Jean-Luc Solère

Silence et philosophie

All knowledge is conceptual and systematic, but if being cannot enter a system, then contemplation remains on the edge of knowledge, attentive to what exceeds this knowledge. There is a never-ending dialogue between being as something non-deductible and reason as a power of systematisation, but this dialogue is thought itself, and silence is a moment in this exchange. At least, silence which is not the absolute negation of being, its contrary, pure nothingness, but non-being as a relative negation of being, the other of being, opening within being the possibility of articulations and multiple relations.

La logique d'un texte médiéval

From the time that Peter the Lombard integrated considerations about the power of God into his attempt to provide a reasoned presentation of theology, this problem became an indispensable topic for discussion in medieval thought and also one of the most fruitful. By examining the possible limitations of or conditions for this power, thinkers came to inquire how to define the very concept of the possible. Aristotles concept, which was elaborated within the framework of a science of nature, was critically reexamined. William of Auxerre can be seen groping and making detours in the process of doing so. Parallel to the account of his thought on the topic, the article provides, from the formal point of view, an analysis of the sequence and titles of the questions he raises, which leads one, on the one hand, to emphasize the continuity of the scholastic corpus in th 12th and 13th centuries, and, on the other, to propose a method for reading these frequently misleading texts.