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Two major developments mark the start of the week: Washington’s extraordinary economic and financial offensive against Iran – dubbed the “economic D-Day” – and, in Lebanon, the resurgence of the case of Mohammad Reza Chibani, Iran’s designated but unaccredited ambassador to Beirut. The significance of the barrage of sanctions announced by Washington on Monday lies in its direct consequences across multiple fronts, both in the short and medium term, for Iran’s economy, the survival of the mullahs’ regime, the regional balance of power and even international relations, particularly with China. The Mohammad Chibani affair, of course, is in no way comparable to the economic D-Day. Above all, however, it puts the Lebanese authorities’ ability to maintain consistency between their words and their actions to the test. It matters because it represents yet another test for a Lebanese state that has long struggled to assert its authority. On Monday, August 24, official Lebanon failed the test once again. The measures announced as part of the economic D-Day are unprecedented in every respect – both in form and in substance – insofar as they shake the global economy as a whole while simultaneously strangling the Iranian regime economically. The sanctions target every sector: gold, technology, digital assets, oil, the banking, aviation and shipping. The ultimatum issued by the U.S. Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, leaves no room for ambiguity: countries that do business with Iran must fall into line or risk being isolated themselves. Worse still, he warned, they risk being removed from the U.S. dollar system. “No one should test our resolve,” Bessent warned, adding that “gray spaces no longer exist.” “It is now time for world leaders to make a decision between peace and terror, America and Iran,” he declared. No exceptions – least of all for China, Tehran’s strategic partner, with which Donald Trump had nevertheless opened a new chapter, and which now finds itself back in Washington’s crosshairs. Beijing had recently expressed its displeasure with Washington’s new strategy towards Iran. Bessent responded bluntly when asked about the matter: “If Beijing facilitates Iranian transactions, it will be targeted.” For the U.S. official, such transactions, whatever their nature, amount to “money laundering on behalf of Iran.” The Treasury Secretary said he “expected a major institution to be sanctioned this week,” without providing further detail, but indicated that, even as he spoke, “around 60 entities with ties to Tehran had just been sanctioned.” Bank Melli, along with other Iranian institutions, was ordered to “close all its branches around the world.” According to Bessent, Iran “faces a very clear choice, with only two possible paths: complete isolation and a subsistence economy, or a return to normalcy with the opportunity to rejoin the global economy,” he said, calling on Iranian soldiers to lay down their arms. “Remember that the Berlin Wall fell when ordinary soldiers decided not to shoot on their fellow citizens,” he told them. In an initial reaction, the Tasnim news agency, which is close to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, sought to play down the significance of the unprecedented new round of sanctions, “as the Pakistani mediator is in Tehran.” It attributed the move to Donald Trump’s “repeated media and psychological operations,” citing an Iranian official source. According to that same source, “nothing will change on the ground.” A message essentially intended for domestic consumption, because the situation on the ground will, precisely, no longer be the same. Panic in Tehran Announced by President Donald Trump on Wednesday, the economic D-Day – a reference to the Allied landings in Normandy in June 1944, which hastened the collapse of the Nazi regime in Germany during the Second World War – could deliver a decisive blow to Iran if it is fully implemented and maintained in the absence of a diplomatic breakthrough. The choice of name for the draconian measures Washington intends to impose on the Islamic Republic and its recalcitrant partners is no accident. The sanctions, which Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent describes as the “largest financial offensive ever undertaken,” would mark the final chapter of a war that has been raging in various forms since February 28. Iranians are well aware of this, as shown by the rial’s precipitous fall – it was trading at more than 2 million to the dollar on Monday – and, above all, by the palpable panic within the ranks of the regime. Since Sunday, official statements and commentary have been coming thick and fast, in an Iran that continues to send contradictory signals, ranging from direct threats against the United States and countries that might join the new sanctions regime, to clear signals in favor of a political solution to the conflict, interspersed with grandiose claims about Iranian resilience and military capabilities. So much so that President Massoud Pezeshkian felt compelled to call for “unity of positions in the face of American threats.” Conspicuously absent from this chorus of statements was Iran’s Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei. Can Iran withstand the American sledgehammer? Impossible, given the severity of the U.S. sanctions and the scale of the financial and inflation crisis that has gripped the country for months and has been compounded by the U.S. naval blockade. One need only look at Iranian oil exports to grasp the depth of the financial crisis gripping the mullahs’ regime. From nearly two million barrels a day before the February war, exports had fallen to around 400,000 by mid-August. In any event, faced with this economic D-Day, Iranian authorities said on Monday evening that they had drawn up a “two-year plan” – that is, one extending until the end of President Donald Trump’s term – to weather this economic war. What role for diplomacy? Despite the pressure it is under, Tehran still refuses to back down over what it calls its right to control the Strait of Hormuz – at least publicly, as Pakistan has stepped up its diplomatic efforts in the hope of a breakthrough that would bring Iran and the United States back to the negotiating table and ease tensions on the ground. Yemen’s Houthi militia, meanwhile, continued to target Saudi sites on Monday, including in the Red Sea. Pakistan’s army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, is currently in Tehran for talks with Iranian officials. According to Reuters, he spoke by phone with Donald Trump last week. Oman’s foreign minister, Badr al-Busaidi, is due to follow him to the Iranian capital on Tuesday for talks on the Strait of Hormuz. The Unfortunate Chibani Affair In any event, if it continues without a diplomatic breakthrough, the economic D-Day will undoubtedly affect countries across the region where Tehran maintains influence through its armed proxies – Hezbollah in Lebanon, armed factions in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen. Two significant developments stand out in this context: Baghdad has delayed the timetable for disarming pro-Iranian armed groups, without explaining the change or setting a new deadline. Launched in June, the process was supposed to be completed by September 30, when the mission of the U.S.