Annie Larivee

Michèle Le Doeuff coined the term “déshérence” to describe a phenomenon affecting the relation of women to knowledge. Déshérence reflects the antithetical connection between women and value: if something is socially devalued, women may claim it; if something women already possess reveals itself as valuable, then they have to relinquish it. My article shows how Plato’s Statesman offers a perfect example of déshérence in its two complementary forms. But the article’s primary objective is to shed light on the connection between Plato’s Republic and his Statesman. Indeed, the presence of déshérence becomes clear when considering a perplexing question about the Statesman: What happened to the philosopher queens in this dialogue? If advocating for them was once seen as worth risking a formidable wave of mockery and attacks in the Republic, why are the philosopher queens nowhere to be seen in Plato’s following dialogues? This question leads to a reconsideration of the role of the guardians in the Republic and to a recognition of their presence in the Statesman. As it turns out, those we call “philosopher queens” are still instrumental to what Plato sees as an excellent polis. The reason why we do not see them is that they are not where we expect them to be.

Helfer opens his book with a series of vigorous reflections that have the virtue of challenging some of the reader’s deeply seated beliefs concerning political emotions. While we moderns see political ambition mostly as a threat to the public good that needs to be checked, ancients, the author suggests, considered that passion in a positive light. Indeed, they regarded political ambition as the manifestation of a powerful desire to achieve noble deeds in the civic sphere, an aspiration they saw as a central feature of human nature. That Alcibiades presents us with the most spectacular example of a man animated by such a passion is uncontentious, no matter how controversial this historical person was. By studying...

This text seeks to situate Being and Time in the line of the ancient philosophical tradition of care for self (epiméleia heautou). After a brief description of the main features of this tradition as portrayed by Michel Foucault and Pierre Hadot, the author presents the elements of Being in Time in favour and those against such a link. Her hypothesis appears to encounter a major objection in the explicit refusal of Heidegger to speak of Selbstsorge. But an attentive examination of the meaning of this reserve (the rejection of selfhood as a transparent and introspective relationship of the soul to itself) makes it in reality possible to show Heidegger to be one of the most consequent philosophers in the tradition of care for the soul. Indeed, by highlighting the constitutive link between selfhood and care, Heidegger shows the very condition of possibility of the tradition of care for the soul: that the self is not given as a thing, but may contribute to its own transformation through a specific form of care.

Abstract The aim of this article is to make use of recent research on `political eros ' in order to clarify the connection that Plato establishes between eros and tyranny in Republic IX, specifically by elucidating the intertextuality between Plato's work and the various historical accounts of Alcibiades. An examination of the lexicon used in these accounts will allow us to resolve certain interpretive difficulties that, to my knowledge, no other commentator has elucidated: why does Socrates blame eros for the decline from democracy into tyranny? What does he mean by ` eros ' here, and what link existed between eros and tyranny in the minds of his contemporaries? And finally, who are the mysterious `tyrant-makers' ( turannopoioí , 572e5-6) who, according to Socrates, introduce a destructive eros in the soul of the future tyrant? After a careful examination of the passage from book IX on the genesis of the tyrannical man (focused on the last stage of the metamorphosis, which is concerned with éros túrannos , 572d-573b), I will offer answers to these questions by turning to the writings of Thucydides, Aristophanes and Plutarch while examining the portrait of Alcibiades that Plato paints in the Alcibiades I and Symposium

While specialists of the Platonic corpus often evoke the most remarkable passages of the Statesman or use it to trace the evolution of Plato’s political thought, few invite us to appreciate this difficult text itself. We can, therefore, only revel in the almost missionary zeal with which Dimitri El Murr champions this neglected dialogue in his Savoir et gouverner.The best way to appreciate the Statesman is to recognize its distinct contribution; and what sets this dialogue apart, according to El Murr, is the attention paid to the idea of politics as a form of knowledge possessed by the ruler. This intense focus on the issue of politics as a science—found neither in the Republic nor Laws—is unique to the Statesman..

En 1981-82 Foucault a consacré son enseignement au Collège de France à la question du souci de soi antique. À ce cours, publié en 2001, il a donné le titre énigmatique d’«Herméneutique du sujet». Ma communication vise à élucider le sens de ce titre en montrant comment les travaux généalogiques entrepris par Foucault au cours des dernières années de sa vie visaient à combattre un mode de rapport à soi dominé par l’interprétation. Mon but consiste donc à montrer que si le dernier Foucault s’est concentré sur le souci de soi antique, c’était en vue d’opposer une résistance à la tendance contemporaine à l’herméneutique de soi.

Ce texte cherche à montrer que plusieurs allusions textuelles indiquent l'existence d'un lien significatif entre le Choeur de Dionysos et le νυκτ∊ρινος συλλογος dans les _Lois_ de Platon. Cette hypothèse inédite se trouve confirmée par un examen attentif des diverses correspondances entre les deux instances, examen qui permet en outre de préciser la nature de leur lien. Il semble d'abord que le Choeur de Dionysos ait pour rôle d'apporter un complément pédagogique de «musique appliquée» à l'élite politique et scientifique de la cité. Plus important encore, le Choeur Dionysien paraît être l'organe idéologique privilégié par lequel les gouvernants du Collège de veille peuvent donner une forme persuasive à leur science et exercer une influence civique puissante sur l'ensemble de la population.