Fulvio Accardi

Lo studio si focalizza sulla funzione della nozione di gloria nel pensiero di Blaise Pascal. La gloria presiede al funzionamento della celebre partizione ontologica degli ordini (carnale, psichico, spirituale), in quanto rappresenta il compimento o la perfezione di ciascuno. I primi due ordini hanno come fine ultimo la gloria mondana con le sue implicazioni psicologiche e sociali (la prodezza, le ricchezze, l’ingegno, ecc.) e ruotano attorno al concetto di desiderio di prestigio proprio e a quello corrispondente della stima altrui. l’ordine dello spirito ha invece come unico fine la carità. Il desiderio di trasfigurazione nella gloria d’elezione, donata da Dio, è il motore di un percorso di perfezione spirituale il cui punto di arrivo è quella gloria che coincide senza scarti con la carità e, infine, con la gloria divina. la gloria è quindi immediatamente associata alla grazia, in un rapporto analogico-figurale (la grazia è figura della gloria/carità, il fine ultimo) e in una consequenzialità di causa-effetto (la grazia dà la gloria, come premio). Su tale connessione si regge la speculazione filosofico-teologica dell’autore sulla gloria d’ordine spirituale, tra il recupero dell’agostinismo secondo l’ermeneutica gianseniana e l’attenzione tipicamente moderna all’interiorità e al mondo dell’io come modello di partecipazione mistico-ascetica al fenomeno divino.

The question concerning the mysticism in Pascal's thought is very complex. This paper aimed to explore this subject by analyzing some very important text, like the Mémorial, the Mystère de Jésus, the 4th letter to Mlle de Roannez and some other pensées. The specific goal is not to draw a doctrine, but rather to show the effort made by the philosopher of a correspondence between the development of a personal experience of the sacred and his whole theological thought and spiritual practices.

Pendant les persécutions, les religieuses de Port-Royal éprouvent leur capacité d’intervention au milieu des événements tragiques qui les touchent. Elles renversent leurs rapports avec la hiérarchie ecclésiastique et l’autorité monarchique, au moyen d’une constellation d’images complexes, qui articule leur conscience religieuse, leurs vies, leurs corps. Cette étude veut approfondir le point de vue spécifique des religieuses, dans la perspective des modèles de représentation du pouvoir. Il s’agit de nouvelles constructions théoriques du règne, qui transposent Port-Royal en tant qu’enclave du royaume de Dieu sur la terre.

A partir de la lecture d’un passage biblique très connu, cette étude souhaite en explorer quelques enjeux inédites. Tout d’abord, quelle est la relation entre la thématique du commencement et le célèbre épisode rapporté dans la Genèse ? C’est en effet une expérience fréquente et commune, que de remarquer la pluralité des discours. Une voie au départ de Babel : le commencement de tout discours, le partage d’une seule langue et même d’un seul langage, comment appartiendrait-il à une communauté, ou à son échec, à ses ruines ?

Reading a well-known biblical passage, this paper aims to explore some unexpected issues. Firstly, what is the connection between the matter of the beginning and the famous episode related by the Genesis? Surely, it’s a frequent and common experience, that of noticing the plurality of speeches. A road starting from Babel: that’s the beginning of all discourse, the sharing of one only language and even of one only speech. How shall it belong to a community, or to its collapse, its ruins?

La philosophie politique de J.-L. Nancy est un emblème des rapports entre les domaines religieux et non religieux d’aujourd’hui. Elle comporte la réinvention du concept même de politique comme quelque chose différente d’avec une transcription de l’élément théologique et politique. La philosophie politique de Nancy, rentre-t-elle dans le procès de sécularisation ? A-t-elle vraiment évité de ‘toucher’ l’objet religieux ? Nancy utilise des nouvelles herméneutiques afin d’interroger même la ‘présence’ en tant que ‘comparution’. Est-ce que la politique de la communauté risque d’être le paradoxe d’une nouvelle transcription du fait religieux ?


J.-L. Nancy’s political philosophy is a symbol of current relationships between religious and non-religious fields. It leads to re-inventing the same concept of politics like something different from a transcription of the theological and political element. Does Nancy’s political philosophy take part to the secularization process ? Does it really avoid to ‘touch’ the religious object ? Nancy uses new hermeneutics with the aim of questioning even the ‘presence’, as a ‘co-appearance’. Does community politics risk to be a new paradoxical transcription of the religious factum ?

