Trouble in charity

Abstract

In ^11th-centuryAndalusia , and in the face of the collapse of the empire, Ibn Hazm thinks at the same time about political division and dissension in love. For love is a fitna, and a "secret " lies in the words that say it, or fail to say it. We discuss the power and limits of a historiography of ecclesiastical domination that makes the opposition between caro and spiritus the analogical matrix of Christian society. For ambivalence always nests at the heart of the lexicon of love, making it impossible to separate the erotic from the charitable, if not through a moral effort that is certainly of interest to the Church, but undoubtedly less so to history.

" The dissimulation of language is one of the traits of love " (Ibn Hazm, De l'amour et des amants, trans. Gabriel Martinez-Gros, Paris, 1994)
A " secret folded " in the hollow of love's words in the ^11thcentury : poetics and politics of the Dove's Necklace
Poésie arabe, platonisme et lyrique occitane (Rachel Arié, " Ibn Hazm et l'amour courtois ", Revue de l'Occident musulman et de la Méditerranée, 1985)
Andalusian enlightenment and ruined empire : love as fitna
Don't look to the invention of love as the founding novel of the West, but open up the paths of " mondialatinisation " (Jacques Derrida, Foi et savoir, Paris, 2000)
Amor, caritas and dilectio : new words and facts of language
The political energy of equivocity
After the fall of the empire and since Augustine, emotionally refounding the community (Emanuele Coccia, " Citoyen par amour. Émotions et institutions ", L'Atelier du Centre de recherches historiques, 2016)
Semantic analysis and lexicometric processing of love words
Corps humain, corps social : un composé harmonieux de charnel et de spirituel (Anita Guerreau-Jalabert, " Occident médiéval et pensée analogique : le sens de spiritus et caro ", in Jean-Philippe Genet ed., La Légitimité implicite, Paris-Rome, 2015)
Lay displacements in the analogical matrix : spiritualizing aristocratic love and territorializing social domination
From caritas to solidarity : baptismal kinship and generalized fraternity (Anita Guerreau-Jalabert, " Spiritus et caritas. Le baptême dans la société médiévale ", in Françoise Héritier-Augé and Élisabeth Copet-Rougier eds, La Parenté spirituelle, Paris, 1995)
Between the Middle Ages and us : strangeness and familiarity
" Generalized analogy produces a compact, strongly integrating ideal device, which founds a total order " (Anita Guerreau-Jalabert)
Penser autrement l'efficacité de la domination : propositions sur la notion d'expérience politique (Patrick Boucheron, lecture on March 12 and 19 2019 at the Collège de France)
To hear the rumbling of sedition at the heart of words : the etymology of caritas, or the fire under the ashes
In all words of love, ambivalence between the carnal and the spiritual (Dominique Poirel, " les noms de l'amour dans le Moyen Âge latin ", colloquium at the Institut catholique de Paris, December 8 2023)
Une bipolarité transmise aux langages modernes de l'amour (" Aimer, amour, amitié ", in Barbara Cassin dir., Vocabulaire européen des philosophies. Dictionnaire des intraduisibles, Paris, 2004)
How can we discipline it despite everything ? Against Augustine's " funeste synthèse " (Anders Nygren, Eros et agapè. La notion chrétienne de l'amour et ses transformations, Paris, 1944-1952)
Deus caritas est : Benedict XVI's 2005 encyclical XVI and the disturbing acceptance of the erotic in Christian charitable love
" God surpasses us as the best lover (Jean-Luc Marion, Le Phénomène érotique, 2003)
Back to the uncertainty of signs : Ibn Hazm, Stendhal and Kierkegaard
" Human language does not have a word, not a single word, not even the most sacred, of which we can affirm that by pronouncing it a man absolutely proves the presence in him of love " (Søren Kierkegaard, The Works of Love, 1847)
Proximity and preference :the political indistinction of the love commandment (Marc Crépon, " Politique de l'amour ", lecture at the College for World Studies, 2017)