La présence des paradoxes stoïciens dans l’œuvre de poètes dont les liens avec le Portique sont divers révèle le statut particulier occupé par ces formules déconcertantes dans la pensée romaine. Après l’étude des origines du paradoxe et de ses transformations au cours du développement des écoles philosophiques grecques, la thèse examine la spécificité du paradoxe stoïcien et son adaptation au monde romain. Contre toute attente, les Stoïciens ne renoncent pas à ces affirmations déconcertantes. Grâce à leur efficacité rhétorique, et malgré l’hostilité qu’ils suscitent par ailleurs, les paradoxes sont repris dans des textes étrangers au Portique. Leur adaptation dans des œuvres poétiques - satires de Lucilius, Horace et Perse, épodes, odes et épîtres d’Horace et épopée lucanienne - pourrait nous faire considérer qu’ils sont pervertis et détournés de leur fin première. En effet, le but de ces poètes n’est nullement de faire adhérer le lecteur à l’intransigeante perfection dessinée par les paradoxes stoïciens. Mais le lien entre les paradoxes que l’on trouve dans ce corpus poétique et leur origine stoïcienne est en réalité bien plus intime. Selon des modalités différentes, chaque poète reprend l’essentiel de la démarche paradoxale du Portique : il s’agit bien de réveiller les consciences, et de souligner la radicale nouveauté de la vérité que l’on veut faire entendre, tout en s’assurant que le lecteur peut s’y rallier. La virulence de Lucilius, le ton de confidence horatien, la stupeur lucanienne et l’obscurité de Perse constituent les voies distinctes mais convergentes par lesquelles est menée l’entreprise subtile consistant à choquer pour mieux convertir. / The presence of Stoic paradoxes in the works of poets whose links with the Stoa are complex reveals the particular status of these incongruous formulas in Roman thought. After studying the origins of paradox and its transformations during the development of the Greek philosophical schools, the thesis considers the particularity of Stoic paradox and its adaptation to the Roman world. Unexpectedly, the Stoics do not sign away these disconcerting assertions. By their rhetorical effectiveness, and despite the hostility they also arouse, paradoxes appear in texts which do not belong to the Stoa. Their adaptation in poetic works – satires of Lucilius, Horace and Persius, epodes, odes and epistles of Horace, and Lucanian epic - could make us consider that they are perverted and diverted from their first aim. Indeed, the purpose of these poets is not at all to have the reader adhere to the uncompromising perfection outlined by the Stoic paradoxes. But the link between the paradoxes we find in this poetic corpus and their Stoic origin is actually much more intimate. By different ways, each poet takes up the main of the Stoic paradoxical approach : it consists in waking up the minds, and showing the radical novelty of the truth which one wants to reveal, making sure, at the same time, that the reader can join it. Lucilius’ virulence, Horace’s intimacy, Lucan’s daze and Persius’ abstruse language constitute the different but converging ways by which one subtly undertakes to shock in order to convert.

The thesis has two aims. The first is to show that a more charitable approach to Manilius, such as Lucretian scholarship has exhibited in recent decades, yields a wealth of exciting discoveries that earlier scholarship has not thought to look for. The thesis' contributions to this project centre on three aspects of the poem: (I) the sophistication of its didactic techniques, which draw and build on various predecessors in the tradition of didactic poetry; (II) its cosmological, physical and theological basis, which has no exact parallel elsewhere in either astrology or natural philosophy, and despite clear debts to various traditions, is demonstrably the invention of our poet; (III) the extent to which rationales and physical bases are offered for points of astrological theory – something unparalleled in other astrological texts until Ptolemy. The second, related aim of the thesis is to offer a more satisfying interpretation of the poem as a whole than those that have hitherto been put forward. Again the cue comes from Lucretius: though the DRN is at first sight primarily an exposition of Epicurean physics, it becomes clear that its principal concern is ethical, steering its reader away from superstition, the fear of death and other damaging thought-patterns. Likewise, the Astronomica makes the best sense when its principal message is taken to be not the set of astrological statements that make up its bulk, but the poem’s peculiar world- view, for which those statements serve as an evidential basis. It is, on this reading, just as much a poem ‘on the nature of the universe', which provides the title of my thesis. At the same time, however, it finds new truth in the conventional assumption that Manilius is first and foremost an advocate of astrology: it reveals his efforts to defend astrology at all costs, uncovers strategies for making the reader more amenable to further astrological study and practice, and contends that someone with Manilius' set of beliefs must first have been a devotee of astrology