Papers by Benoit Vermander
Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society, 2025
The term "Mystic Learning (xuanxue)" refers to a Chinese philosophical and mystical movement that... more The term "Mystic Learning (xuanxue)" refers to a Chinese philosophical and mystical movement that was most active in the third century AD, although the investigative practices proper to the School are attested as late as the sixth century. It is associated with thinkers such as Wang Bi (226-249) and Guo Xiang (252-312). It corresponds to a creative revival of the founding texts of Taoism and of certain Confucian writings, while establishing a reflexive distance from the experience proposed by these original writings. This contribution brings such a revival closer to that attempted by Michel de Certeau in an entirely different context. It will look at the founding intuitions they may share. How do commentators give new life and relevance to "mystical" texts? How do they create new works by reading a corpus and reactivating its fruitfulness, which might have been thought to have dried up?
Religions, 2025
In Vietnam, as in other parts of Asia, rural communities establish ritual markers that delineate ... more In Vietnam, as in other parts of Asia, rural communities establish ritual markers that delineate the social spacetime in which communal existence takes shape and meaning. These ritual markers evolve according to the socio‐economic, political, and ecological chal‐ lenges that said communities confront. The material for this study comes from a local com‐ munity of North Vietnam that belongs to the Muong ethnic group. We focus on the various spatial levels—household, village, ethnic territory, and the nation as a whole—according to which this community fashions its sense of identity, asserts its ethos, and delimitates its frontiers. We also examine how these levels take varying importance at different moments in time. Moreover, we show how specific rituals condensate different strata of meaning into one unifying event. Finally, we attempt to unearth the various ways through which an Asian rural community constructs and asserts its agency by activating the ritual resources at its disposal while respecting the constraints that weigh upon their mobilization.
Geschichte der Philologien, 2024
Dans cette contribution j’esquisserai certains des «usages» qui ont gouverné la lecture des ‹Odes... more Dans cette contribution j’esquisserai certains des «usages» qui ont gouverné la lecture des ‹Odes›,9 et je procèderai de façon thématique plutôt que chronologique. La première partie retrace les lignes d’interprétation du recueil suggérées par leur exégète autorisé, le Confucius des ‹Analectes› ; bonne part de cet héritage sera systématisée par les commentaires officiels ultérieurs, mais on peut découvrir aussi en Confucius un lecteur plu moderne et plus surprenant qu’on ne l’imagine habituellement. La deuxième partie nous transporte au début du vingtième siècle lorsque les ‹Odes› sont lues par Marcel Granet en fonction de leur contexte rituel et du rôle qu’elles y reçoivent, en insérant la lecture dans la découverte ou la redécouverte de la «littérature orale» – approche des plus innovantes mais dont certains présupposés restent sujets à débats. La troisième partie élargit l’approche de Granet et montre comment les ‹Odes› peuvent être abordées comme un document ethnographique, et particulièrement d’ethnographie religieuse. La quatrième partie évoque certaines des lectures qui ont trouvé dans les ‹Odes› une norme esthétique, dans la Chine classique d’abord, au début de l’histoire de leur transmission en d’autres langues ensuite. La cinquième partie prolonge cette analyse en portant l’accent sur la mise à jour de la rhétorique structurelle propre aux ‹Odes›, une tâche initiée dans la première moitié du 20ème siècle. Enfin, la dernière partie fait un retour à Confucius, non pas celui des ‹Analectes›, mais celui de l’auteur-fonction associé à un texte excavé durant les dernières décennies, texte par lequel sera relancée la question de l’intention à attacher à la lecture des ‹Odes›.
Religions, 2024
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Chinese Social Sciences Today, 2024
Some fields of knowledge are well constituted from the start. For instance, you can be a speciali... more Some fields of knowledge are well constituted from the start. For instance, you can be a specialist of European economic history on a period spanning from the time of the industrial revolution to the First World War. Some other fields stand at the intersection of several academic disciplines, and their object, method and frontiers are only progressively emerging. This is the case for me: I work in religious anthropology and I try to intertwine two research interests: on the one hand, I pay attention to the rituals through which a community gives meaning to its existence; on the other hand, I pay special attention to the comparative study of classics: throughout the reading of classics of various civilizations, I try to describe recurring patterns of thought.
Sulla Via del Catai, 2023
Father Robert Jacquinot de Besange (1878–1946), the architect of the Safe Zone that bears his nam... more Father Robert Jacquinot de Besange (1878–1946), the architect of the Safe Zone that bears his name, saved tens of thousands of civilians during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, yet he has often been described as a loner. However, closer examination shows that his initiatives were only possible thanks to a wide network of contacts, based on the connections established by the Jesuits in the Jiangnan region. Jacquinot thus exemplifies how the successes of the Jesuit mission in Shanghai were based on their networks. This article traces the intertwining institutions, clans, and figures that helped insert the Society of Jesus into the thriving civil society of Shanghai from the 1860s to 1949.