-led international coalition against Islamic State in Iraq is due to end. Under pressure from Iran, however, some groups refused to lay down their arms, arguing that doing so would benefit the United States and Israel. Seeking to avoid armed confrontations and favoring dialogue, the Iraqi authorities adjusted their timetable without ever changing the original deadline. Iraq’s decision to abandon that deadline can only be explained by increased Iranian pressure, which has pushed Ali al-Zaidi’s government to slow the process already under way. The same is true in Lebanon, where Iran’s designated but unaccredited ambassador, Mohammad Reza Chibani, is holding on to his post, even though he was declared persona non grata and ordered by the Foreign Ministry to leave the country in March. In practical terms, Chibani has been in an irregular situation in Lebanon since March 24, since his visa ceased to be valid once he was declared persona non grata . Nevertheless, the authorities have done nothing to enforce the decision they themselves took, thus failing an initial test of their authority. On Monday, they squandered a second opportunity to prove their credibility, as Iran’s representative managed to obtain a six-month residence permit from General Security on the grounds that he was a former ambassador who had served in Lebanon from 2006 to 2009. This maneuver, however, does little to conceal the enormous gulf between officials’ statements about their determination to shield Lebanon from foreign influence and actions that run directly counter to those stated intentions. Only Foreign Minister Joe Raggi has remained true to his position, saying a few days ago in an interview with An-Nahar that there is no question of reversing the decisions taken last March. The renewal of Chibani’s residence permit is a humiliation for the authorities, showing that they lack the resolve to enforce their own decisions, whatever pretexts they may offer – all the more so given that Hezbollah, which answers directly to Iran, continues to defy them. This was demonstrated once again by one of the group’s MPs, Hassan Fadlallah, who, during a meeting in Tehran with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, spoke as though he were representing Lebanon, going so far as to call for “concerted action” with the Islamic Republic to confront Israel’s ongoing military operations in Lebanon. Syria Removed from the Terrorism List Against this backdrop of mounting tensions, one development of major importance remains to be noted – a move whose symbolic significance and timing are hard to miss. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Monday evening the official removal of Syria from the list of state sponsors of international terrorism. At the same time, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the organization formerly led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa who was then known by the alias al-Jolani, was also removed from the list of international terrorist organizations. The strategic impact of the move will be to pave the way for private investment in Syria, thereby helping to revive the Syrian economy and allowing post-Assad Syria to rejoin the global economic system.

Some people spend their lives accepting their lot, while others take their destiny into their own hands. This is all the more difficult for a woman living in a man’s world. And yet… some women chose to fight, succeeding in breaking the taboos of their time. Whether they wielded a brush, a pen, scientific instruments, or their voices, they made their mark on their century with a boldness that at times bordered on scandal. From Artemisia Gentileschi, defying Italian society and the courts five centuries ago, to George Sand, who traded the corset for the freedom to write; from Camille Claudel, the deeply wounded artist, to the rigor and genius of Marie Curie, and the universal voice of Oum Kalthoum… these women succeeded in overcoming social prejudice. In a series of articles, we invite you on a journey through time to meet these rebellious women. Marie Curie embodies the very essence of intellectual rebellion. She not only defied the political order of her country and the entrenched prejudices of her time; she also pushed back the very boundaries of human knowledge. Marie was born Maria Salomea Skłodowska in Warsaw in 1867, when the city was under Russian rule. From an early age, Maria displayed exceptional intellectual abilities. Her parents gave her and her sisters the same education as their brother. Yet under Tsarist law, women were barred from attending university. She joined the “Flying University,” a clandestine institution that provided higher education to young Polish women under the very noses of the Tsarist authorities. This act of defiance was the prelude to the life that lay ahead. Realizing that her homeland could never satisfy her thirst for science, she decided to move to Paris with her sister Bronia, who wanted to study medicine. After years of grueling work as a governess to finance their respective studies, Marie finally arrived in Paris in 1891. She was 24, almost penniless, but driven by an insatiable thirst for knowledge. The Sorbonne Marie enrolled at the Sorbonne and studied with ascetic intensity, working twice as hard to make up for lost time. She lived in a freezing attic room and barely had enough to eat, but at last her mind was free to flourish. She graduated first in her class with a degree in physics and second with a degree in mathematics. Amid this intellectual ferment, she met Pierre Curie, a scientist as independent-minded and passionate as she was. Their union was not merely romantic; it was also a meeting of two extraordinary minds. Together, they set out to unravel the mystery of the invisible rays emitted by uranium. In a poorly insulated shed, freezing in winter and stifling in summer, Marie spent endless hours stirring boiling vats of pitchblende, a uranium ore. Yet the male-dominated scientific establishment struggled to take her seriously. Marie persisted. The effort was immense, but the reward would transform modern physics: Marie and Pierre discovered two new chemical elements, polonium, named in honor of Marie’s homeland, and radium. The age of radioactivity had begun. Marie et Pierre Curie in their laboratory. Triumphs and Tragedies: Claiming Her Place In 1903, the Nobel Prize in Physics recognized their groundbreaking work. Initially, the Swedish Academy intended to honor only Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel, deliberately overlooking Marie’s contribution. But Pierre threatened to refuse the prize unless she was included. Marie thus became the first woman ever to receive a Nobel Prize. Yet fate, often cruel, soon intervened. In 1906, Pierre was killed after being struck by a horse-drawn carriage. Devastated, Marie refused to retreat into the obscurity then expected of widows. She drew new strength from her grief and threw herself back into her work. She continued her research and took over her husband’s position at the Sorbonne, becoming the first woman to teach at the prestigious university. Against the Mob: A Relentless Fight In 1911, after her affair with the married physicist Paul Langevin was made public, Marie faced an extraordinarily vicious campaign of sexist and xenophobic attacks in the French press. Yet despite the media frenzy that threatened to destroy her career, she refused to back down. The same year, she traveled to Stockholm to receive her second Nobel Prize, this time in Chemistry. To this day, she remains the only person to have been awarded Nobel Prizes in two different scientific disciplines. When the First World War broke out, Marie, true to her convictions, devoted herself wholeheartedly to the war effort. She helped develop and deploy the “Little Curies,” mobile surgical units equipped with X-Ray machines that she herself drove to the front lines. In doing so, she helped save countless lives. An Immortal Legacy Until the very end, Marie continued her research. Though weakened by illness, she traveled the world, wrote books, and visited the United States, where she was given a hero’s welcome. She also attended scientific conferences alongside the leading scientists of her time, including the Solvay Conference, where she met Albert Einstein and other prominent scientists. At last, her contribution to the advancement of science and medicine was recognized, particularly her role in the fight against cancer. Her eldest daughter, Irène, helped her with her work. Like her parents, she would go to marry a scientist and win a Nobel Prize of her own. “To Great Men, the Grateful Nation” Marie Curie died in 1934, worn down by decades of exposure to radiation. Her laboratory notebooks – and her own body – bore the marks of the science she had brought to light. The woman once dismissed as “the foreigner, the homewrecker” now rests in the Panthéon, in a lead-lined coffin, among France’s greatest figures. A quite rebel, Marie Curie defied the deepest prejudices of her time through her work and her actions. She did not merely accept the world as it was. She dissected it, sought to understood it, and ultimately changed it.

