as regards the Pythagorean influence on his thought, to stress instead a religious component of the music that doesn't seem so evident in the Augustinian analysis.Quest'ultimo viene infatti sviluppato sulla scia del platonismo cristiano mediato da Agostino, che viene sottoposto a una serie di piccoli mutamenti in funzione di una migliore e più attuale teologia morale. L'esito filosofico non è tuttavia dei più convincenti, vuoi per i numerosi appelli al principio d'autorità, vuoi per le frequenti contraddizioni argomentative che emergono dal testo in modo evidente. La tensione tra la fedeltà alla dottrina, il tentativo di rilettura della musica in chiave apologetica e la proposta di una filosofia pratica producono così un vistoso scacco metodologico che rappresenta uno dei limiti maggiori del Trattato.Le considerazioni di Marrou sul rapporto tra cristianesimo e filosofia antica sono certamente molto interessanti ma assai discutibili da un punto di vista storico-filosofico. L’autore si spinge fino a correggere Agostino stesso, soprattutto per quanto riguarda la componente pitagorica della sua riflessione, per sottolineare invece una componente religiosa della musica che non sembra così evidente nella riflessione agostiniana.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.2 (2002) 256-257 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Die Struktur des menschlichen Geistes nach Augustinus: Selbstreflexion und Erkenntnis Gottes in "De Trinitate" Johannes Brachtendorf. Die Struktur des menschlichen Geistes nach Augustinus: Selbstreflexion und Erkenntnis Gottes in "De Trinitate." Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2000. Pp. viii + 335. Cloth, DM 128,00. "The Trinity" is arguably Augustine's (philosophically) most demanding work. Yet it is (...) precisely its philosophical quality that is nowadays sometimes called in question for its apparent lack of argumentative coherence. H. I. Marrou has even expressed the view that this may have been intended, as the text is designed as an exercitatioanimi, a spiritual-mental exercise; i.e., the argumentative gaps are deliberately left open to be filled in by whoever undergoes the exercise. This would mean that "The Trinity" lacks any philosophical or theological position or doctrine in particular, and that it must not be judged by the standards of philosophical discourse, even those of Augustine's own day and age. Brachtendorf sets out with a revision of that view. Augustine, he argues, does indeed formulate a particular position. The impression that there may be gaps in his arguments could well stem from a misunderstanding of some of them. Augustine, Brachtendorf reports in his first chapter (1), developed his teaching of the triune God in close contact with the philosophy of Plotinus. However, he distanced himself from Plotinus by analyzing the process of cognition not by taking as an example the divine nous, but the menshumana. Apart from that he developed an ontology of the Trinity (2) and only then analyzed the human mind in analogy to it (3-4). He also looked into the relationship of mind and language ("word") (5) and developed further some aspects of this relationship such as the trinitarian structure of the human mind (6), the relationship of knowledge and wisdom (7), the human mind as the image of God (8), the self-reflection of the human mind (9), language as an expression of that self-reflection in the image of God (10), and the concept of the "inner word" (11).Brachtendorf concludes with an appeal not to read into Augustine's link of notitia and amor that he was interested in the analysis of self-knowledge merely for ethical reasons. Amor, he argues, expressly includes operations of the intellect. Augustine's interest was therefore genuinely theoretical and intellectualist. Amor, for Augustine, was a force that creates knowledge as such, no matter what the content. Its impact is practical and theoretical. Referring to the works of Charles Taylor, Martin Heidegger, Max Scheler, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Hannah Arendt, Brachtendorf demonstrates how influential Augustine was with this aspect of his thought in the development of "Subjekt"-centered philosophies in the twentieth century. Yet, as influential as this approach may have been in this particular field, arguing, as it did, for the ontological character of human subjectivity (i.e., that the human mind was naturally structured in a trinitarian way, but had to make its natural intelligence explicit in thought through the learning of language) it did not revolutionize [End Page 256] the understanding of language. In consequence it did not impress the philosophers of the linguistic turn, and that is probably why today the argument of "The Trinity" is so often found wanting.Pointing back to the source Brachtendorf's study is a welcome contribution to the subject and a useful guide for all who now--hopefully, and encouraged by this work--set out for themselves to have a (closer) look at the original. Josef Lössl Catholic University Leuven... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Elizabeth Hanson-Smith AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS: THE CONCRETE REFERENT The chief problem facing critics who would consider the Confessions as both a literary work and a philosophical treatise remains the connection between the first nine books, the autobiography, and the last four, the metaphysical speculations on time, eternity, epistemology, and theology. A persistent desire to justify the work as an aesthetic whole has led critics on a search for thematic and (...) structural unity; they have been more successful in the former endeavor than in the latter. The interpretation of the work's plot as a peregrinatio animae, a pilgrimage of the soul, is now generally accepted as definitive; but attempts to find structural unity within that broad outline have not progressed beyond Marrou's characterization of the work as a "musical composition."1 His analogy to music has not been anchored to any concrete structural features of the Confessions and does not illuminate the connections between its content and its form. I shall attempt to prove that a unified structural model for the development of the soul in the Confessions does indeed exist and is outlined in Augustine's earlier discursive work, the De quantitate animae.2 The seven degrees or steps (gradus) of the soul's ascent to God, as sketched in the De quantitate, are deliberately fleshed out and translated into a mimetic, narrative version in the Confessions. Placing the two works side by side gives us a unique opportunity to examine a typically medieval literary form, the educative journey, in its relationship to its philosophical premises. Such a study reveals the inner formal unity of the literary work and, further, provides us with significant evidence for a re-examination of Augustine's Neo-Platonism, his supposed dualism, and his influence on later works, both literary and philosophical. In the Confessions we see one of the earliest Christian blendings of several models: first, the educative journey, the archetypal pattern familiar from the Odyssey, the Aeneid, and even The Golden Ass of Apuleius. Augustine's version, like later medieval cosmologies, also 176 Elizabeth Hanson-Smith1 77 includes a vision of the cosmic order and its relationship to human order, elements of significance in pagan philosophical works such as the Timaeus and the Dream of Scipio. But Augustine's journey also depends upon the Judeo-Christian conception of history as a series of figurae or types of the Messiah: the protagonist of the Christian educative journey joins thefigurae of the Biblical past. Christ's incarnation as Mansoul and his life on earth are the pattern of universal history from Fall to Apocalypse; Christ's life becomes a figurative pattern for the actions of Everyman.3 The Confessions is one of the earliest Christian works to apply this pattern in a narrative context. Augustine was also preoccupied with the Hexaemeron, the six days of creation and the seventh of rest. He views the exegesis of Genesis as an explanation of all subsequent life; the Ages of Man recapitulate the days of creation, as do the sacraments and the seven steps in the ascent of the soul. Thus, to the figurative pattern of Christ's "pilgrimage" from creating Logos to Incarnate God and finally to judge at the Second Coming, Augustine applies the schematic seven-fold ascent found in the De quantitate: the soul passes through the ascending steps of animation, sense, art, religion, tranquillity, initiation, and contemplation—each of which is figured by or patterned on a stage in Christ's life, as represented by the sacraments, and each of which, further, reflects a segment of universal history. The seven steps are not simply the movement of the individual soul, but the progress of Mansoul on its journey to Apocalypse. The stylistic differences between the two works—one an exposition written as Socratic dialogue, the other a metaphorical personal narrative —will no doubt give rise to differing interpretations; but one may, I think, object to certain details I suggest while still agreeing that the De quantitate provides the structuring model. Let me first define the major areas of difference between the two works. In the De quantitate, each of the levels or steps of the soul takes on a discrete, separate... (shrink)