李金远教授教学与创作57周年回顾》成都， 四川师范大学美术学院书法学院主编/出版。 , 2024
一个中国画家的记忆宫殿《李金远教授教学与创作57周年回顾》成都， 四川师范大学美术学院书法学院主编/出版。 2024年
中国社会科学报, 2023
《礼与经之间： 正在建设中的知识领域》中国社会科学报， 2023.12.29
基督教学术 / Christian Scholarship, 2023
Discussing Anew the 'Sacred' and the "Profane' in the Chinese Context:
The French School of Socio... more Discussing Anew the 'Sacred' and the "Profane' in the Chinese Context:
The French School of Sociology in Non-European Societies
Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie, 2021
- “Jouer (et Donner) à Penser. Une Lecture de Roberte Hamayon en Contexte(s) Chinois.” Cahiers d... more - “Jouer (et Donner) à Penser. Une Lecture de Roberte Hamayon en Contexte(s) Chinois.” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 30 (2021): 173–207.
Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World, 2022
“Cross-Reading the Classics: Witness Through Respect and Dialogue”, in: Christian Witness in a Mu... more “Cross-Reading the Classics: Witness Through Respect and Dialogue”, in: Christian Witness in a Multi-Religious World, ed. by Indunil J. Kodithuwakku K., Rome, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2022, pp.231-243.
Thinking with/for Many Others In Memory of Vincent Shen (1949-2018), 2023
This essay tries to capture the way Chinese and Western classics were exchanged and reinterpreted... more This essay tries to capture the way Chinese and Western classics were exchanged and reinterpreted. It further examines how a reflexive appraisal of these attempts may enrich our contemporary endeavors at reading classics, focusing toward the end on “comparative theology” as a field still in the making. By doing so, this essay is also a modest homage to Professor Vincent Shen’s contribution to cross-cultural hermeneutics.
Religions, 2022
This article uses a typology of action framework to analyze a selection of the gospels’ parables.... more This article uses a typology of action framework to analyze a selection of the gospels’ parables. It does so by connecting these parables to A. G. Haudricourt and C. Ferret’s research on the “anthropology of action”. After summarizing Haudricourt’s and Ferret’s results, I relate modes of action to types of emplotment. I select four parables as the basis of my analysis, using J. P. Meier’s findings as a guide for selection. I discern in these four parables four modes of emplotment, which enables me to insert them into larger narrative networks found within the gospels. I locate the corpus of narratives determined this way in the context of Jesus’ time so as to better appreciate how the four modes of emplotment combine into a typology of action shaped by a specific social and cultural context. Within this typology of action, I put a spotlight on the way our corpus’ modes of emplotment make use of “discontinuous actions” (coined by Ferret). “Discontinuous actions” decisively initiate or correct a specified course of events. The stress on this dimension of action applies to the relationships occurring between humans and the natural world, within the social world, and between humans and
the supranatural world, thus connecting one order of reality with another.
La Croix, 2021
La crise sanitaire a généré des tensions dans la société, dans les familles, parfois en chacun… B... more La crise sanitaire a généré des tensions dans la société, dans les familles, parfois en chacun… Benoît Vermander, jésuite et sinologue, témoigne de ce qu'il en a été en Chine et explique comment l'idée de réconciliation peut y résonner. entretien Quelles tensions la crise sanitaire at -elle révélées ou accentuées en Chine ?
Religions, 2023
This Introduction to a Special Issue published in "Religions' crisscrosses three theoretical ques... more This Introduction to a Special Issue published in "Religions' crisscrosses three theoretical questions that the ten contributions gathered integrate into a unified subject of investigation.
Journal of Sino-Western Studies 國學與西學, 2022
Among other contributions, Jean Gerson (1363-1429) has played a decisive role in establishing spi... more Among other contributions, Jean Gerson (1363-1429) has played a decisive role in establishing spiritual theology as an experimental science, the foundation and process of which are independent from the ones of dogmatic theology, even if their results need to eventually coincide. Based, as all works in the field, on Pseudo-Dionysius, Gerson's De theologia mystica (written between 1402 and 1423) developed an epistemology of mystical knowledge, itself grounded upon an anthropology describing how humankind's cognitive and affective powers operate together. Gerson's work played a major role in the development of French, and more largely, modern approach to mysticism.