At a time when public debate can seem to be running out of steam, the thinking of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas stands out as a singular compass and remains strikingly relevant today, as it offers a way of thinking about secular modernity, the place of religion, the nation-state and nationalism in a European context, and critical thought more broadly, all through the lens of “discourse ethics” and “dialogue free of domination.” Within this framework, Habermas rejects the notion that good and evil can be defined by an absolute authority, a fixed tradition or an unquestionable metaphysical truth. Instead, he argues that they must be worked out rationally among free and equal individuals in an open space for dialogue. Born in 1929 into a Germany in crisis, Habermas grew up in a relatively sheltered bourgeois household, yet one marked by the ideological divisions of the era. His father joined the Nazi Party – a heavy family legacy in a context where allegiance to the regime had become, for many, as much a social expectation as a political constraint. As a child, Habermas also suffered from a cleft lip, a visible disability in a society that had little tolerance for physical difference. Several surgical procedures marked his childhood, adding to an early experience of vulnerability and of being subject to social scrutiny. As a teenager, he was briefly a member of the Hitler Youth, like nearly everyone of his generation. The end of the war and the gradual discovery of the crimes of Nazism came as a formative shock. This rupture – between indoctrination, reconstruction and the need to think anew – would play a decisive role in shaping his later reflections on memory and reason. In the postwar years, he studied in a Germany still shaped by intellectual figures compromised by their ties to the Nazi regime. While still young, he mounted a forceful critique of Martin Heidegger, focusing in particular on Heidegger’s silence about, and involvement in, the Nazi era. The essay caught the attention of Theodor W. Adorno, a leading figure of the Frankfurt School, who brought him on as an assistant. Habermas initially worked within that critical tradition but gradually moved away from it. Where the Frankfurt School’s early thinkers developed a pessimistic view of modernity and reason, he retained a strong faith in the capacity of language and discussion to foster social bonds and rationality. It was in this context that he developed what he called discourse ethics. A norm is legitimate, he argued, only if it can be accepted by everyone affected by it through dialogue free of domination. Morality, then, rests not on some external truth but on the quality of the deliberative process itself. Unlike Socrates, who sought to draw out a truth presumed to already exist, Habermas emphasizes procedure: it is the discussion itself that establishes validity. This line of thinking led to his theory of “communicative action.” Language, for Habermas, is not merely a tool for exchange but a space structured by implicit demands: truth, sincerity and rightness. To speak is already to enter into a relationship of mutual recognition. From this follows his conception of the public sphere, envisioned as a site of democratic deliberation where citizens exchange and weigh arguments as equals. That vision extends to his political thinking on constitutional patriotism: political belonging, in this framework, no longer rests on national or cultural identity, but on a commitment to the democratic principles guaranteed by the Constitution. This idea is rooted in his rejection of nationalism, which the history of twentieth-century Germany made particularly problematic. Continuing along these lines, his commitment to Europe seeks to move beyond the power politics of nation-states – not to weaken Germany, but to prevent any one nation from dominating the continent. Europe thus becomes a space where cooperation and dialogue take precedence over power struggles. Later in his career, Habermas also revisited the question of religion. Long reserved toward religion, he came to adopt a more open position: the point is neither to incorporate faith into philosophy nor to reject it as irrational, but to recognize that it can still contain moral resources of value to public debate. Religions, in his view, no longer provide comprehensive worldviews, but they continue to transmit essential ethical insights: attentiveness to human vulnerability, a sense of responsibility, recognition of suffering, and a commitment to solidarity. He also stresses that secular modernity did not emerge in a total break with religion but retains some of its legacies. Habermas is, in short, a philosopher of striking contemporary relevance, one well worth discovering or revisiting.

