Theologians of the 14th C. agreed that theology is scientific knowledge based upon the truths of revelation. But the very introduction of Aristotle's and aristotelian philosophy into theology turned out to be problematic. Above all, it was questionable to integrate theology - as a science based on revelation - within the aristotelian framework of sciences. This problem is difficult for Scotus in two ways. On the one hand, he uses the concepts elaborated in greek philosophy, but, onthe other hand, his franciscan spirituality compels him towards the opposite solution. Scotus only has the Aristotle's division of theoretical and practical sciences at his disposal to determine the character of theology, and he chooses to classify theology as practical science. Scotus is pouring „new wine" of Christian revelation into „old wineskins" of greek philosophy, the fact causing noticeable problems when interpreting many Scotus' ideas and views.

Maximus the Confessor in his „Ambigua" opposes himself in a decisive way to the Origenist vision of man and of his relation to God, a vision extremelywide-spread in his time. He creates his own anthropology which in its turn serves as a foundation of his theology. Man becomes a complete and integrated being and obtains his full realisation only provided that he is united with God and is a corporeal being related to the world in which he lives. Man, World and God are the terms of a dynamic relation, in which each of the first terms finds its unity. Man's unity, as well as that of the world, is realised in God, towards Whom both tend and move. The article is an attempt to retrace this movement of man, together with the world, to God, the movement crowned in unity with Him, a kind of unity that does not take away man's identity.

Ontology is still relevant for the reception of Christian revelation. Transcendental subjectivity, whose main role is to constitute, calls out for a deeper foundation. It is this deeper foundation that supplies an ontology of participation of all beings in Being and in God, as found in St Thomas and in some interpretations of his work (those of E. Gilson, A. Chapelle, A. Léonard). God’s immanence in humanity and in creation, and human participation in Being and ultimately in God, enable us to conceive of a causal action upon the whole of humanity and upon the whole of creation, a causal action issuing from the death-resurrection of Christ. In the context of contemporary philosophy, marked too unilaterally by finitude and historicity, this ontology needs to be supplemented by an anthropological reflection on liberty – liberty donated to itself (C. Bruaire) rather than liberty uniquely devoted to an indefinite search of itself. This is the main point behind A. Chapelle’s anthropology. Moreover, it is this sense of liberty that underlies at the same time a genuine pathway to ethics.

The word ‘ontology’ has no meaning outside the context in which it was created. When it was invented, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, theword ‘metaphysics’ already existed. So the creation of ‘ontology’ had to express a distance with respect to tradition. ‘Metaphysics’ had its roots in Aristotle and his search, his impossible search, for a first principle. This project is taken up again by ‘ontology’ but this time by limiting the Aristotelian intention to the area of univocal formality, while Aristotle had situated himself within the order of dialectical investigation. Current phenomenology tries to re-actualize the Aristotelian intention by emphasizing ontological difference and analogy, while analytic philosophy remains firmly within the tradition of modern ontology.

Contemporary naturalism, especially through ethology, neuroscience and cognitive science, challenges the traditional ontological points of referencefor determining the specificity of human beings. After illustrating the full measure of this upheaval, I will show the inadequacy of a return to traditional essentialismand will then defend the relevance of a different type of essentialism: an approach to human specificity in terms of a homeostatic property cluster.

The aim of this article is to show that the “attestation of evil and testimony of hope” are characterized by the genitive that accompanies them. This places them both, each no less than the other, in two different horizons: while the horizon of attestation is Heideggerian, the horizon of testimony is a legacy of Jean Nabert. Both of these horizons are present in the thought of Ricoeur, and characterize the entire spectrum of his work. However, we are not dealing here with a syncretism resulting from the co-presence of a hermeneutic source and of the philosophy of reflection. On the contrary, I attempt to show that the copresence of attestation and testimony results from the fact that Ricoeur never stopped “walking on two legs,” given what he writes in a conversation published in the Critique and Conviction, and that this presence is rooted in Ricoeur’s formation, which is at the same time philosophical, literary and biblical, as he never renounced either the former one, or the latter ones.

This essay offers a personal account of the author’s friendship and collaboration with Paul Ricoeur in the last years of his life. Catherine Goldenstein, who, after Ricoeur’s death, took care of his manuscripts and organized the archives of the Fonds Ricoeur, reflects on her conversations with the philosopher. Their contents, recorded as she remembers them, illuminate Ricoeur’s philosophical endeavors and his work as an academic instructor. Ricoeur is also viewed through the testimony of letters addressed by him to the author, through his personal notes, and through the events of his academic career. These perspectives combine to offer a concise and challenging vision of a life devoted to reflection, whose ultimate boundary is a reality we do not know directly: that of eternity.

Every reader of Ricoeur knows that hermeneutics endeavors to answer the aporiae of historical phenomenology. Hence arises the need to return to those aporiae and those answers. On the one hand, phenomenology, born with the maxim of going “directly to things themselves,” is confronted with the incessant evasion of the thing itself and with its dreams of presence being thereby shattered. This reversal should not be blamed on the failings of this or that thinker, but attributed to the very destiny of phenomenology itself. On the other hand, Ricoeurian hermeneutics takes note of a gap (the very remoteness of the thing itself), and of a necessary return (to the thing of the text). Thus, there is nothing for thought itself to grieve over with respect to this enterprise. However, while the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, faced with the same difficulties, orients itself towards political philosophy, the hermeneutics of Ricoeur rather seeks to lead us to a philosophy of religion. This article hypothesizes that, in spite of the formula (inherited from Thévenaz) of a “philosophy without an absolute,” the thought of Ricoeur heads in fair measure towards the Absolute, and that ontology is not the only name of the Promised Land.