Religions, Spiritualities All books
Dominique Schnapper, Paul Saloma, Perrine Simon-Nahum
Thinking about anti-Semitism A Symposium on Anti-Semitism
Commentary from the latest reports on anti-Semitism in France, in order to go well beyond journalistic and political discourse. The current character of the issue, which is examined here with the resources of both history and philosophy. The scope of the analyses proposed by some of the most respected specialists on the issue.
Rita Hermon-Belot
The Sources of the Secular Idea Religious Pluralism and French Secularism
Laïcité: a long history of confrontation
Olivier Artus, Sophie Ramond
Contemporary Challenges and the Hebrew Bible An Ethics of Good and Evil
A text that combines history, biblical science, philosophy and ethics, for an original reflection on society’s current challenges in terms of justice, ecology and human dignity.
The Dalaï-lama, Thubten Chödrön
Buddhism One Teacher, Many Traditions
The diverse expressions of the Buddha's teachings
Bernard Lewis
Faith and Power Religion and Politics in the Middle East
One of the greatest experts on the Middle East revisits the great question of Islam and its clash with the West
Alain Boureau
Satan, the Heretic History of demonology in Medieval Europe, 1260-1350
Alain Boureau is one of the most original French medievalists. In his earlier, best-selling book on the droit du seigneur, he showed that such a custom had never actually existed. The present work is not about Satan and Satanism, but about the birth of demonology, i.e. about the demons that inhabit Satan's Court - a fascinating topic for a medievalist. Before the end of the thirteenth century, theology had shown little interest in demons, according to Boureau. But Saint Thomas Aquinas' Treatise on Evil, written in 1272, changed all this. Boureau tries to find an explanation. He is not concerned with why people believe in demons - he has not written a social history of demonology. Instead, he sets out to understand why theologians became interested in the subject - for this is a history of theological ideas about demons. The author summarises his explanation as follows: I propose that the date of the invention of demonology be moved forward by more than a century, not because a new doctrine was established and enforced then, as was the case in the fifteenth century, but because of the considerable procedural changes that assimilated witchcraft and invocations of the devil with the crime of heresy, which in turn led to new legal developments and more revelations. In addition, the injection of doctrinal content into the ancient theme of the devil's pact explained demoniac activity in the world. The issue that lies at the heart of these discussions about a pact with the devil, evil and evidence is obviously the emergence of our legal system. Alain Boureau is a director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.