The Israeli state appears determined to counter Turkish ambitions in Syria, drawing a lukewarm response from Washington. On Iran, the United States is now favoring a strategy of economic strangulation. In Lebanon, Hezbollah is facing increasing U.S. pressure. In the Middle East, the major development of the week of August 17–23 was the standoff between Israel and Turkey in Syria. The affair began on Tuesday with a strike on the Abu al-Duhur airport in the province of Idlib, in southwestern Syria — out of service since the start of the Syrian war, but home to a presence of the new Syrian army under Ahmad al-Sharaa's authority. The eight strikes immediately drew condemnation from the Syrian government, which blamed Israel. A statement from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights provided an initial clue as to the cause of the raids: Turkish troops had deployed to the site shortly before the strikes, with the aim of rehabilitating the damaged facility. Israel's claim of responsibility came only two days later, from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said he had sent a "clear" message to both Syria and Turkey. He accused Ankara of seeking to establish a foothold on Syrian soil by setting up a base at Abu al-Duhur. Israeli Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir underscored the point by visiting Israeli forces stationed in southern Syria and asserting that his country would not tolerate any hostile presence along its borders. A new Israeli strike on Syrian territory took place on Saturday, near the occupied Golan Heights. Also on Saturday, an Israeli drone targeted a vehicle in southwestern Syria. Syria denounced the attacks as violations of its sovereignty and called for a UN condemnation. The Israeli-Turkish escalation continued to intensify throughout the week. While denying any military presence on Syrian soil, Turkey declared it would not "fall into the trap" set by Prime Minister Netanyahu by being drawn into an armed conflict — a statement that suggests a ceiling to this escalation. Yet the verbal hostilities continued to escalate, bringing the deep animosity between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Netanyahu into full public view. As Israelis branded him an "antisemitic dictator," Erdoğan ultimately issued an "international arrest warrant" against Netanyahu for war "crimes" in connection with the crackdown on the Gaza Flotilla, which the Israeli military had intercepted in May to prevent it from reaching the Gaza Strip. Israeli-Syrian meeting in Amman With this direct Israeli strike on Syrian territory, the Jewish state has significantly complicated an already highly complex regional situation. Its Turkish adversary has just signed a mutual defense agreement with two other Sunni powers, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Moreover, Turkey maintains friendly relations with the United States: at the NATO summit held in Turkey a few weeks ago, U.S. President Donald Trump spoke of Erdoğan in glowing terms. This would help explain the less-than-enthusiastic reaction from Trump's envoy to Syria, Tom Barrack, who described the Israeli strike as "unnecessary escalation." Barrack also suggested that the Israeli escalation was a "political maneuver" by Netanyahu, with critical elections in Israel just weeks away in which the Likud leader's political survival is at stake. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz hit back on Saturday, insisting that he had shared "intelligence with the United States" ahead of the strike, and accusing Barrack of making statements "full of inaccuracies and positions that contradict" President Trump's own line. Indeed, a confrontation between two giants would have unpredictable consequences, so why would Israel take that risk? Netanyahu's electoral ambitions may offer part of the answer, but they are not sufficient on their own. Israeli officials have used phrases such as "Turkey's attempts to destabilize the region" and a desire to "prevent Turkish entrenchment," which seem to suggest they fear that Turkey could fill the vacuum left by a retreat of Iranian influence over the Levant. It is worth noting in this regard that this explosive issue was at the center of a meeting held Sunday in Amman between Syrian Foreign Minister Assaad al-Shaibani and the new Mossad director, Roman Gofman. The talks aimed to defuse tensions between Syria and Israel following the strike on Abu al-Duhur airport. This Israeli-Syrian meeting came after a recent statement by Minister Shaibani, who announced the imminent resumption of negotiations between Damascus and Tel Aviv aimed at finalizing a security agreement between the two countries. The broad outlines of this agreement had been agreed upon earlier this year. Trump's economic war On the Iranian front, it appears that the American decision to replace military escalation with economic pressure — or even an economic war — remains in effect. New U.S. sanctions against Iran are being considered, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is expected to hold a press conference on the matter on Monday. Economic pressure on Iran dominated statements from both sides this week. President Trump explicitly announced "total economic war" against Iran, warning "any country, airport, company, financial institution, or government entity" that offers a "lifeline" to the Iranian regime. Iran's response was to label the economic pressure and sanctions threats as "economic terrorism." Iran also resorted to threats against any country that participates in economic restrictions against it, through the voice of the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Mohsen Rezaei. What further deepened Iran's economic isolation this week was the decision by the United Arab Emirates to sever all ties with Tehran, following an unclaimed missile strike. The UAE is a critical partner for Iran, but the Gulf state has markedly accelerated its alignment with Israel and the United States during this war. This week also marked the end of the 60-day deadline set out in the Islamabad agreement, signed by Washington and Tehran in June to reach a final deal. President Trump himself announced that no further discussions are taking place, urging Iran to "surrender" and declaring once again — with an enigmatic smirk — that the Strait of Hormuz is "American territory." The U.S. president also suggested there are no longer any viable interlocutors in Iran. On the Iranian side, despite the ferocity of the verbal attacks, reports of genuine economic and social suffocation are multiplying, as are reports of repression by the authorities through summary executions of opponents, teenagers, and young university students in particular. Could this be what prompted Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian's statement at the end of the week, suggesting it is time to end the war with the United States? This moderate Iranian voice was careful, of course, to placate the hardliners by adding that Tehran should consider this possibility "as long as it is in a position of strength." Parliament Speaker Mohammad Ghalibaf, for his part, defied the United States by announcing on Saturday "new security and economic cooperation arrangements" with neighboring countries, which he pointedly refrained from naming. The former Revolutionary Guard commander visited Iraq this week, as that country makes clear its determination to disarm all illegal factions — primarily pro-Iranian ones — by September 30. Yet another sign of Iran's waning influence in the region? Sanctions against Hezbollah Reports of upcoming U.S. sanctions against Iran were preceded this week by sanctions targeting individuals suspected of financing Hezbollah in Lebanon, with the United States making clear that these measures stem from the Shia party's ties to Iran's Revolutionary Guards. They came in the wake of remarks by Edward Gabriel, president of the American Task Force for Lebanon (ATFL), during a visit to Beirut, in which he stated — in response to a journalist's question — that President Trump would be open to engaging with Hezbollah, but that the group does not appear to be "ready" to do so.

