Il y a chez Philon des expressions pour parler du bien qui sont apparemment contradictoires ou qui, au moins, font difficulte. Dans quelques passages l’Alexandrin parle de Dieu en termes de bien ; ailleurs il en parle comme de cause ou source du bien ; dans autres textes, enfin, Dieu est meilleur que le bien.Le theme de la possibilite de connaitre Dieu aussi pose des problemes : d’un cote nous avons le Dieu inconnaissable dont meme pas le nom ne peut etre dit, d’un autre, le Dieu demiurgique et providentiel dont quelques personnages parviennent a avoir une connaissance, au moins indirecte et partielle. Telle vision est proportionnelle au niveau du voyant. Cet article s’interroge a propos d’une solution similaire concernant la perception du bien, saisi par les hommes de facon differente selon leur niveau. Non pas, alors, Dieu comme bien, comme bon, comme meilleur que le bien, per se, mais en relation aux hommes qui n’arrivent pas a atteindre to agathon et cherchent vainement a lui attribuer un nom – quoique impropre –, de determiner ce qui est au dela de toute nomination, qualification, definition.

Not many texts from the Greek classical literature focus on the nature of the Good more closely than Aristotle’ Metaphysics Lambda 10. The first section raises the question to be answered henceforth : is the Good to be conceived as anything separated or does it intrinsically belong to the universe, as a way of being ? And if both ways, how so, and which way first, and why ?According to a current reading, which is well established in the commentary tradition, Aristotle’s Good comes, first of all, as a separate being, namely God ; as a consequence, it also belongs to every kind of being. My aim is to show that this view, though playing a significant role in late Aristotelian scholastics, is scarcely supported in Aristotle’s text. In fact, it is unlikely to grasp whatever Aristotle has been willing to say in this final chapter of book Lambda, which brings to conclusion his overall theory about the principles of the world.

In Resp. 509c7 and 9 Socrates declares that he has omitted many things in the exposition of the analogy between the supreme Good and the sun. In fact Socrates’ exposition leaves some questions open which are seminal with regard to the interpretation of the aforesaid analogy : 1) Why Plato designates the sun as analogon of the Good ? 2) Why the original manifestation of the Good consists in a plurality of intelligible beings ? 3) Why the original manifestation of the Good consists not only in a purely objective intelligible being (νοητόν), but also in an intellect (νοῦς), that is in a form of consciousness ? 4) How can be explained the fact that Plato perceives the Good as origin not only of intelligible, but also of physical reality ? While the first question can be simply answered by referring to the infinite manifestativity of the Good, the other three questions require a significant effort in the field of speculation. Basing on some clues given by Plato in the exposition of the analogy between the Good and the sun, this article attempts to answer these questions by conjecturing that Plato could have presupposed the image of an infinite sphere consisting in intelligible light. This image, which could have already been presupposed by Parmenides, would offer a conceptual background capable of explaining on the one hand the unity of intelligibility (being) and intellect (consciousness) characterizing the original manifestation of the Good, on the other hand why in Plato’s perspective the Good can be perceived as origin not only of intelligible, but also of physical light.

This article aims to analyze the philosophical and religious message of Julian’s Hymn to King Helios. The emperor, using Iamblichean structures, shows how the First Cause, the Neoplatonic One, can interact with the layers or gradation below it, including the physical world ; his starting point is an original ‘pluralizing’ interpretation of the Sun analogy contained in Resp. VI 509b.However, Julian’s hymn has a political meaning, too ; it can be considered as a sort of manifesto of Julian’s imperial ideology. The parallel between the emperor and the sun – already present in the ancient rhetorical tradition – is reworked by the Apostate and is part of a complex metaphysical‑cosmological system, grounded on the principles of similarity (homoiotēs) and middleness (mesotēs). These concepts were subject to controversy between nicene and heterodox christians in the IV century. It is possible that these controversies were largely known by Julian and that he has consciously recalled them in his panegyric to Helios intellective, mediator and saviour.

