Sciences, Philosophie, Histoire – UMR 7219, laboratoire SPHERE

This sub-axis is, like the other sub-axes, inscribed in the development of Platonic and Aristotelian traditions. It brings together works devoted to Socratic ethics and politics, to Platonic and Aristotelian political philosophy, and to the reception and transformation of Greek political thought in the Arab and Latin Middle Ages. An important cleavage takes place according to whether one favors the Platonic or Aristotelian tradition, as one sees when one develops the medieval political thought in John of Salisbury before the reception of Aristotelianism.

A monthly seminar on Socratic Ethics and Politics is organized as part of the ANR JCJC "SOCRATES" project, led by D. El Murr. Initiated in 2011-2012 with the translation and commentary on Aristotelian doxography on Socrates and the Socratic Letters, this work will continue with the study of the Greek and Latin patristic doxography of the different lives of Socrates (in Diogenes Laertius, In the Souda, and in Eudocias), as well as in the Socratic gnomology, essentially present in Stobe.

As regards Aristotle’s tradition of ethics and politics, Pierre Pellegrin (translator of Aristotle’s Politics) and Annick Jaulin will continue the systematic re-reading of this work. Two international symposia at the Michel de Montaigne University in Bordeaux have already been devoted to the rereading of the Politique : International Symposium, Aristotle and Political Excellence, June 2008 ; Aristotle, Policies IV-VI, June 2012. The proceedings of the 2008 symposium are scheduled to be published by Peeters (Belgium) in 2013. It is a question of renewing the hermeneutic framework projected on the text by showing how a number Of philological problems are displaced as well as transformed the logic of its reception (Machiavelli had read Aristotle quite well). Another international symposium is planned on this theme in 2014.

As part of the study of the reception of Platonic politics in the Middle Ages, a work was begun on the work of Jean de Salisbury, considered one of the first medieval thinkers of politics (Christophe Grellard). The challenge of examining the constitution of medieval political theories before the rediscovery of Aristotle’s policy in 1270 is to uncover the structures of governmentality. These are organized around two main axes, of which Jean de Salisbury is one of the first to propose a theory, within the framework of the metaphor of the political body : first, a theory of the hierarchy, secondly A theory of officia (duties, functions). This examination is based primarily on a workshop of reading and translation of the Policraticus, organized by C. Grellard and F. Lachaud (University of Lorraine), and which seeks to confront this text with its ancient and medieval sources, From Plato to the Carolingian mirrors. At the same time, the Jean de Salisbury Workshop (C. Grellard, F. Lachaud and Y. Sassier), organized by Paris 1, Paris 4 and the University of Lorraine, invites all those who work on Jean Of Salisbury to come and present their work, makes it possible to put this work in perspective and to put it to the test of the discussion.