In April 2026, Wissam Saadé delivered four lectures at the University of Bologna. The first, at the invitation of Professor Giovanni Giorgini, was entitled “The Prophet and the Philosopher: The Hierarchy of Knowledge between Avicenna’s Falsafa and al-Kirmānī’s Ismaili Neoplatonism.” Its text is presented here in a revised and expanded version, as part of a series of ten articles. This series explores the intellectual landscape of Neoplatonism in Islam through a comparative reading of Avicenna and al-Kirmānī. Although both thinkers share a broad Neoplatonic horizon, shaped by a metaphysics of emanation, a hierarchy of being, and a synthesis of Aristotelian and Platonic thought, they develop two distinct philosophical projects: Avicenna within the Peripatetic tradition of falsafa , and al-Kirmānī within Ismaili theology. Despite their different intellectual contexts, their systems remain in constant dialogue around the nature of knowledge, the relationship between reason and revelation, and the ascent of the soul. Their respective projects also embody two contrasting conceptions of the political, illuminating different ways of understanding the place of philosophy in relation to authority, law, and the organization of the community. This article constitutes the ninth part of this ten-part series. IX - The Bifurcated Reception of Avicennism and Averroism in Medieval Christendom: Constructing the “Double Truth” Accusation Showing that reason does not quite sabotage revelation became something of a shared intellectual pastime across the Islamicate world, Latin Christendom, and Jewish communities moving between the two. The effort was less a unified project than a recurring anxiety, dressed in different vocabularies: in kalām as dialectical defense, in falsafa as philosophical reconciliation, in anti-philosophical currents as outright suspicion, in Sufism as an experiential bypass, and in medieval Europe as the careful architecture of Scholastic theology. The same problem, in other words, was rehearsed with different accents, and occasionally with the confidence that this time, finally, it might be settled. In medieval Europe, the debate over the relationship between reason and revelation crystallized around two poles: the Augustinian credo ut intelligam (“believe so that you may understand”) and the more systematically articulated Thomistic synthesis. Within this framework, Thomas Aquinas advanced the claim that human reason, operating on its own terms, is capable of attaining certain foundational truths, most notably the existence of God, while remaining intrinsically limited when confronted with the suprarational mysteries of Christian doctrine, such as the Incarnation or the Trinity. Aquinas sets a clear condition for this synthesis of theology and philosophy: philosophy is to function as the ancilla theologiae , the “handmaid of theology.” In his own way, he restates a principle often associated with Averroes, namely that truth cannot contradict truth. Since God is held to be the source of both the “light of reason” and Revelation, a genuine contradiction between the two is, in principle, impossible. Any apparent conflict therefore points either to an error in rational inference or to a misinterpretation of the scriptural text. On this basis, Aquinas formulates his well-known maxim: grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it. By the thirteenth century, this framework reached its most systematic expression within Scholasticism under Thomas Aquinas, where theology came to function as the magister scientiarum , the “master of the sciences,” shaping the intellectual architecture of the emerging universities. Within this hierarchy, theology provides the overarching horizon, while the liberal arts, organized into the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music), are integrated as preparatory disciplines. Their value is thus not autonomous but instrumental: they acquire their full meaning only insofar as they are ultimately ordered toward theological understanding, flowing, as it were, into its encompassing framework. Kalām, fiqh, and the Sovereignty of Tradition In contrast, kalām in the Islamic sphere never achieved such total hegemony. It failed to subordinate philosophy to its own ends, nor could it maintain its centrality against jurisprudence ( fiqh ). Instead, it was absorbed into the broader legalistic system as a subordinate discipline, a science of creed (ʿ aqīda ), which, after the early Abbasid centuries, could not compete with the sheer momentum, scope, and theoretical depth of fiqh and uṣūl al-fiqh (Principles of Jurisprudence). Islamic civilization evolved as a “civilization of Law.” Within the duality of reason (ʿ aql ) and tradition ( naql ), the balance tilted toward tradition, albeit through continuous attempts to ward off perceived contradictions between the two. A prime example is Ibn Taymiyya’s Dar ʾ Ta ʿ āruḍ al- ʿ Aql wa-l-Naql (“Warding Off the Contradiction between Reason and Tradition”). As the archetypal figure of Salafism, Ibn Taymiyya did not seek to abolish reason, but to demonstrate that “explicit reason” inevitably leads to “authentic tradition.” In this equation, however, tradition remains the standard, while reason serves as the witness that validates it. Notably, the very definition of “reason” shifted from the Ashʿarite-Ghazālian model to Ibn Taymiyya’s Ḥanbalī-Salafist model. For al-Ghazālī, reason was a logical “balance,” largely Aristotelian, a necessary instrument for demonstrating the truth of prophecy that nonetheless halts at the threshold of the Unseen. For him, any apparent conflict required ta ʾ wīl (allegorical interpretation), while reason itself functioned as a “light” cast by God into the heart. For Ibn Taymiyya, by contrast, reason was fiṭra , primordial nature or innate disposition. He rejected the confinement of reason within Greek logical rules, arguing that “explicit reason” is simply that which accords with sound fiṭra . Reason, for him, was not an external instrument but an innate faculty naturally attuned to Revelation. While the Muʿtazilites and the philosophers sought the primacy of reason, the ideological victory ultimately went to those who placed reason under the sovereignty of tradition, eventually redefining it through the lens of fiṭra . Ultimately, uṣūl al-fiqh became the true arena for Islamic logical ingenuity. Rather than constructing grand theological systems on the scale of Aquinas, Muslim intellectual culture turned toward a “methodology of deriving norms.” Reason was “contained” and deployed within a vast linguistic and logical engineering project in the service of the Text. Here, reason is not a sovereign legislator, but an “engineer” who interprets and measures. Ockham, Siger of Brabant, and the Crisis of Scholastic Synthesis Ironically, the very success of Latin Scholasticism in imposing its primacy laid the groundwork for its own eventual undoing. By absorbing Aristotelianism and demonstrative logic in order to make faith a “rationally impregnable fortress,” Scholasticism inadvertently created the tools through which its own authority could later be subverted. In the fourteenth century, William of Ockham declared that universal concepts possess no independent reality; they are merely “names,” a position later associated with Nominalism. This philosophical shift had two major consequences. First, it widened the separation between faith and reason by arguing that God’s “absolute will” cannot be bound by human logic. Second, by redirecting attention from theological universals toward particulars, it helped prepare the conceptual ground for the rise of empirical science. Before Ockham, however, there was Siger of Brabant and the impact of Latin Averroism. Siger embodied the intellect that attempted, prematurely, to liberate philosophy from its theological shroud. A secular cleric rather than a member of the mendicant orders, as Aquinas and Bonaventure were, Siger (c. 1240–1284) became the leading figure of Latin Averroism. He taught philosophy as an autonomous discipline without seeking to subordinate it to theology. Accused of heresy and pursued by ecclesiastical authorities in France, Siger fled to Italy to appeal to the Papal Curia at Orvieto, where he was eventually stabbed to death by his secretary. Notably, Dante Alighieri placed Siger in Paradise in the Divine Comedy (Canto X), alongside his intellectual rival Thomas Aquinas, presenting him as a spirit who had “syllogized envious truths.” In the intellectual milieu of the University of Paris in the late thirteenth century, Siger of Brabant occupied a particularly tense position. He was neither a simple adversary of faith nor a conventional theologian, but a thinker attempting to push Aristotelian rationality to its internal limits, largely through the lens of Averroes. His project did not consist in opposing Revelation as such, but in rigorously articulating what follows if one remains strictly within the autonomy of philosophical demonstration. From this standpoint, several theses became especially controversial. First came the question of the eternity of the world. Against the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo , Siger defended the philosophical plausibility, indeed, from the standpoint of Aristotelian physics, the necessity, of an eternal cosmos without temporal origin. Within this framework, there is no “first moment” and no inaugural human event in the biblical sense, but only an unbroken continuity of motion and causality. Second was the doctrine commonly associated with Averroism, namely monopsychism. Here, the central claim is that the Active Intellect is singular and universal rather than individually multiplied across human beings. The implication is radical: while acts of thinking occur in individuals, the principle of intellection is one and the same for all humanity. This leads to a third, even more destabilizing consequence. If intellect is not individually differentiated in a strict ontological sense, then traditional notions of personal immortality and individual moral accountability become difficult to sustain within a purely philosophical register. The classical framework of reward and punishment thereby risks losing its metaphysical foundation. From these tensions arose the so-called problem of “double truth,” often attributed to Siger in simplified form. In its crude version, it suggests that something could be true in philosophy while false in theology. Siger’s position, however, is subtler. Philosophical reasoning, operating according to demonstrative necessity, may arrive at conclusions that diverge from revealed doctrine; yet this divergence does not negate the authority of Revelation, which remains absolute within its own order. The issue is therefore not simply contradiction, but the coexistence of two distinct epistemic regimes operating according to different criteria of truth. His insistence on the autonomy of philosophical inquiry nevertheless proved institutionally explosive. At the University of Paris, this line of thought contributed to a broader crisis over the status of Aristotelianism in Christian intellectual life, culminating in the Condemnation of 1277, when numerous propositions associated with radical readings of Aristotle were officially censured. Siger’s historical significance thus lies less in any single systematic doctrine than in the pressure his position exerted on the medieval synthesis itself. He made visible the fragile boundary between a theology capable of integrating philosophy and a philosophy that, by pursuing its own rigor, risked escaping that integration. Ernst Bloch and the “Aristotelian Left” In contrast to the “Aristotelian Right” of the Scholastics, who viewed matter as a passive vessel for divine form, the theo-Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch sought to construct the genealogy of an “Aristotelian Left” in his book Avicenna and the Aristotelian Left . He traced a subversive lineage beginning with Alexander of Aphrodisias and reaching its culmination in Avicenna’s concept of the “fertility of matter.” This lineage continued through Averroes and eventually crossed into Christendom with Siger of Brabant. For Bloch, it represented the “warm stream” of materialism, a current that privileges the self-moving and creative power of the natural world over theological imposition. Yet this seamless genealogy glides over an obvious difficulty: Averroes spent much of his career attempting to dismantle Avicenna’s philosophy, to say nothing of the vastly different, and often contradictory, receptions their respective “authorities” encountered in the Latin West. And yet Bloch’s intuition remains brilliant. His genius lies less in cold historical accuracy than in his transgressive bridging of Islamic and medieval intellectual traditions in order to construct a philosophical mythos capable of revitalizing the past. Bloch correctly identified Avicenna as the figure who breathed soul back into matter: by conceiving matter as inherently “form-bearing” rather than as a vacant vessel, he helped lay the conceptual groundwork for an autonomous physics. Perhaps most significantly, Bloch’s decision to enlist both Avicenna and Averroes in a shared “leftist” camp offers a compelling alternative to the influential structural project of Mohammed Abed al-Jabri. In his landmark critique, al-Jabri sought to preserve the purity