Luc Brisson

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Luc Brisson
Born(1946-03-10)March 10, 1946
OccupationHistorian of philosophy
Awards CNRS Bronze medal
HonorsFellow of Lincean Academy and Royal Society of Canada

Luc Brisson (born 10 March 1946 in Saint-Esprit, Quebec) is a Canadian (and from 1986 also French) historian of philosophy and anthropologist of antiquity. He is emeritus director of research at the CNRS in France, [1] and is considered by some of his colleagues and students to be the greatest contemporary scholar on Platonism. [2]

Contents

Life

Brisson was born in a small agricultural village in Québec in 1946. All his education was received in the ecclesiastically administered and staffed schools, seminaries, and universities of Québec. At the end of the sixties he joined the general movement of Québec students to Paris, where he undertook a thesis on the Timaeus of Plato, under the direction of Clémence Ramnoux at Paris X Nanterre. During 1971-1972 he was a visiting scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. His studies include several years of Sanskrit. Upon the completion of his Ph.D. thesis, and through the support of Jean Pépin, who shared his interest in the ancient treatment of myth, Brisson was attached to the CNRS in 1974. In 1975 he was awarded the Zographos Prize for his systematic commentary on Timaeus, Le Même et l’Autre dans la structure ontologique du Timée de Platon. [3]

Despite his wider philosophical interests, he says that “I can be defined as ‘an historian of philosophy’ whose domain of research is Plato and Platonism.” His historical work includes several studies of Neoplatonism including new French translations of Plotinus. [4]

Brisson’s range and quantity of publications has been very large, but the topic of the relation between myth and reason has dominated. At home neither in Québec nor in France, Brisson feels himself to be a kind of Platonic “nomad.” For him, as for Pierre Hadot, philosophy is “a spiritual exercise destined to transform the life of the individual who gives himself up to it.” [5]

Works

English translations

Original French works

See the French Wikipedia article for a comprehensive list.

Translations of Plato

See also

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References

  1. Author page at the University of Chicago Press. Personal page at CNRS.
  2. “Le plus grand spécialiste de Platon”.
  3. Personal page at CNRS.
  4. “One Hundred Years of Neoplatonism in France: A Brief Philosophical History”, by Wayne Hankey, in Studies in Philosophical Theology, Leuven/Paris/Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2006, pp. 97-248.
  5. One Hundred Years of Neoplatonism in France.