Revue des sciences religieuses, 2017
Asian theologians have been trying to epitomize the nature of the expe- that has been ... more Asian theologians have been trying to epitomize the nature of the expe- that has been unfolding its principles and tenets over the last three to four decades. Catholic theologians, networking through the gatherings organized by Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conference (FABC), have played a leading role in bringing this task to fruition; at the same time, the work of several leading Protestant theologians has been resonating and associating with this endeavor.
Dao
The progressive dominance of historical-critical methods in the reading of ancient Chinese classi... more The progressive dominance of historical-critical methods in the reading of ancient Chinese classics has led scholars to privilege micro levels of textual analysis. Consequently, the question as to whether laws of composition could be identified in this corpus has often been ignored, or considered irrelevant. Working on Chinese number symbolism as well as on rules governing "ring composition" in other cultural contexts, this article aims at fashioning anew the question of the possibility of an ancient Chinese "structural rhetoric" and at envisioning the patterns that might have governed it. It specifically applies the approach it propounds to Huainanzi 淮南子, showing how numerology frames its structure and argument, the text being built after the image of the "roundness" of the Way and of the Ruler. It then endeavors to apply these results to the unearthing of "inter-structural" patterns that would help us to locate Huainanzi, Lüshi Chunqiu 呂氏春秋, the versions at hand of Zhuangzi 莊子, Lunyu 論語, or yet Laozi 老子 into a textual universe that shares correlated rhetorical features.
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Papers by Benoit Vermander
The French School of Sociology in Non-European Societies
the supranatural world, thus connecting one order of reality with another.
The French School of Sociology in Non-European Societies
the supranatural world, thus connecting one order of reality with another.
This book endeavors to read the Daodejing “with others”—with its Chinese commentators, with its contemporary exegetes, with the Pseudo-Denys and Master Eckhart—and, by doing so, it shows this short treatise to be as inexhaustible as the mystery towards which it points.
Alain Bonjean, Benoît Vermander
Les Belles Lettres 2021
C’était aussi l’occasion de me replonger dans les années où ces textes avaient été rédigés – de 1980 à 1988 -, d’apprécier persistances et métamorphoses, tant personnelles que politiques, culturelles et sociales. Je partage aujourd’hui cette édition électronique non pas pour l’intérêt intrinsèque de textes commis par un auteur âgé de vingt-huit ans au moment de la publication de l’ensemble, mais plutôt pour ce qu’ils peuvent encore dévoiler de l’esprit et des débats d’une décennie dont la relecture éclaire le présent.
BV, septembre 2016
La Chine en quête de ses frontières : La confrontation Chine-Taiwan
Jean-Pierre Cabestan, Benoit Vermander
Presses de Sciences Po | Académique`
Date de parution 29/09/2005
La Chine reste en quête de ses frontières alors même qu’elle ambitionne de réussir son “émergence pacifique” sur la scène mondiale. Rien n’illustre mieux ce constat que les relations toujours vivaces entre la Chine et Taiwan. Cet ouvrage propose une analyse synthétique et globale de cette confrontation, replacée dans le cadre de la politique étrangère de la Chine et de la réalisation de ses ambitions internationales. C’est la seule étude comparative en français et à jour qui éclaire le contexte et la dynamique de ce conflit. Les auteurs présentent de plus les principaux scénarios d’évolution future des relations entre la Chine et Taiwan. De manière plus large, en dévoilant la sophistication de cette relation conflictuelle, ce livre apporte une contribution précieuse à la nouvelle discipline que constitue “l’étude de la résolution des conflits”.
Photographies de Liang Zhun, texte de Benoît Vermander
The attached is the edited, abridged version of a book entitled "Violence and Politics" published in 1995 by Fu-Jen University Press.
Contributions de Aloysius Ch'ang Chun-shen, Gianni Criveller, Mark Fang Chih-jung, Louis Gendron, Wang Hsien-chih, Li Jinyuan, Madeleine Kwong Lai-kuen, Eugenio Menegon, Yves Raguin, Benoît Vermander, Liu Xiaofeng
We are celebrating this year the centenary of the birth of Father Yves Raguin, founder of the Taipei Ricci Institute.
The main connection between the celebration of his birth and our conference is that Yves Raguin had focused all his life on the quest for the resonances and encounters between the different spiritual
experiences that humankind has engaged into – and the spiritual style he slowly developed has oceanic undertones.
Global governance, when it comes to climate change, must be one of "variable geometry" rather than based on the principle of "everything or nothing."
"I am Noah's ark. Strange, innumerable beasts are surviving and vaguely struggling within my womb. They are smelly, nasty and so dreadful. But somehow they can be tamed-can they? Brush strokes make them surge, stand erect, fly, die or run away."