of “demonstrative reason” ( burhān ), seeing in Averroes the culmination of a rationalist revival that could lead toward modernity, while regarding Avicenna’s synthesis as a turn toward the mystical (ʿ irfān ) that complicated the intellectual trajectory of the East. Bloch, however, through his own distinctive lens, manages to reconcile these two giants. By framing them as part of a single revolutionary lineage, his genealogy invites us to recognize a more inclusive current of materialist thought, one that finds as much value in Avicenna’s “fertile matter” as in Averroes’ rigorous logic, thereby transcending the sharp dichotomies that have long shaped the study of the falsafa heritage. The Bifurcated Latin Reception of Avicenna and Averroes The contrasting reception of Avicennism and Averroism, the latter championed by Siger of Brabant, in the thirteenth century stems from the very architecture of Avicenna’s thought. Unlike the uncompromising Aristotelianism of Averroes, Avicenna offered metaphysical bridges that the Latin West found indispensable. While Siger of Brabant was perceived as an existential threat because of his adherence to a “pure,” radical Aristotle, Avicenna had already synthesized Aristotelianism with Neoplatonism, rendering his system far more “compatible” with monotheistic dogma. Avicenna distinguished between the essence of a thing, what it is, and its existence, the fact that it is. God alone is the Necessary Being ( Wājib al-Wujūd ), whose essence is identical with His existence. All other beings are merely “possible” or contingent: they do not possess existence inherently, but receive it from God. This structure allowed medieval theologians to articulate philosophically the world’s total ontological dependence on a Creator, whereas Siger’s “Averroistic” Aristotle suggested an eternal, self-subsisting universe. Moreover, unlike Averroes and Siger of Brabant, who were associated, in different ways and with different degrees of nuance, with monopsychism, the theory of a single intellect shared by all humanity, Avicenna defended the individuality of the human soul and its survival after death. Through a sophisticated dialectical maneuver, Thomas Aquinas instrumentalized the internal tensions among the “Arab” interpretations, using Avicennism to check Averroism, and vice versa, in order to lay the groundwork for his own Scholastic architecture. Aquinas effectively “baptized” Aristotle by meticulously filtering these Eastern interpretations. He preserved the scaffolding of Avicenna’s ontology of Being while discarding its emanative determinism; conversely, he retained Averroes’ analytical rigor while dismantling his monopsychism. By defining the soul as the form of the body, Aquinas anchored the intellect to the biological individual. Within this framework, man is neither a spirit trapped in a body, as in Plato or Avicenna, nor a body inhabited by a single collective intellect, as in Averroes, but a substantial unity. With striking audacity, Aquinas conceded that reason alone is incapable of proving either the eternity of the world or its temporal beginning. While he held, as a matter of faith, that the world began in time because Revelation says so, he maintained that, philosophically, an eternal world created by God remained a logical possibility. However, the most consequential aspect of the Thomistic intervention was its framing of the intellectual landscape as a binary choice. Philosophy must either declare its independence and drift toward the “absurdity” of a double truth, or submit to theology and assist in the rational articulation of faith, thereby accepting the role of the handmaid ( ancilla ). Yet no major philosopher, Muslim, Jewish, or Christian, ever actually advocated a “Theory of Two Truths.” Their insistence on a hierarchy of knowledge, distinguishing between demonstrative truths accessible to the intellectual elite and rhetorical truths intended for the masses, nevertheless provided the very foundation for the accusations of duplicity leveled against them. Al-Kirmānī, Avicenna, and Averroes were all committed to a single, unified truth; they never posited the existence of two. Even Siger of Brabant held no other view. The problem was that Siger lacked the “Neoplatonic gymnastics” necessary to reconcile his belief in the eternity of the world with religious dogma, yet he could not openly dismiss “non-philosophical” truth. His accusers, however, believed they knew exactly what he was doing: for Siger, there was ultimately only one truth, the Aristotelian, philosophical truth that the world had existed from all eternity. From the “Double Truth” to Spinoza’s Separation This tension gave rise to two distinct strategies for interpreting the history of philosophy and its intersection with religious thought: the first associated with Spinoza in the seventeenth century, and the second with Leo Strauss in the twentieth. Spinoza’s position was that the only way to end the perennial accusation of duplicity leveled against philosophers was to enforce a strict separation between theology and philosophy. Before him, philosophers such as Maimonides and the Latin Averroists had often relied on interpretive strategies to protect their freedom of thought. They argued that the Bible “speaks the language of men” and must therefore be interpreted allegorically in order to reveal philosophical truths. This method left the philosopher vulnerable to the charge of manipulating Scripture to fit a predetermined philosophical agenda. By severing the two domains, Spinoza essentially argued: “Leave the Bible alone.” For him, Scripture contains no hidden philosophical truths; its purpose is not to teach philosophy, but to instill obedience and moral conduct. This separation liberated philosophy from its role as the “handmaid” ( ancilla ) of theology. If theology makes no claim to philosophical truth, its aim being piety and obedience, it can no longer come into genuine conflict with philosophy. The philosopher can likewise no longer be accused of “distorting” the Word of God, having already declared that philosophical inquiry operates on an entirely different plane. Leo Strauss and the Return of Dissimulation Leo Strauss remained skeptical. He argued that Spinoza’s “separation” was itself a rhetorical shield. By claiming that faith and reason were compatible precisely because they belonged to separate domains, Spinoza could introduce radical materialist or atheistic ideas while appearing to preserve respect for “true” piety. For Strauss, even this separation could be understood as a form of dissimulation, since Spinoza’s ultimate project was to replace the authority of Revelation with the sovereign authority of Reason.