--- The copy of this paper can be found at https://journals.openedition.org/cerri/1635 ---

Pascal’s Pensées represent a weapons of persuading unbelievers to win their indifference concerning the desire of God. Pascal creates and experiments new shapes of eloquence. The fragmentation of the ‘book’ is, malgré lui, a ‘machine’ by which the reader is captured in a reading experience, that of investing him/herself in this operative-performative act, which contributes to the construction and the apparition of the work as an inner achieved book. At the same time, the reader is forced to know and see his own status, in such a projective device, as well as the authors disappears under the statement: 'C’est mon affaire que ta conversion…' (L 919, S 751). This article wishes to analyse the dynamics of detour based on the logics of difference.

--- Sorry, no copy of this paper will be uploaded here ---

Integral text will be found in the link below:
http://www.giornalecritico.it/archivio/12-13/GCSI_12_Accardi.pdf

The use of pseudonym is frequently adopted in baroque oratory, but it works in a specific way in Blaise Pascal's writings. Pseudonyms represent both life states and existential conditions referring to political thought and spiritual experiences. The paths of imagery and rhetorics trace new accounts in Pascal's religion and anthopology as well as in epistemological processes of <truth> communication.

The use of quotations holds a relevant role in Gabriele Dannunzio’s rewritings of classical literature. This study sets out the entailments of a yet unidentified quote in his Fedra (1909). A late Greek source dystich is partly translated in the exergue and returns, as a riddle, in the key moment of the tragedy. Insofar it conveys the love-death dyad, it enhances a deeper comprehension of the play as a whole. The Cretan princess embodies the ‘inextricable enigma’, the solution of which leads herself and other characters to their fatal liberation of ‘deity’s yoke’.

Søren Kierkegaard’s thought on religion was influenced by the reading of Blaise Pascal’s works. Both authors criticed the secularization process in modern Christianism. Inner dimension is difended by an authentic agreement of faith, both in abstract reasoning and in the same existential solutions. The trial was to find a personal way to spiritual experience of God, focusing to the proper use of the exterior practice of religion and the sacraments.

"C’est le couronnement de cette doctrine. Vous y verrez donc que cette dispense de l’obligation fâcheuse d’aimer Dieu est le privilège de la loi évangélique par-dessus la judaïque. […] Mais on passe encore au-delà, et la licence qu’on a prise d’ébranler les règles les plus saintes de la conduite chrétienne se porte jusqu’au renversement entier de la loi de Dieu. On viole le grand commandement, qui comprend la loi et les Prophètes ; on attaque la piété dans le cœur ; on en ôte l’esprit qui donne la vie ; on dit que l’amour de Dieu n’est pas nécessaire au salut ; et on va même jusqu’à prétendre que cette dispense d’aimer Dieu est l’avantage que Jésus-Christ a apporté au monde. C’est le comble de l’impiété. Le prix du sang de Jésus-Christ sera de nous obtenir la dispense de l’aimer ! Avant l’Incarnation, on était obligé d’aimer Dieu ; mais depuis que Dieu a tant aimé le monde, qu’il lui a donné son Fils unique, le monde, racheté par lui, sera déchargé de l’aimer ! Etrange théologie de nos jours !" (Pascal, X Prov.)

«En tidligere Xstd., den nuværende, at Omvendtheden er naaet. Skulde jeg med een eneste Paralelle betegne Forskjellen, er alene den nok: den første Xsthed udsatte Daaben saa længe som muligt, den nuværende anbringer den saa tidligt som muligt. Og hvorfor? Fordi den første Xsthed betragtede Daaben hovedsagligt som For|pligtelse, Ansvar (Daaben gjorde ogsaa kun Fyldest for det Forbigangne, de senere Synder maatte forsones ved gode Gjerninger, »gode Gjerninger vare Supplement til Sacramenterne«, Cyprian) den nuværende betragter Daaben ene som Gevinst, Noget, som man jo før jo hellere maa see at faae Fingre i. Der er meget Sandt og Træffende i, hvad Pascal siger, at den senere Xstd. ved Hjælp af nogle Sacramenter fritager sig selv for det at elske Gud. Overalt viser det sig, at man egl. har franarret Gud Xstd, redigeret den om og sat den aldeles over i Mskets Interesse, istedetfor at den oprindelig er i Guds Interesse om end af Kjerlighed» (NB 28, 53 (1853), SKS 25, 255-256 = X5 A 144-145,  [n. tr.])

Shoah’s memory is strictly connected to the problematic status of representation of the extermination. Historical and philosophical reflections, theoretical analysis and implications in ethics and politics converge in this debate. J.-L. Nancy has compared inexactitude, incapacity or even impossibility of such a representation with a prohibition due to the ancient anti-idolatric statement of hebraic religion, and in connection to ontological relation between original and copies. A new perspective could indeed be found in the inner sense of collective memory suffering and evil.

