Prelude: When Truth Encounters Us

The proposed text first appeared under the title Prélude. Quand la vérité nous donne rendez-vous as an introduction to Jean Greisch’s volume, Rendez-vous avec la vérité. However, the vortex of metaphors that ‘tell’ the ‘truth’ remains hardly reducible to a single ‘theory’ of ‘Truth’. Over the centuries, what-is-’true’ has been said in many different ways, starting with the unsolvable opposition between the truth-fidelity of the Jewish tradition and the truth-disclosure/manifestation of classical Greek thought; passing through the truth-regulating, namely the truth-institution of Roman Latin culture, which ‘contractualises’ what is true; reaching up to the truths of the medieval Anglo-Saxon world (truth-correspondence, truth-coherence, truth-semantics, truth-consent, truth-interpretation). However, that the truth is not objectified does not mean that it is not an existential issue. On the contrary, this seems to be the lesson one can draw from the encounter between Pilate and Jesus: “I am the Truth”. Nevertheless, it is possible to observe that some of the best pages from the history of philosophy are not those wondering about what the truth is, but rather those pages allowing their own authors and readers to be questioned by the – sometimes sudden – encounter with the disproportion of Truth. Therefore, not theorising but encountering the truth will be a fundamental question of philosophical research

Paul Ricœur: la sagesse de l’incertitude

Po II wojnie światowej Paul Ricoeur podjął sie nauczania filozofii w Collège Cévenol w wiosce Chambon-sur-Lignon, gdzie napisał swój doktorat poświęcony fenomenologicznej analizie woli. Przejęte od Milana Kundery paradoksalne pojęcie „mądrości niepewności”, zastosowane do dzieła Ricoeura jako całości naświetla specyfikę jego wkładu w rozwój hermeneutyki filozoficznej XX wieku

Le « grand jeu de la vie » et ses enjeux : « religion » et « métaphysique »

La métaphore kantienne du « grand jeu de la vie », dont nous sommes tous partie prenante en tant que nous sommes citoyens du monde, obligés d’affronter les quatre questions fondamentales : « Que puis-je savoir ? Que dois-je faire ? Que m’est-il permis d’espérer ? » et : « Qu’est-ce que l’homme ? » qui, d’après Kant, récapitulent les grands intérêts de la raison humaine dans une optique cosmopolitique, cette métaphore nous offre un excellent fil conducteur pour analyser les rapports complexes entre religion et raison philosophique. Contrairement à ce que prétend la vulgate contemporaine, nous n’avons pas encore fini d’explorer la « fonction méta » en ses quatre dimensions essentielles de la « trans-ascendance », de la « trans-descendance », de la « trans-passibilité » et de la « trans-possibilité » qui, même si elles trouvent une expression différente dans le champ religieux et dans le champ de la réflexion philosophique, donnent infiniment à penser à la religion comme à la philosophie.Kant’s metaphor of the “big game of life”, to which all humans partake insofar as they are citizens of the world confronted with the four fundamental questions: “What can I know?, What ought I do?, What may I hope for?” and, last but not least: “What is man?”, which according to Kant summarize the major interests of Human reason in a cosmo-political perspective, offers an excellent thread for analyzing the complex relationships between Religion and Philosophy. As opposed to what many contemporary thinkers pretend, we have not yet finished pondering the “meta-function” in its fourfold dimensions: “trans-ascendance”, “transdescendance”, “trans-passibility” and “trans-possibility” which, although they find a different expressions in the religious field and in the field of philosophical thought, invites to rethink both religion and philosophy.La metáfora kantiana del “gran juego de la vida”, en la que todos somos partícipes interesados en tanto que somos ciudadanos del mundo, obligados a enfrentar las cuatro preguntas fundamentales: “¿Qué puedo saber?”, “¿Qué debo hacer?”, “¿Qué me está permitido esperar?”, y “¿qué es el hombre?”, las cuales, según Kant, recapitulan los grandes intereses de la razón humana desde una óptica cosmopolítica, nos ofrece un excelente hilo conductor para analizar las relaciones complejas entre religión y razón filosófica. Contrariamente a lo que pretende la vulgata contemporánea, no tenemos que vérnosla aún con la “función meta” en sus cuatro dimensiones esenciales de la “trans-ascendencia”, de la “trans-descendencia”, de la “trans-pasabilidad” y de la “transposibilidad” que, aún si encuentran una expresión diferente en el campo religioso y en el campo de la reflexión filosófica, dan mucho que pensar a la religión y a la filosofía

