Latin Pre-Socratics. Heraclitus.
Beautiful Letters| N° d'inventaire | 17977 |
| Format | 13.5 x 21 |
| Détails | 193 p. paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2014 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | |
Collection "Fragments", bilingual from Belles Lettres. This book is the first collection, with introduction, translations and commentaries, of all the testimonies on Heraclitus preserved in Latin. Specialists of the Pre-Socratics have shown little interest in the Latin texts that have come down to us, considering them to be clumsy translations or useless accounts. This approach proves too reductive, because the Latin tradition, rich in quotations in both languages, can shed light on Greek sources. Thus, Cicero is the only one who reveals the discomfort of the Greek Neo-academicians in the face of a thinker who created virtually skeptical themes and who nevertheless appeared as the ancestor of Stoicism. The very fact that Heraclitus could have interested the Romans constitutes a considerable fact for the study of the acculturation of philosophy to a world other than the one in which it was born. He was considered the thinker of universal flux, while in Rome the notion of grauitas, that founding heaviness of all values, prevailed. The Romans should therefore have felt alienated from a philosopher who could appear to them as the incarnation of the leuitas of the Greeks, of their difficulty in facing duration. What this book shows, on the contrary, is their fascination with him and an original perception of his great themes. They were interested in the obscurity of his language, his legendary tears, his thought of fire; on the other hand, with the exception of Seneca, they felt little concerned by the theme of flux and its relationship to Stoicism. What were the paths that allowed the diffusion of his work in Latin? What became of his image with the advent of Christianity? These are some of the questions this book seeks to answer.
Collection "Fragments", bilingual from Belles Lettres. This book is the first collection, with introduction, translations and commentaries, of all the testimonies on Heraclitus preserved in Latin. Specialists of the Pre-Socratics have shown little interest in the Latin texts that have come down to us, considering them to be clumsy translations or useless accounts. This approach proves too reductive, because the Latin tradition, rich in quotations in both languages, can shed light on Greek sources. Thus, Cicero is the only one who reveals the discomfort of the Greek Neo-academicians in the face of a thinker who created virtually skeptical themes and who nevertheless appeared as the ancestor of Stoicism. The very fact that Heraclitus could have interested the Romans constitutes a considerable fact for the study of the acculturation of philosophy to a world other than the one in which it was born. He was considered the thinker of universal flux, while in Rome the notion of grauitas, that founding heaviness of all values, prevailed. The Romans should therefore have felt alienated from a philosopher who could appear to them as the incarnation of the leuitas of the Greeks, of their difficulty in facing duration. What this book shows, on the contrary, is their fascination with him and an original perception of his great themes. They were interested in the obscurity of his language, his legendary tears, his thought of fire; on the other hand, with the exception of Seneca, they felt little concerned by the theme of flux and its relationship to Stoicism. What were the paths that allowed the diffusion of his work in Latin? What became of his image with the advent of Christianity? These are some of the questions this book seeks to answer.