Though considerably indebted to Raymond Aron, this book is primarily a distinguished historian's personal statement, on a fairly elementary level, of the meaning of the historian's vocation. Marrou's main principle is that "history and the historian are inseparable," that historical knowledge, like other kinds of knowledge, results from an interaction of subject and object. "Facts" have no meaning apart from the concepts that order them. The positivist position that historical knowledge can and should be "purely objective" produces only an (...) extremely impoverished kind of history. But Marrou has no place for rampant subjectivism. The historian must open himself to the real quiddity of the documents he studies, instead of trying to make them fit his theories; getting to know a document, like getting to know a person, is an existential encounter. Marrou writes repetitiously at times, and the translation is often stiff, but the book is a stimulating introduction.—W. B. K. (shrink)

The philosophy of history is still a comparative stranger in the family of the philosophical disciplines. It is perhaps because its status has not yet been settled satisfactorily that it continues to attract some of the best contemporary minds. Toynbee, Maritain, Marrou, Pieper, Collingwood, Tillich, C. S. Lewis and others—following in the steps of Vico, Herder and Hegel—make a distinguished company which Fr. D’Arcy joins with his present book.

The philosophy of history is still a comparative stranger in the family of the philosophical disciplines. It is perhaps because its status has not yet been settled satisfactorily that it continues to attract some of the best contemporary minds. Toynbee, Maritain, Marrou, Pieper, Collingwood, Tillich, C. S. Lewis and others—following in the steps of Vico, Herder and Hegel—make a distinguished company which Fr. D’Arcy joins with his present book.

This is the 1965 Saint Augustine Lecture, the seventh in the annual series. It would have been difficult to find someone more knowledgeable on Augustine's thought than M. Marrou, and the result is something of a synoptic view of Augustine's thought through the unifying perspective of his theology of embodiment. The whole of this very short book is executed with such scholarly ease and impressiveness that Marrou's conclusion after only twenty nine pages that Augustine is the precursor of (...) modern personalism seems in need of no more justification.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This article is an edited transcript of the roundtable entitled “What is Philo-Performance?” that took place in Paris on 28 June 2014, within the framework of the “Theatre, Performance, Philosophy International Conference: Crossings and Transfers in Anglo-American Thought”. The conference was organized by Julien Alliot, Flore Garcin-Marrou, Liza Kharoubi and Anna Street from the LAPS, a French research group on performance philosophy.

The Fonds Guattari contain a number of unpublished manuscripts catalogued under the title of ‘écrits littéraires’ which include a set of theatrical dialogues. Noting the scope of these titles, as well as their likely models, Guattari's theatrical practices are introduced with reference to the only play that was actually staged, Socrates, courtesy of Enzo Cormann at the Théâtre Ouvert, in Paris, in 1988.

Nous nous proposons dans le présent article de revenir sur l'enjeu de Über Gewissheit : doit-on lire cet ensemble de notes comme l'ultime réponse de Wittgenstein à l'idéalisme sceptique ou comme la réélaboration de nos catégories de connaissance (croire, savoir, être certain) ? La réponse à cette question passe tout d'abord par la prise en compte du dialogue avec Moore et en particulier par une réévaluation de sa défense du sens commun et de sa preuve du monde extérieur tout aussi (...) célèbre que controversée. Nous voudrions souligner les limites d'une interprétation purement dogmatique de ces textes en mettant en évidence le caractère problématique du dogmatisme mooréen, avant de revenir sur les deux critiques que Malcolm puis Wittgenstein en ont proposées. Un bref rappel de la critique de Malcolm nous permettra ensuite de saisir la singularité de la démarche de Wittgenstein qui consiste par l'analyse grammaticale des propositions « intéressantes » de Moore à renvoyer dos à dos les prétentions au savoir de Moore et les doutes sceptiques. (shrink)

La marque que la pensée de Kierkegaard a laissé sur Wittgenstein a le plus souvent été envisagée de manière binaire : soit comme une contribution à la réflexion sur la singularité de la croyance religieuse, soit comme la mise en évidence de la parenté des modes d’écriture des deux auteurs. Nous montrons dans cette contribution en nous appuyant sur des extraits du Nachlass de Wittgenstein qui ont été rarement mobilisés le soubassement de ces deux versants qui tient selon nous à (...) l’usage du modèle scénique pour figurer l’intériorité. (shrink)

Cet article soutient que Ben. 1, 3-4, une célèbre polémique à l’encontre de l’étymologie chrysippéenne, ne devrait pas être lue comme un rejet « en bloc » d’une étymologie philosophique, mais seulement comme un ensemble de conditions restrictives imposées à celle-ci. Cette interprétation nous permet de considérer les nombreuses étymologies du corpus sénéquien, dont une douzaine sont ici réunies et commentées, comme des réflexions philosophiquement intéressantes sur le langage. L’article se concentre sur la manière dont Sénèque utilise l’étymologie comme une (...) stratégie de traduction (baptisée ancrage étymologique) ayant pour but de rendre acceptables pour le lecteur romain, les aspects les plus contre intuitifs et paradoxaux de la philosophie stoïcienne, domestiquant ainsi la doctrine du Portique. Cette stratégie est comparée à l’approche très semblable de Cicéron dans Tusc. 3, 7-11. (shrink)