Waterloo ou la pluralité des interprétations

Abstract

Résumé Les interprétations de Waterloo appartiennent à l’histoire non moins que cet événement lui-même. L’article étudie en détail celles de Clausewitz et Stendhal, avant de proposer une ébauche philosophique sur les concepts d’interprétation et de pluralité interprétative. Il découvre en Clausewitz l’un des premiers théoriciens du choix rationnel, et en Stendhal, qui s’exprime à travers son personnage Fabrice, un théoricien de la sémantique avant l’heure. Choisis pour leurs tendances opposées, respectivement unificatrice et dissolvante, ces deux exemples aideront à établir finalement que la pluralité des interprétations n’est pas dénuée de règles.

An analytical narrative of the Day of Dupes

“…"Analytic narratives" of military campaigns 4 , such as Napoleon's Waterloo campaigns (Mongin 2008(Mongin , 2012(Mongin , 2019, and of political assassinations, such as Aldo Moro's assassination (Crettez and Deloche 2009), and Caesar's assassination (Crettez and Deloche, 2018), however, fare quite well with respect to these criticisms, because, in such cases, it is acceptable to concentrate on the study of a few decision-makers whose rationality has already been studied in historical narratives. Each of the above studies focuses on a small-scale, well-defined historical event, which is the result of interactive decisions made by designated individuals and makes a key assumption about these players: their cognitive skills are unbounded.…”

An analytic narrative of Caesar’s death: Suicide or not? That is the question

“…Using the AN method, an influential set of articles by Mongin (2008, 2012, 2017) sheds new light on Napoleon’s Waterloo campaign by showing that “the decision Napoleon made on June, 17, 1815 to detach part of his army and send it against the Prussians, whom he had defeated, and not destroyed, on June 16 at Ligny” (Mongin, 2017: 1), could have been a cautious strategy.…”