Luc Brisson (born
10 March 1946 in
Saint-Esprit, Quebec
Saint-Esprit (French for "Holy Spirit") is a municipality in the Lanaudière region of Quebec, Canada, part of the Montcalm Regional County Municipality. It is located on both banks of the Saint-Esprit River, a tributary of the L'Assomption Ri ...
) 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, and is considered by some of his colleagues and students to be the greatest contemporary scholar on
Platonism
Platonism is the philosophy of Plato and philosophical systems closely derived from it, though contemporary platonists do not necessarily accept all of the doctrines of Plato. Platonism had a profound effect on Western thought. Platonism at l ...
.
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 Timaeus (or Timaios) is a Greek name. It may refer to:
* ''Timaeus'' (dialogue), a Socratic dialogue by Plato
*Timaeus of Locri, 5th-century BC Pythagorean philosopher, appearing in Plato's dialogue
*Timaeus (historian) (c. 345 BC-c. 250 BC), Greek ...
'' of Plato, under the direction of
Clémence Ramnoux at
Paris X Nanterre
Paris Nanterre University (French: ''Université Paris Nanterre''), formerly Paris-X and commonly referred to as Nanterre, is a public research university based in Nanterre, Paris, France. It is one of the most prestigious French universities, ma ...
. During 1971-1972 he was a visiting scholar at
Balliol College
Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...
,
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
. 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''.
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.
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
Pierre Hadot (; ; 21 February 1922 – 24 April 2010) was a French philosopher and historian of philosophy specializing in ancient philosophy, particularly Neoplatonism.
Life
In 1944, Hadot was ordained, but following Pope Pius XII’s e ...
, philosophy is “a spiritual exercise destined to transform the life of the individual who gives himself up to it.”
[''One Hundred Years of Neoplatonism in France.'']
Works
English Translations
* ''Inventing the Universe: Plato's Timaeus, the Big Bang, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge'', Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995.
* ''
Plato the Myth Maker
''Plato the Myth Maker'' (french: Platon, les mots et les mythes, lit, Plato, the words and the myths) is a book by the Canadian historian and anthropologist Luc Brisson, published in 1982. An English translation was published in 1998.
Background
...
'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
* ''Sexual ambivalence: Androgyny and Hermaphroditism in Graeco-Roman Antiquity'', Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.
* ''How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical Mythology'', University of Chicago Press, 2008.
* ''Plato's Philebus: selected papers from the Eighth Symposium Platonicum'', with
John M. Dillon, Sankt Augustin: Academia, 2010.
* ''Dialogues on Plato's Politeia (Republic): selected papers from the Ninth Symposium Platonicum'', with Noburu Notomi, Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2013.
* ''Neoplatonic Demons and Angels'', Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2018.
Original French Works
* ''Le mythe de Tirésias, essai d’analyse structurale'', Leiden, Brill, 1976
* ''Éros'', París, Flammarion, 1980
* ''Lectures de Platon''. Paris, J. Vrin, 2000. .
* ''Orphée et l’orphisme dans l’Antiquité greco-romaine'', Londres, Variorum, 1995
* ''Puissance et limites de la raison. Le probleme des valeurs'', Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1995, with Walter Meyerstein
* ''Poèmes magiques et cosmopologiques / Orphée'', Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1995
* ''Le sexe incertain: androgynie et hermaphrodisme dans l’antiquité gréco-romaine'', Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1997.
* ''Matière et devenir dans les philosophies anciennes'', Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2003, joint volume.
* ''Etudes platoniciennes VI'', Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2004, with Jean-François Pradeau.
* ''Lectures de Platon'', Paris, Vrin, 2000.
* ''Platon 1990-1995: Bibliographie'', Paris, J. Vrin, 1999. , with Frédéric Plin.
* ''Introduction a la Philosophie du mythe I et II'', Paris, Vrin, 1997–2000, with Christoph Jamme.
* ''Les écrits socratiques de Xénophon'', Paris, Presse Universitaire de France, 2004.
* ''Platon 1995-2000: Bibliographie'', Paris, J. Vrin, 2007. , with B. Castelnerac and F. Plin.
* ''Le même et l'autre dans la structure ontologique du Timée de Platon. Un commentaire systématique du Timée de Platon'', Paris, Klincksieck, 1974 (4th edn, with an added bibliography 1998–2015, Sankt Augustin Academia Verlag, 2015).
See the French Wikipedia article for a comprehensive list.
Translations of Plato
* ''Lettres'', Paris, Flammarion, 1987. (GF ; 466).
* ''Apologie de Socrate. Criton'', 3rd ed., Paris, Flammarion, 2005. .
* ''Timée. Critias''; 2nd ed., Paris, Garnier-Flammarion, 1995. .
* ''Parménide'', Paris, Garnier-Flammarion, 1994. .
* ''Le banquet'', 4th ed., Paris, Flammarion, 2005. .
* ''Phèdre'', 6th ed., together with ''La pharmacie de Platon'' by
Jacques Derrida. Paris, Flammarion, 2004. .
* ''Le politique'', Paris, Flammarion, 2003. (, with Jean-François Pradeau.
* ''Les lois''. I-VI, Paris, Flammarion, 2006. with Jean-François Pradeau.
* ''Les lois''. VII-XII; Paris, Flammarion, 2006. , with Jean-François Pradeau.
* ''Œuvres complètes'' in one volume, Luc Brisson (ed.), Flammarion, 2011. .
* ''Apologie de Socrate, Criton: traductions, introductions, notes, chronologie et bibliographies'' (5th corrected and updated edn), Flammarion, 2017.
See also
*
Diophantus of Abae
Diophantus ( grc, Διόφαντος), born Herais ( grc, Ἡραΐς; 2nd century BC), was an intersex person who lived in the second century BC and fought as a soldier with Alexander Balas. His life is known from the works of Diodorus Siculus.
...
References
External links
CNRS personal page
Online lecture: « L'actualité de Platon »
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brisson, Luc
1946 births
20th-century French historians
20th-century French philosophers
Canadian philosophers
Canadian historians of philosophy
French National Centre for Scientific Research awards
Continental philosophers
École pratique des hautes études alumni
Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada
French hellenists
French philologists
French scholars of ancient Greek philosophy
Living people
Members of the Lincean Academy
People from Lanaudière
Philosophy academics
Scholars of ancient philosophy
Université de Montréal alumni
University of Paris alumni
Canadian emigrants to France
Research directors of the French National Centre for Scientific Research