A study of the main conceptions of truth, from the classical formulation of correspondence to modern theories, with the distinctions required to avoid confusing the existence of truth, its knowability, and its independence from the subject. The article does not defend a single theory, but delimits what can be safely asserted and what remains open.
An exposition of the Aristotelian conception of knowledge from the natural desire to know: the degrees of knowing, the division of the sciences, and the identification of contemplation with happiness. The article also points out an internal tension between the universal desire to know and the restricted character of its full fulfillment.
An analysis of why, if reality is one, human knowledge is divided into disciplines. The answer distinguishes three senses of 'unity' that must not be confused and shows that the disciplinary division is a condition of finite access to the real, not a fracture of the real itself.
A study of the Augustinian conception of the search for truth: the restless heart that only rests in God, the immutable truth that demands a subsistent Truth, and the relation between faith and understanding. It is the main source of the existential register of the search for truth.
A study of the concept of mimesis and of what it means for art to 'represent' reality. The Platonic condemnation of mimesis as copy is contrasted with the Aristotelian revaluation as knowledge of the universal, and eight senses of 'representing' that must not be confused are distinguished.
An exposition of the Socratic-Platonic conception of the search for truth: the examination of one's own life as the starting point and desire (eros) for the true as the engine of a conversion that transforms the knower. This figure of the search is contrasted with the Aristotelian one, centered on the term of contemplation.
An exegetical study of John 8:31–32 ('you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free'). The article presents the text, its context and the meaning of its terms, examines the historical interpretations, and makes precise that the passage speaks of knowing and abiding, not of seeking.
An analysis of the difference between creating, making, fabricating, producing, transforming, inventing and discovering, and of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. The article distinguishes being (which only God creates) from form (which man produces) and situates the principle 'art imitates nature' as the bridge between reality, knowledge and art.
A study of the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk: its origin, the meaning Wagner gave it, its social and political dimension, and Benjamin's critique. The article makes the attribution of the term precise and does not reduce it to a simple 'mixture of arts'.
A study of Leonardo da Vinci as a case of polymathy, centered on the relation between his scientific research and his pictorial practice. The article verifies to what extent his knowledge of anatomy, optics and other disciplines informed his painting and what historical limits his figure has.
A study of the intellectual ideal of the Order of Preachers from two formulas — contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere and in dulcedine societatis quaerere veritatem —, with their sources and attributional precisions. The article distinguishes the communal climate of study and the structure of contemplating and transmitting.
A micro-history of the motto 'ora et labora'. The article shows that the formula does not come from the Rule of Saint Benedict but from the 19th century, and sets out the real triad of the Rule — prayer, reading and work — that the popular motto omits.
An essay that develops and puts to the test a thesis about the artist's relation to reality: that the artist does not create from nothing, but receives, contemplates, and re-produces form. The article examines the objections, confronts the thesis with abstract art, and proposes a reformulation that recognizes the plurality of modes of relation between art and reality, including the abstraction of ideas and feelings.
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