Paroles du Christ

Préface à l’édition des notes préparatoires de Michel Henry pour son dernier ouvrage Paroles du Christ

Rendez-vous con la verità

The proposed text first appeared under the title Prélude. Quand la vérité nous donne rendez-vous as an introduction to Jean Greisch's volume, Rendez-vous avec la vérité. However, the vortex of metaphors that 'tell' the 'truth' remains hardly reducible to a single 'theory' of 'Truth'. Over the centuries, what-is-‘true' has been said in many different ways, starting with the unsolvable opposition between the truth-fidelity of the Jewish tradition and the truth-disclosure/manifestation of classical Greek thought; passing through the truth-regulating, namely the truth-institution of Roman Latin culture, which 'contractualises' what is true; reaching up to the truths of the medieval Anglo-Saxon world (truth-correspondence, truth-coherence, truth-semantics, truth-consent, truth-interpretation). However, that the truth is not objectified does not mean that it is not an existential issue. On the contrary, this seems to be the lesson one can draw from the encounter between Pilate and Jesus: "I am the Truth." Nevertheless, it is possible to observe that some of the best pages from the history of philosophy are not those wondering about what the truth is, but rather those pages allowing their own authors and readers to be questioned by the - sometimes sudden - encounter with the disproportion of Truth. Therefore, not theorising but encountering the truth will be a fundamental question of philosophical research

Structural information inference from lanthanoid complexing systems: photoluminescence studies on isolated ions

The application of lanthanoid complexes ranges from photovoltaics and light-emitting diodes to quantum memories and biological assays. Rationalization of their design requires a thorough understanding of intramolecular processes such as energy transfer, charge transfer, and non-radiative decay involving their subunits. Characterization of the excited states of such complexes considerably benefits from mass spectrometric methods since the associated optical transitions and processes are strongly affected by stoichiometry, symmetry, and overall charge state. We report herein spectroscopic measurements on ensembles of ions trapped in the gas phase and soft-landed in neon matrices. Their interpretation is considerably facilitated by direct comparison with computations.\newline The combination of energy- and time-resolved measurements on isolated species with density functional as well as ligand-field and Franck-Condon computations enables us to infer structural as well as dynamical information about the species studied. The approach is first illustrated for sets of model lanthanoid complexes whose structure and electronic properties are systematically varied via the substitution of one component (lanthanoid or alkali,alkali-earth ion): (i) systematic dependence of ligand-centered phosphorescence on the lanthanoid(III) promotion energy and its impact on sensitization, and (ii) structural changes induced by the substitution of alkali or alkali-earth ions in relation with structures inferred using ion mobility spectroscopy. The temperature dependence of sensitization is briefly discussed. The focus is then shifted to measurements involving europium complexes with doxycycline an antibiotic of the tetracycline family. Besides discussing the complexes’ structural and electronic features, we report on their use to monitor enzymatic processes involving hydrogen peroxide or biologically relevant molecules such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP)

A litmus test for the balanced description of dispersion interactions and coordination chemistry of lanthanoids

The influence of long-range interactions on the structure of complexes of Eu(III) with four 9-hydroxy-phenalen-1-one ligands (HPLN) and one alkaline earth metal dication [Eu(PLN)$_{4}$AE]$^{+}$ (AE: Mg, Ca, Sr, and Ba) is analyzed. Through the [Eu(PLN)$_{4}$Ca]$^{+}$ complex, which is a charged complex with two metals—one of them a lanthanoid—and with four relatively fluxional π-ligands, the difficulties of describing such systems are identified. The inclusion of the D3(BJ) or D4 corrections to different density functionals introduces significant changes in the structure, which are shown to stem from the interaction between pairs of PLN ligands. This interaction is studied further with a variety of density functionals, wave-function based methods, and by means of the random phase approximation. By comparing the computed results with those from experimental evidence of gas-phase photoluminescence and ion mobility measurements it is concluded that the inclusion of dispersion corrections does not always yield structures that are in agreement with the experimental findings