Guillaume de Vaulx
Doctor of Philosophy and IDEO member
icon-calendar Tuesday December 12ᵗʰ, 2017
It is impossible to hold these three statements at the same time: 1) “God wants all people to be saved”, 2) “God shows people a path of salvation”, and 3) “Anyone who does not follow this path cannot be saved”. Either God wants the salvation for all, in which case He cannot impose only one path of salvation; or He imposes a particular path, in which case He risks that some will not follow it. And in any case, whatever the revealed path, it is only given to a given group, at a given time, condemning those who lived prior to or far from the place of this revelation.
The author of Rasāʾil Iḫwān al-ṣafā, whom Guillaume de Vaulx believes to have discovered to be Aḥmad al-Ṭayyib al-Saraḫrsī (d. 286/899), offers an original solution within a Muslim context. For him, the world is built on complementary relationships: no one person can have all skills, per se. Rather, together, we have all skills. This principle of complementarity is valid not only in everyday life, but also for eternal salvation. individually, we cannot achieve salvation, but together, each according to his religion and beliefs, we are able to achieve salvation for all, because salvation is beyond what any of us can achieve alone.
Guillaume de Vaulx
PhD student at Paris-IV University
icon-calendar November 3, 2015
Guillaume de Vaulx presented under the title “Reason against reason” a medieval Christian-Muslim polemic. The debate opposed the Nestorian bishop Isrāʾīl al-Kaskarī to Aḥmad ibn al-Ṭayyib al-Saraḫsī, one of al-Kindī disciples who the speaker suspects to be the author of Iḫwān al-Ṣafāʾ’s treatises. The traces of this polemic that are found in these treatises show us what the purpose of interreligious dispute purpose could be: not to reach an agreement but to allow everyone to deepen their quest for the truth.
Guillaume de Vaulx is French and lives in Beirut.
After completing two degrees in philosophy (CAPES and Agrégation), he lived in Saudi Arabia before settling in Egypt. In 2016, he defended his PhD thesis on the topic of the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity under the supervision of Professor Marwan Rashed (Paris-IV).
He worked at the IDEO until 2018, before joining the IFPO in Beirut, where he continues his research, leading a project on “animals worshiping God above all else” funded by the French Ministry of the Interior, section of religious affairs.
His research focus on the parallels between Arab and contemporary philosophy.
Guillaume began his research by focusing on the history of classical Arabic thought (9ᵗʰ‒10ᵗʰ centuries) from al-Fārābī before devoting his doctorate to the question of wholeness in the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, a systematic understanding of the work published in a summary book form in Arabic with commented translations in French.
This understanding led him to reconsider the historical debates on the authorship of the work and to advance the hypothesis of their authorship by Aḥmad Ibn al-Ṭayyib al-Saraḫsī (d. 286/899), a disciple of al-Kindī (d. 252/866). His articles are mainly devoted to editing the remaining fragments of this author’s works.
He is currently developing a reflection on animality in the classical Arab period, both from the point of view of fables (“The Animal Trial of Human Domination”), of zoology (“Trouble in the Genre, the Rhinoceros is a Bird. The Islamic Beginnings of Anthrozoology”) or the religious sciences (a project on animal piety).
In contemporary philosophy, he worked for several years with Nibras Chehayed on the one hand to translate the philosophical lexicon into Arabic, and on the other hand to reflect on the contemporary world from what Arab cultural production has to say both about art (La destructivité en œuvres. Essai sur l’art syrien contemporain) and literature (La destructivité en personne : Chismah. Essai sur Ahmad Saadawi — forthcoming).
Publications:
- La Naqla : Étude du concept de transfert dans l’œuvre d’Al-Fārābi dans Arabic sciences and philosophy, 20, 2010, pages 125–176.
- Apprendre à philosopher avec Hannah Arendt, Ellipses, Paris, 2013, 240 pages.
- La bêtise des penseurs arabes dans Les cahiers de l’Islam, 1, 2015.
- رسائل إخوان الصفا وخلان الوفا، سلسلة تيسير التراث، الهيئة العامة للكتاب، القاهرة ۲۰۱۷، ۲٤۱ صفحة.
- كاترين كنسلر، (ترجمة جيوم دڤو)، ما العلمانيّة؟، المركز القوميّ للترجمة، القاهرة، ۲۰۱۷، ۱۰۹ صفحة.
- Les Épîtres des Frères en Pureté, mathématique et philosophie, Paris : Les Belles Lettres, 2019, 318 pages.
- « La civilisation et ses bêtes » comprenant une fiction interactive et des réécritures de la fable des animaux des Ikhwān al-ṣafā, hypotheses.org, juillet 2019.
- « Aḥmad b. al-Ṭayyib al-Saraḫsī, réviseur de L’introduction arithmétique de Nicomaque de Gérase et rédacteur des Rasāʾil Iḫwān al-ṣafā », Arabic Science and Philosophy, août 2019, pages 261‒283.
- « Dépassement de la dialectique laïcité v/s confessionnalisme », Travaux et jours (Université Saint-Joseph, Beyrouth), n°95 (décembre 2019): « Sécularisation – laïcité – confessionnalisme ».
- « Trouble dans le genre : le rhinocéros est un oiseau ! Les débuts islamiques de l’anthropozoologie », Anthropozoologica 55 (18), 2020, pages 257‒268.
- Avec Nibras Chehayed, La destructivité en œuvres, essai sur l’art syrien contemporain, Beyrouth : Presses de l’Ifpo, 2021, 208 pages.
- Le Procès animal de la domination humaine, Fable tirée des Épitres des Frères en Pureté (Rasāʾil Iḫwān al-ṣafā), Paris : Les Belles Lettres, 2021, 346 pages.
- مع نبراس شحيّد، التدميريّة تشكيليًّا: قراءاتٌ فلسفيّة في الفنّ السوريّ المعاصر، منشورات المعهد الفرنسيّ للشرق الأدنى، بيروت، ٢٠٢١، ٢٥١ صفحة.
