The current controversy over the teaching of values and the role of religion in our public schools is an important and much discussed topic. Stock-Morton's work represents not only a valuable historical investigation, but a useful resource for the review and consideration of our present-day dilemma. France is the only country which has attempted to teach an official secular morality and Stock-Morton's is the first study to describe and trace the development of that effort. During the nineteenth century, the impetus for a practical, secular moral teaching arose, primarily through the concern of those who sought the liberalization of French society and politics. The educational dilemma faced at that time arose from the opposition of the Catholic Church to liberal government. Gradually liberals and radical reached a consensus on the necessity of teaching ethics in the schools while eliminating the presence of the clergy. Their solution and its philosophical basis were anchored in the Enlightenment and the Revolution, but developed in the context of nineteenth-century political and philosophical change. In the 1880s, when the republicans were able to inaugurate universal, free, and secular education, secular ethics became a required course for all. The history of morale laique is significant at a time when our own country is rife with controversy over the role of religion and the teaching of values in the schools. Stock-Morton's thoughtful study represents an important contribution to the literature for those concerned with these significant issues.

In The Enemy Within, Gilbert D. Chaitin deepens our understanding of the nature and sources of culture wars during the French Third Republic. The psychological trauma caused by the Ferry educational reform laws of 1880-1882, which strove to create a new national identity based on secular morality rather than God-given commandments, pitted Catholics against proponents of lay education and gave rise to novels by Bourget, Barrès, A. France, and Zola. By deploying Lacanian concepts to understand the "erotics of politics" revealed in these novels, Chaitin examines the formation of national identity, offering a new intellectual history of the period and shedding light on the intimate relations among literature, education, philosophy, morality, and political order. The mechanisms described in The Enemy Within provide fresh insight into the affective structure of culture wars not only in the French Third Republic but elsewhere in the world today.

Merleau-PontyENTRE HIER ET DEMAINBETWEEN YESTERDAY AND TOMORROWTRA IERI E DOMANI****dossiers – special sections – dossiersMerleau -Ponty demainMerleau -Ponty TomorrowMerleau -Ponty domaniMerleau -Ponty et la philosophie classique allemandeMerleau -Ponty and Classical German PhilosophyMerleau -Ponty e la filosofia classica tedesca****varia – diverse – varia****COMPTES RENDUS – REVIEWS – RECENSIONItextes de – texts by – testi diJacopo Bodini, Guillaume Carron, Frank Chouraqui, Anna Caterina Dalmasso, Guy-Félix Duportail, Faustino Fabbianelli, Véronique M. Fóti, Anne Gléonec, Koji Hirose, Kathleen Hulley, Takashi Kakuni, Stefan Kristensen, Donald A. Landes, Len Lawlor, Laura McMahon, Stefano Micali, David Morris, Angelica Nuzzo, Claudio Rozzoni, Ted Toadvine, Dylan Trigg, Luca Vanzago