Paris Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi

Department Member, Department of Philosophy and Sociology

About

After having taught six years at Paris-Sorbonne University, I moved in September 2010 to the United Arab Emirates, to take care of the (small but fine) Department of Philosophy and Sociology at Paris-Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi. Teaching philosophy in a country without any institutional history in that subject and among students that often do not share any common values is an exciting task. It gives also to my work a more comparative bias.

I’m currently working on theories of belief between late Antiquity down to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. I’m trying to sketch a sort of medieval "grammar of assent" which would allow to read philosophically the huge literature produced about faith in the confessional contexts of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

I devoted most of my previous research to the conceptual and historical development of Jesuit metaphysics. My (still unpublished) 2003 PhD is an analysis of how Spanish Jesuit theology thought about the limits of possibility and impossibility, and how modal concepts were articulated in discussions of divine knowledge and power. I also tried to show that Jesuit metaphysics in no way limits itself to the always-quoted Francisco Suárez, but that we should look at it as a huge tradition with many currents and influences. An important part of my research was dedicated to the study and edition of seventeenth and even eighteenth century manuscripts, since entire traditions were never really published. After leaving Spain and settling to France, I started working on the French scholastic manuscripts of the 1500-1800 period, and hope one day to publish a comprehensive catalogue of them.

I’m also a translator, mainly of German essays. I translated into French works by Eric Voegelin, Niklas Luhmann, Vittorio Hösle, Kurt Flasch and more recently Jan Assmann.

RECENT TALKS AND CONFERENCES

Al Ain (UAE), United Arab Emirates University, Maqam Campus, 1st June 2011: "Medieval Doctrines of Faith in a Comparative Perspective"

Padua (Italy), International conference "Fides-Virtus", organized by the IGTM and the University of Padua, 6-9 July 2011 : "When did Faith cease to be a Virtue?"

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