Superman is known as the Man of Steel, dressed in a tight-fitting suit and a red and blue cape, a figure who takes things seriously and bears on his shoulders, like a policeman, the responsibility of saving the world. This is the man embodied by David Corenswet in his modern Hollywood incarnation: he stops villains and intervenes to save lives threatened by wars, fires, or drowning. This American film also gives rise to another figure of Superman: a character who constantly intervenes in world affairs without stopping to consider the consequences of intervening in other countries’ conflicts. Such a geopolitical approach may seem ill-suited to the values of superheroes. Yet this is what U.S. President Donald Trump appears to suggest through his spectacular moves to reshape the world, in a metaphorical evocation of the villainous figure alluded to by the film’s director in the “MAGA,” without naming it, through the businessman character or others such as Lex Luthor. It is, in other words, a new version of America in an evil world ruled by predatory capitalism, an image of arrogant businessmen reminiscent of Gordon Gekko in the film “Wall Street.” The character of Superman was created 87 years ago to fight independent employers and the Nazis during World War II, and then, in the 1950s, to stand alongside Americans during the Cold War. Each version reflected the threats and concerns dominating American society at the time. Today, Superman leaps to the aid of everything Trump loathes, with Superman himself portrayed as an immigrant from a poor background, while those who object to this image are considered racist when they speak of migrants and “their desire to destroy America.” Every Superman has been a symbol of change, in a world that needs someone to save it in its most turbulent moments, which reflect an era of state capitalism in its vast environment. An even more American version reminds the world of what it can become at its worst, through one of America’s most emblematic heroes, while reflecting the temptations and contradictions of an age engaged in an excessive American search for what it means to be a great power. In reality, Trump presents himself as a version that echoes the original text, yet he brings forth forms of political action far removed from the classical mold, restoring to the international stage the model of an era dominated by state capitalism, the exploitation of global resources, and power politics in geopolitical conflicts. These are contemporary reflections of a political scene represented by the pact Faust made with the devil. At the same time, Trump relinquishes neither luxury nor the spectacular dimension of using visual and symbolic arts to introduce change into his political action. He thus appears as a mixture of aspirations to control and hegemony, together with all the political and social deviations that follow, as he inflames the issue of migration worldwide and revives social, nationalist, and racist conflicts. He plays with everything: international rules as well as diplomatic conventions. He recognizes no limits to his deals or his influence when imposing and manipulating tariffs. Nor does he restrain his audacity in refusing to acknowledge the global energy crisis in the war over the Strait of Hormuz or the dangers of climate change, despite the massive fires, hurricanes, and floods sweeping across the world. And, just as a horror writer might imagine it, the regime in Tehran was weaker than at any point in its 47-year history before the outbreak of the U.S.-Israeli war on February 28, 2026. It was on the verge of falling without a war, through a gamble on the dynamics of unraveling internal balances and bringing conflicts among different domestic groups and forces to the surface. Fortune then smiled on Donald Trump, notably in Venezuela, even though he had mocked neoconservative visions of regime change and the construction of democratic societies, particularly when he says: “All I want is freedom for the Iranian people.” He declares war in order to eliminate the nuclear threat and prevail over the regional chaos caused by hardliners, promising Iranians that they will finally be freed from the theocratic regime. But the experience of a global Superman is anything but conventional amid the boundless ambition of new admirers among online audiences, eager to exert influence without fearing a descent into political and financial chaos across the world. He seeks to redistribute wealth in a way that lacks any perspective of justice and equality, within an international economic system dominated by the GAFAM giants, while paying insufficient attention to other geopolitical dimensions: poverty, unemployment, and hunger affecting millions of children around the world as a result of his wars. He knows how to impose tariffs, compel leaders and presidents around the world to support his agenda and dance with him, impose sanctions, and know when to retreat after entering arenas of conflict. He then proclaims himself the man deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize, granting himself the power to extinguish fires and wars without verifying whether there are any signs that they are actually ending, while presenting himself as fully versed in matters of war and in imposing peace by force. The result is a crisis reshaping the Middle East in ways likely to have long-term consequences for Washington, as regional leaders adapt to a new reality rather than simply submit to it. They consider what exists now better than nothing, amid doubts about the reliability of the United States and suspicions that Israel is a destabilizing force, while this imaginary Superman asks Americans and the world to reward him as he seeks another presidential term. In return, this accumulation of anxiety and division generates unstable dynamics across the world that deepen existing crises. Such confidence cannot be placed in a single man leading the world when he acts through a sweeping deal that does not truly represent two-thirds of the planet, while never ceasing to talk or entertain, and never ceasing to quarrel with others. He attacks international efforts undertaken at the United Nations and speaks disparagingly of the officials of its legal institutions. He excels at shaping the terms of negotiations, his speeches, meetings, and travels in order to contain others, with the exception of digital loyalists who practice “post-irony” toward other societies. The American Superman thus grants himself all this confidence before he has even earned it. For the state of the world remains bound up with the difficulties facing political systems and with a non-democratic, pre-emptive phenomenon that applies its concepts to capitalism and technology, weakening state institutions and paralyzing them. All that defenders of political realism do is little more than submit, to the detriment of the real world, particularly with regard to international politics itself and existing international treaties. The world falls into the trap of believing that results can be achieved through personal and improvised deals rather than through a multilateral order based on shared and stable rules. This is precisely where the danger lies: that humanity may lose its political bearings, while states become trapped within their domestic policies for the benefit of a new feudal system governing the world according to a reactionary philosophy hostile to democracy, under the influence of the political views of technology investors, including Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. This helps shape the current culture of Silicon Valley and the White House instead of defending pluralism and democracy. And if people come to believe that governments should be run by techno-capitalist corporations or by artificial intelligence, or that human society operates according to a logic of singularity, then these ideas become real through the consequences of the failure of declared strategies. They no longer even need America’s adversaries to act against it. All this may follow if this new Superman succeeds, a Superman different from the one we once knew, with Trump’s tendencies toward the darker side of wars and everything that follows: plunging the world and its economies into the unknown. Yet there is still time for cinematic entertainment to avert the worst, before people follow their favorites and promote them in an attempt to bring them back into the center of public attention. Then comes Spider-Man, in the form of a swarm of 1,500 drones crossing the sky above Gwangan Bridge, while his film continues its strong run at the U.S. and Canadian box offices, overtaking Superman under the glare of the spotlights. In short, Trump himself has opened Pandora’s box. This is a new catastrophe in a war waged in the name of global peace imposed by force, without any genuine strategy, where every film leads to another American film. For all to watch.