Benoît Castelnérac

La question de l’union entre sagesse et bonheur se situe au cœur même de la tradition morale. Dans la perspective la plus traditionnelle, croître en sagesse revient automatiquement à augmenter son bonheur. La philosophie est ainsi la voie royale pour parvenir à un bonheur plus durable que dans la conception vulgaire, en détachant l’esprit des choses inessentielles et en l’amenant à connaître les vérités qui lui fourniront l’aliment le plus approprié à sa nature réelle. Néanmoins, le lien analytique entre sagesse et bonheur a également été critiqué par la démonstration que l’effondrement de l’un des deux termes n’entraînait pas nécessairement l’effondrement de l’autre. Au premier chef de ces critiques se situent les sceptiques, qui de l’Antiquité à la période moderne s’accordent à nier la possibilité d’une connaissance réelle, tout en maintenant généralement la possibilité d’être heureux. Inversement, cette accessibilité du bonheur a pu être critiquée sans que soit remise en question la connaissance elle-même : c’est ce que révèlent les philosophies tragiques, qui assimilent plutôt sagesse et souffrance. Par la diversité des contributions, qui puisent principalement dans les traditions ancienne et moderne, mais offrent également quelques perspectives contemporaines et non euro-centrées, le présent volume illustre l’affrontement de ces deux grands courants dans l’histoire de la philosophie, et permet de penser à nouveaux frais ce problème essentiel à la morale qu’est l’utilité ou l’inutilité de la connaissance pour être heureux. Sigmund Freud, et surtout Jacques Lacan, m’ont apporté l’éclairage théorique nécessaire.

The essays collected in this volume focus on the Ancient Greeks' perception of foreigners and of foreign lands as potential sources of knowledge. They aim at exploring the hypothesis that the most adventurous intellectuals saw foreign lands and foreigners as repositories of knowledge that the Greeks σοφοί had to engage with, in the hope of bringing back home valuables in the form of new ideas. It is a common place to state that the "Greeks" displayed xenophobia, which is probably best exemplified in the binary and ethnocentric division of humanity in two groups: the Greek world (i.e., the hellenophones) and the others, the Barbarians - those who speak foreign languages. This attitude of insularism and defiance, however, did not hinder the curiosity of Greek and Roman societies towards strangers. Lycurgus, Pythagoras, Democritus, etc.: there is a long list of sages and philosophers who travelled around the world for a significant period of time. The Greeks had a rich and varied relationship with foreign lands and people, which made possible a real circulation of knowledge throughout the Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic times; this is also true of the Roman Empire. Each of the articles included in this collective work explore one aspect of the "stranger" as a possible source of knowledge, with contributions mostly focused on Plato, Xenophon, Democritus, Aristotle, Diogenes, Cicero and Galen.

This is the first French translation of Galen’s De optima doctrina, which articulates his view “On the Best Teaching”. The translation is preceded by an introduction on the context in which this text was written, especially on the relationship of Galen towards scepticism in general and Favorinus of Arles in particular. Although it is hard to characterize this “treatise” in terms of its date of redaction and its form, nonetheless it yields clear information on Galen’s critiques with regards to the “Platonists” and the “Pyrrhonists”.

This paper deals with the philosophical purpose of the Gorgias. I argue that this dialogue, both in its form and content, yields a dramatic demonstration that the success of the Socratic inquiry depends on the character of his interlocutors and their sense of what is shameful or not. To read the Gorgias is to inquire whether Socrates’ refutations have demonstrated anything. Although there is no definition of justice, happiness or the art of rhetoric, the dialogue nevertheless shows that justice and trustworthiness concern both the practitioners of rhetoric and those of dialectic.

This paper is devoted to theParmenides’methodological preamble, in which Parmenides teaches how one is to lead a dialectical inquiry. The method presented there recalls the goddess’s advice, as presented by the historical Parmenides in his Poem, to think “the way of being and the way of non-being.” In Plato’sParmenides, these two ways are seen as manners of examining a hypothesis. I explain that the method is exhaustive insofar as it requires repeatedly asking what the consequences are if a thing does exist, or does not. Lastly, I suggest that the method should be distinguished from other dialectical practices found in Plato’s work.

Minha intenção é a de mostrar como uma leitura cética dos diálogos socráticos de Platão permite explicar alguns impasses nos quais resulta a interpretação dogmática desses diálogos. Enumero aqui, de maneira programática, os elementos que permitirão sustentar que, nos diálogos de juventude, Platão desenvolveu uma lógica que conduz a uma posição forte sobre os limites do conhecimento e do intelectualismo. Essa interpretação se inspira em traços dominantes do ceticismo de Arcesilau (séc. III a.C.). Mostrarei como os diálogos de Platão podem ser lidos como a inspiração por trás da posição de Arcesilau quando este afirma que seria preciso suspender o julgamento e, na falta de certeza, seguir o que é razoável (eulogon). De uma parte, o estudo do estatuto paradoxal da ignorância socrática e do papel do oráculo na Apologia permite discernir o funcionamento de uma lógica propícia a gerar aporias. De outra parte, a análise do problema da virtude-ciência no Protágoras e no Laques permite exibir os mecanismos de uma argumentação cuja conclusão é a impossibilidade de defender hic e nunc uma ética estritamente intelectualista.

I argue that, in the Prior Analytics, higher and above the well-known ‘reduction through impossibility’ of figures, Aristotle is resorting to a general procedure of demonstrating through impossibility in various contexts. This is shown from the analysis of the role of adunaton in conversions of premises and other demonstrations where modal or truth-value consistency is indirectly shown to be valid through impossibility. Following the meaning of impossible as ‘non-existent’, the system is also completed by rejecting any invalid combinations of terms in deductions or conversions. The notion of impossibility reaches the core of Aristotle's system in the Prior Analytics. On the one hand, the use of adunaton shows that he is following one of the two requisites for demonstrative science formulated in the Posterior Analytics, i.e. to demonstrate that it is impossible for things to be otherwise than stated. On the other hand, that demonstrations through impossibility are rooted in the notion of contradiction supp..

Normal 0 21 Minha intenção é a de mostrar como uma leitura cética dos diálogos socráticos de Platão permite explicar alguns impasses nos quais resulta a interpretação dogmática desses diálogos. Enumero aqui, de maneira programática, os elementos que permitirão sustentar que, nos diálogos de juventude, Platão desenvolveu uma lógica que conduz a uma posição forte sobre os limites do conhecimento e do intelectualismo. Essa interpretação se inspira em traços dominantes do ceticismo de Arcesilau (séc. III a.C.). Mostrarei como os diálogos de Platão podem ser lidos como a inspiração por trás da posição de Arcesilau quando este afirma que seria preciso suspender o julgamento e, na falta de certeza, seguir o que é razoável ( eulogon ). De uma parte, o estudo do estatuto paradoxal da ignorância socrática e do papel do oráculo na Apologia permite discernir o funcionamento de uma lógica propícia a gerar aporias. De outra parte, a análise do problema da virtude-ciência no Protágoras e no Laques permite exibir os mecanismos de uma argumentação cuja conclusão é a impossibilidade de defender hic e nunc uma ética estritamente intelectualista.