Dans un travail anterieur j’ai essaye de montrer que Heidegger a finalement refuse de faire place, dans sa philosophie, a la notion platonicienne d’idee, bien qu’elle semblait, selon un certain point de vue, etre une figure capable de representer l’ouverture originelle de l’être qui était au coeur des recherches de Heidegger dans les annees qui entourent Etre et Temps. La raison de cela, a mon avis, est que l’approche aristotelicienne de la philosophie de Platon par Heidegger explicitement adoptee conduisait au bout du compte a interpreter l’idee de Platon comme une substance (et donc comme une figure de l’etant et non pas de l’etre). Mais qu’en est‑il de l’idee du bien, qui pour sa determination teleologique et pour sa collocation au‑dela de l’ousia d’un cote semblait repondre aux besoins propres a la pensee heideggerienne, et d’un autre cote etait plus refractaire a la substantialisation aristotelicienne (la Verdinglichung de P. Natorp) ? La these que je soutiens est que Heidegger, tout en ayant cultive pour longtemps le projet d’utiliser l’idee du bien comme un precedent important de son ontologie, a finalement decide que ce projet n’etait pas possible, parce que la connotation ethique de cette idee (qui non seulement ne l’interessait pas, mais qu’il detestait ouvertement) etait largement dominante sur l’aspect ontologique.

Les Stoïciens formulent une conception de la «substance», ou ousia, qui tient un rôle très important dans différentes parties de leur système, parmi lesquelles la cosmologie, la psychologie et l'éthique. Au concept de substance est liée ce qu.on appelle la table des quatre 'catégories'. Cette dernière est considéréepar certains interprètes récents comme l'issue d'un processus historique relativement long, qui trouve sa formulation achevée seulement avec Chrysippe. Les sources relatives à la théorie des quatre catégories forment, comme on le sait, une tradition indirecte et dans une large mesure également hostile, parce qu'elle est transmise surtout par Plutarque, Plotin et les commentateurs aristotéliciens des Catégories. Pourtant, ces sources permettent de saisir certaines des questions qui sont au centre de la réflexion stoïcienne sur l'être. Parmi les plus significatives, il y a la question du rapport entre substance et matière, et la question de la signification de la substance individuelle.

Le but de cet article est d’analyser l’interprétation qu’Averroès propose de l’étude de la génération spontanée développée par Aristote dans le chapitre 9du livre Z de la Métaphysique et montrer que pour Averroès le véritable enjeu de cette étude est celui de démontrer que l’agent et le produit de la génération ontune même forme. C’est cette thèse, en effet, qui d’après le Cordouan permet en dernière instance d’instaurer entre le monde céleste et le monde terrestre unecausalité, pour ainsi dire, «perpendiculaire» qui sauve à la fois l’efficacité des causes secondes et celle de la cause première qui agit par l’intermédiaire descauses célestes. Ce nouveau cadre cosmologico-ontologique apparaît manifestement comme le produit d’une stratégie menée directement contre Avicenne, carle but ultime d’Averroès est de substituer sa propre théorie de l’Artisan divin à la théorie platonicienne de la création démiurgique, à laquelle il assimile la théorieavicennienne d’une donation des formes par une Intelligence cosmique.

Being experienced (Erfahrung) means living. Around these two concepts: experience and living, I created this paper, as an approach to a pretty sensitive field of study, the religious one.The place of truth here can be read between the lines, but this issue stays open and needs more profound study. There is still a question: what is thepriority in studying religious experience: living as an inner and outer manifestation of a person, the analysis of a psychological report between the human being and the divine, the sacred, a research of a belief's truth or all these taken together.It is obvious that Truth stays in itself and its basis is in itself, and the report with the human is found through the act of living.

A socioanthropological debate in the 17th Century. The Myth of the Good Savage. The myth of the Good Savage was born and developed especially in the17th century, but it already had its ethnological bases in the geographical discoveries of the 15th century and in the colonial conquests. The French Enlightenment questions about the Occidental civilization and the moral principles that were the bases of the colonial expansions of the European powers. The cultural debate, extended by the anthropological science, was directed to the attempt to knowledge the submissive populations who became the colonial populations. Any kind of reduction of the social debate to the superiority of the Occidental human being is progressively surpassed by the comparison of two worlds, initially opposed and than more and more close to one another: the civilization world and the primitive one. In Voltaire’s stories the moment of the overtaking of the natural state, specific to the savage, is more important, through one necessary acculturation, while in the autobiographic and traveling stories, under the impulse of the ethnical similarities reminded by Rousseau and by the anthropological philosophers, is asserted the equality of people’s rights. In this way the natural condition is „sweetened” by the knowledge of the nature and of its laws, which is inspired from the recognition of the equality between social condition and birth. To fallow the laws of nature means to surpass the social conventions and to give back to the civilized man the naturalness of his own feelings, the innocence and the purity of his customs. In the rational way, to fallow the laws of the nature means the reconciliation between Rousseau’s principles and Voltaire’s ones. In this way the paradoxes of the civilized world and the ones of the primitive world are eliminated through the integration of the two in one united concept.