Il convegno propone un’indagine sulla nozione di gloria nelle tradizioni cristiane. Gloria di Dio e gloria degli uomini sembrano opporsi. L’una è l’autentica manifestazione di eccellenza, maestà e bontà; l’altra il riflesso di riconoscimenti reciproci tra gli uomini, che si gloriano o sono glorificati più o meno autenticamente per i propri meriti. Se in ambito antropologico si pone la distinzione tra una vera gloria e una vana gloria, la prima come rinomanza per il proprio genio e virtù, la seconda come favore della fortuna, in ambito teologico cristiano c’è una diversificazione tra una gloria come splendore della potenza e sapienza divine e una gloria che si manifesta nell’abbassamento e risplende dalla croce.

'Ancient and modern mysticism referring to Christian tradition'
3-days Conference / 29 november - 2 december 2016 / Address: Aula Magna di Ca’ Dolfin, Dorsoduro 3825/e, 30123 Venezia, Italia

Inspired by the great 20th Century debate concerning mystical spirituality as well as contemporary religious history research, this conference will take into account the issues, problems and new perspectives on such a difficult and perhaps even elusive subject.
Using comparative methods focusing on the relationships between modern mystical techniques and Christian traditional thought and practices, the conference will explore the mystical phenomenon as a whole transversal spiritual trend covering all historical periods and regions, from Syro-Oriental traditions to modern 'moralistes', from Augustinian theology to Michel de Certeau's research, and also such authors as Nietzsche, Jaspers, Rilke, Weil, etc.
Within this extensive range of topics the conference aims to address the nexus of thinking and writing about  “Dieu se donne mieux en s’absentant” (Bremond).

Infos: Cristina Baicchi (baicchi@unive.it)
Organization: Isabella Adinolfi
url: static.unive.it/server/eventi/2461/mistica%20locandina%2011-2016-3.pdf

The research opened new historiographical perspectives on the Savoy states in the period 1650-1750. To achieve this goal, qualitative and quantitative research was carried out. The champions of the research were the Jansenist elites who spread from the Savoy dominions to the Italian peninsula. The interdependence of communications between individual intellectuals was analyzed as a tool for implementing specific forms of behavior towards other cultural and power elites. Furthermore, a mapping of the Savoy Jansenists and their circulations was carried out, on the basis of some unpublished sources found in the local archives. Finally, their socio-cultural networks were questioned using the recent digital tools offered by social network analysis.

Throughout the XVII century Port-Royal nuns face various challenges that compromise their overall existence. In 1650s and 1660s, the French Clergy together with the Crown try several times to subdue all their components, and therefore also Port-Royal nuns, to the signature of a Formulaire in ratification of the anti-Jansenist condemnation endorsed by the papacy, especially with Urban VIII, Alexander VII, Clement IX and Clement XI. Port-Royal community rejects to sign, and starts to elabo-rate a mythic narration that combines resistance and martyrology. Port-Royal nuns write many historical documents that are used by the community as an apologetic means also during the persecutions of the early XVIII century.
The aim of my doctoral research is the analysis the long and complex forma-tion process of the Port-Royal identity, starting from its origins and its development from 1609 onward, when the reform started, and in 1668-1669, during the so-called «Paix de l’Église», that marks the end of the first anti-jansenist persecutions and the acme of the adherence of the community to the Jansenism. The specific focus is the analysis of the community spiritual life through the analysis of the praying and edify-ing literature of the nuns, that until today has been put aside by historiography.
In order to highlight how the community took part to the development of French spirituality of the early XVII century, this work tries to rebuild the image of the spirituality experienced in the monastery, once its identity had been well established. 1. Including Salesian and Oratorian experiences, the reform of mère Angélique grows up during the direction of Saint-Cyran (1633-1643), that harshly stresses the spiritual conduct of the monastery as a whole. 2. Eucharistic adoration became more and more refined, growing as the liturgical centre of the new Istitut du Saint-Sacrement (1633-1647) and endly the model that conforms the communal enterprise of recollec-tion of memories on the reform, and since 1630s it combines the slow development of the self-representation, enhanced by internal traditions and loyalty to the monastic model. It is a remarkable witness of the construction of specific categories of Port-Royal spirituality, before those Jansenist experience in which these categories found their own doctrinal field. 3. Furthermore, regulation of the prayer through oral and written normative devices becomes an important characteristic of the community. 4. The last part of the work focuses on the construction of a unique and shared ‘speech’ that develops into a true ideology facing the menace or the real suffering of persecu-tions in the second half of the century.