Volume 88, Issue 3, July-September 2025
Enlightened religions
Dialogues with the Enlightenment
Charlotte Morel, Forewords
In religious terms, the Enlightenment was not just a time of deism: a plurality of religious forms were developed to inscribe faith within an enlightened framework of thought, while respecting the principle of revelation. This “Religious Enlightenment” (D. Sorkin) took different forms in different denominational and historical contexts, and this diversity is the focus of attention here. What effects can it produce on a philosophical level? We will also draw on the fact that dialogue with the Enlightenment also took place outside Europe, so as not to immediately conceive of the theme of “enlightened religions” as a European entre-soi.
Charlotte Morel, Enlightened religions: Questions to guide our inquiry
This issue reflects the plurality of religious forms developed—in various confessional and historical contexts—to anchor faith within the framework of thought shaped by the Enlightenment. Here, the aim is to shed light on how this plurality is structured. What relationship does the idea of an enlightened religion have with the notion of universality? If reason illuminates faith without being its direct source, what different models of this “lateral enlightenment” emerge according to the various functions of rationality—logical, theoretical, practical, and communicational?
Philippe Hamou, On the origins of “physicotheology”. From a defense of science to an apology for religion
This article explores the intellectual genealogy of “physicotheology,” a genre that flourished in eighteenth-century Europe, aimed at defending divine providence “against atheists and infidels,” through arguments drawn from the natural sciences. It shows that these arguments were first elaborated by experimental philosophers such as Boyle to assert the religious legitimacy of the study of the book of nature, at a time when scholarly activity had not yet secured its own legitimacy. It was only half a century later that the genre became an apology for religion, grounded in the newly acquired authority of Newtonian science.
Philippe Büttgen, Enlightenment as fetish
Reading Was ist Aufklärung? after Frankfurt and Foucault
The later Foucault made Was ist Aufklärung? his “fetish.” Whether intentionally or not, the term pointed to the specifically religious argument in Kant’s text. Was ist Aufklärung? is effectively an anti-treatise on pastoral theology. The fact that Foucault, the philosopher of “pastoral power,” overlooked this crucial aspect carries significant implications that go far beyond the reception of Kant. A fresh reading of Was ist Aufklärung? reveals a broader issue: our ability to truly embrace the Enlightenment.
Ze’ev Strauss, The Spirit of Contradiction: Rabbinic Wisdom, Ecclesiastes, and the Pursuit of Jewish Emancipation
The study examines the pedagogical and exegetical perspectives of Mendelssohn and Friedländer within Jewish Enlightenment thought, bringing their similar approaches to biblical and rabbinic sources into sharper focus. Taking Mendelssohn’s commentary on Ecclesiastes and its German translation by Friedländer as its point of departure, it shows how their works seek to promote a dialectical, universal-ethical consciousness in Jewish youth that aligns with Enlightenment ideals. It further explores Friedländer’s selective reading of rabbinic sources to advocate for Jewish emancipation, particularly with regard to women’s roles in tradition.
Hubert Bost, Protestantism and the Enlightenment. The crossing of the “Desert” or the development of Huguenot discourse on tolerance
During the “Desert” period (1685–1787), when Protestantism was banned in France, a number of pastors and men of letters acted as spokesmen for the demands and ideas of the underground churches. The situation of proscription and persecution in which they found themselves led them to reflect on the dialectical tension between the duty to obey the sovereign and the need to resist orders that were unjust or incompatible with their faith, to promote freedom of conscience and civil tolerance, thus contributing to the emergence of an enlightened Christianity.
Sarhan Dhouib, The Arab Enlightenment and the question of tolerance
Semantic transformations of a concept
This article explores the semantic transformations of the concept of tolerance within the Arab Enlightenment. In the first part, the author contextualizes how Elias Nasrallah Haddad sought to outline its contours in the introduction he wrote for his translation (1932) of Lessing’s play Nathan the Wise, by cross-referencing the use of two terms: tasâhul and tasâmuḥ. The second part examines the different philosophical meanings attached to the term tasâhul. The third part emphasizes the ethical dimension of the notion of tolerance (tasâmuḥ) as used within the context of Muslim theology.
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Arilès Remaki, Tabular origin of Leibnizian combinatorics. Projective and retrospective reading of the
Historia et origo calcul differentialis
In the unpublished manuscript Historia et origo calculi differentialis (written toward the end of his life, around 1714–1715), Leibniz clearly establishes the connection between combinatorics and differential calculus. The article aims to highlight how this short treatise, existing in two manuscript versions—a first version, which emphasizes theoretical foundations, and a second version, which responds more directly to accusations of plagiarism—demonstrates the importance of numerical tables and schemes at the origin of finite difference theory in Leibniz’s early Parisian research.
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Bulletins
Leibnizian Bulletin XI
Introductory remarks
Editing, reading, interpreting Leibniz: Paul Schrecker (1889-1963).