Charlotte Morel

Ce dossier reflète la pluralité de formes religieuses développées, dans différents contextes confessionnels et historiques, pour inscrire la foi dans le cadre de pensée initié par les Lumières. On cherchera ici à éclairer la façon dont cette pluralité se structure. Quel rapport l’idée d’une religion éclairée entretient-elle avec la dimension d’universalité? Si la raison éclaire la foi, sans en être directement la source, quels différents modèles émergent pour un tel éclairage « latéral », selon les différentes fonctions de la rationalité (logique, théorique, pratique, communicationnelle).

L’article examine les perspectives pédagogiques et exégétiques de Mendelssohn et de Friedländer au sein de la pensée juive des Lumières, en mettant en lumière la proximité de leurs approches des sources bibliques et rabbiniques. Prenant pour point de départ le commentaire de Mendelssohn sur l’ Ecclésiaste et sa traduction allemande par Friedländer, l’article montre comment leurs œuvres visent à promouvoir chez les jeunes juifs une conscience dialectique et éthique universelle qui s’aligne sur les idéaux des Lumières. Il explore en outre la lecture des sources rabbiniques choisies par Friedländer pour défendre l'émancipation juive, en particulier en ce qui concerne le rôle des femmes dans la tradition.

Les Lumières, sur le plan religieux, ne sont pas seulement l’époque du déisme : une pluralité de formes religieuses a été développée pour inscrire la foi dans le cadre de pensée éclairée tout en respectant le principe de la révélation. Ces « Lumières religieuses » (D. Sorkin) se déclinent diversement selon différents contextes confessionnels et historiques, et c’est cette diversité qui retient ici l’attention. Quels effets peut-elle produire sur le plan philosophique? Nous nous appuierons aussi sur le fait que le dialogue avec les Lumières a également eu lieu hors d’Europe, pour ne pas concevoir d’emblée le thème des « religions éclairées » comme un entre-soi européen.

Schelling demandait: 'Pourquoi y a-t-il du sens, non du non-sens au lieu du sens?' Dans cette question, la notion n'est pas un signe renvoyant à quelque chose, pas plus que lorsque l'on dit communément non pas d'un énoncé, mais d'une chose, d'un état de fait, qu'ils 'ont un sens' ou non. Comment aborder philosophiquement cette version du sens? Notre ouvrage part d'une conviction : la structure philosophique sous-tendant l'idée du sens s'ouvre avec Kant, dans la mesure où on peut le définir, pour commencer, comme le renvoi d'une réalité donnée à l'horizon d'une réalité (ou d'une idéalité) simplement postulée, que l'on peut certes nommer, mais pas directement connaître. Ainsi par exemple de Dieu. On cherche ainsi à cerner comment le sens est devenu une catégorie directrice de la philosophie, constamment au travail dans les variations de l'idéalisme, l'émergence de la phénoménologie, des philosophies de la vie, de l'existence, de la culture, de la psychanalyse."--Page 4 of cover.

No specific studies have so far reviewed the reception of Hermann Lotze’s (1817-1881) ideal-realism in France, in contrast to its reception in English-speaking countries. Here we address this gap in the literature by focusing on a particular aspect of the subject – how French philosophers considered Lotze’s spiritualism not only to address metaphysical but also religious issues. Another purpose of this article is to reconstruct the possible reasons as to why a paradoxical situation happened in France: on the one hand the significance of Lotze’s philosophy was truly acknowledged, on the other hand it was not really appropriated in a decisive manner.

The play on words in the title of this chapter directly points to the gender bias that can unconsciously affect the concept of ‘humanity’ in its effective scope – a bias heightened and made especially acute by the fact that Kant shapes this concept as an ideal of the Enlightenment. Indeed, there is evidence from far more than one text – or perhaps subtext – in Kant’s work that his normative approach towards what humans can and should be (i.e. the approach of a pragmatic anthropology in Kant’s sense of what humans ‘have to make of themselves’) fits women as adequately as it does men. In other words, although the concept of humanity should apply to every human being, its application turns out to be problematic when it comes to such a generic feature as gender. To explore this problem and other related ones, the chapter turns to the difference between the sexes in Kant that makes no difference in terms of duty. The precritical 'Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime' (1764) offers an answer: presenting us with a binary conception of virtue in terms of the difference between the sexes, this text appears to threaten Kant’s later view of humanity as the universal community of humans converging towards a unique ideal. But that duty is perhaps not Kant’s last word, given that ideals have to be realized by concrete individuals. The chapter provides evidence of how prevalent the issue of desire between the sexes is in Kant’s anthropology, thereby supporting the following thesis: this issue of desire is responsible for the highly contrasting ways Kant constructs male and female gender, and as such it is responsible for a theoretical clash between his construction of gender and his concept of humanity.

This article focuses on two philosophers with respect to the changing philosophical perception of Schiller: Rudolf Hermann Lotze and Friedrich Albert Lange. Lotze’s references to Schiller permit a deeper analysis of the philosophical status of the pair “idealism” and “realism”. This particularly yields insights into the relationship between nature and the ideal, but also between science and poetry. Lange can be said to be the only true Schillerian in philosophy. An atypical Kantian, he differs from Lotze on account of his implementation of a new form of idealism, insofar as the latter does not have recourse to a metaphysical dimension.

The decline of Naturphilosophie deeply polarized the philosophical and scientific debate. Naturalistic–materialistic positions gained powerful influence, but the latent role of the Kantian critical position also re-emerged in the context of an “ideal-realism”. I will first consider in detail two opposing treatments of Kant’s perspective. After Lotze had criticized his earlier materialistic position, advising him to read Kant, Czolbe finally addressed Kant, thereby progressing to a non-materialistic form of naturalism. However, whether to defend or to dismiss naturalism, neither philosopher addresses Kant as a transcendentalist thinker, and I go on to examine this common feature in their writings. This invites us to reconsider what exactly in Kant’s system conflicts with naturalism. Is transcendentalism too broad a requisite for that task? Within “ideal-realism”, the realist part actually implies a denial of transcendental idealism; still, it shows how a realism which refuses to be naturalism could well learn from Kant.

The materialism controversy, which tore the middle 19th century intellectual German society apart, involved scientists, theologians, philosophers, teachers, and even more. Hermann Lotze, who at first was not willing to engage in this dispute, was soon appealed to as an arbiter based upon his previous epistemological writings concerning life sciences, psychology and natural science in general. Since he appeared to defend both a mechanistic point of view in natural science and spiritualism in metaphysics, representatives of both these extreme positions thought he could help backing up their own views during the controversy. Yet, as Lotze himself described it, the controversy was for his times, generally speaking, only “useless torture”. This paper aims at showing that Lotze’s specific role in the controversy corresponds to what we will assume to be a clear theoretical need of the time: i.e., a critical assessment of how to connect natural science with metaphysics.