Michel de Certeau et les Exercices spirituels d'Ignace de Loyola

Abstract

Michel de Certeau's reading of the Spiritual Exercises in his articles in the journal Christus followed the interpretative trail of the philosopher Gaston Fessard, whose interpretation was dedicated to the sign of liberty. In particular, it sketched out strongly an anthropology that Certeau never presented in a didactic format, but which undergirds his work as a whole, whether historical or sociological, psychological or semiotic. This anthropology was relatively simple in its subtlety. It was centred on desire and granted its rightful place to 'mystery' - a word he never uses, though mystical and mystery are closely connected. And for Certeau, the 'I is someone else', all knowledge is faulty, and all claim to dogmatism is denied.