before embracing a natural- philosophical perspective such as his. The thesis is divided into prolegomena and commentaries, which pursue the aims presented above in two different but complementary ways. The prolegomena comprise five chapters, outlined below: Chapter 1 presents a comprehensive survey of the evidence for the cosmology, physics and theology of the Astronomica, and discovers that a coherent and carefully thought-out world-view underlies the poem. It suggests that this Stoicising world- view is drawn exclusively from a few philosophical works of Cicero, but is nonetheless the product of careful synthesis. Chapter 2 explores the relationship between this world-view and earlier Academic criticism of astrology and concludes that the former has been developed as a direct response to these criticisms, specifically as set out in Cicero’s De divinatione. Chapter 3 examines the later impact of Manilius’ astrological world-view, as far as it can be detected, assessing the evidence for the early reception of his poem and its role in the history of philosophical astrology. The overwhelming impression is that the work was received as a serious contribution to debate over the physical and theological underpinnings of astrology; its world-view was absorbed into the mainstream of astrological theory and directly targeted in the next wave of Academic criticism of astrology. Chapter 4 looks at the more subtle strategies of persuasion that are at work in the Astronomica. It observes, first, a number of structural devices and word- patternings that set up the poem as a model of the universe it describes. This first part of the chapter concludes by asking what didactic and/or philosophical purpose such modelling could serve. The second part examines how, by a gradual process of habituation-through-metaphor, the reader is made familiar with the conventional astrological way of thinking about the world, which might otherwise have struck him as a baffling mass of contradictions. The third part looks at the use of certain rhetorical figures, particularly paradox, to re-emphasise important physical claims and assist the process of habituation. Chapter 5 takes on the task of making sense of the Astronomica as a whole, seeking out an underlying rationale behind the choice and ordering of material, accounting as well as is possible for its apparently premature end, and asking why, if it is a serious piece of natural-philosophical teaching, it so often appears to be self- undermining. A short epilogue asks what path can have led Manilius to embark on such a work as the Astronomica. It offers a sketch of the author as an adherent (but not a practitioner) of astrology, who had developed a philosophical system first as scaffolding for an art under threat, but had then come to see more importance in that philosophical underpinning than in the activities of prediction. The lemmatised commentaries that follow cover several passages from the first book of the Astronomica. As crucial as the remaining four books are to his natural-philosophical teaching, it is in this part of the poem that Manilius concentrates the direct expositions of his world-view. Like the chapters, the commentaries' two concerns are the nature and the exposition of the work's world-view. Each of the commentaries has its own focus, but all make full use of the format to tease out the poet's teaching strategies and watch his techniques operate 'in real time' over protracted stretches of text. Finally, an appendix presents the case for the Astronomica as the earliest evidence for the use of plane-image star maps. At two points in his tour of the night sky Manilius describes the positions of constellations in a way that suggests that he is consulting a stereographic projection of each hemisphere, and that he is assuming his reader has one to hand, too. This observation casts valuable new light on the development of celestial cartography.

Contemporary debates in ethics are characterised by opposing views that appear to be irreconcilable. Rational debates seem to be making no headway due to the fact that the incompatibilities of the different views seem to lie within the very premises of the different arguments. These debates acquire an interminable character, because representatives of the different standpoints refuse to accept each others’ premises. MacIntyre attributes this state of affairs to the failure of the Enlightenment project. In their attempt to create a universally valid moral system the Enlightenment philosophers discredited the ethical traditions and emphasized reason as the only authority on these matters. The supposedly “universal” rational arguments are built on premises the Enlightenment thinkers inherited from the exact same ethical traditions whose authority they consciously undermined. The irony of the Enlightenment project is therefore that it caused its own failure. MacIntyre believes that the Enlightenment thinkers were mistaken in undermining the authority of all the ethical traditions. He argues that the authority of the critical traditions is legitimate. A critical tradition is a moral tradition where some form of rational enquiry is embodied in the tradition itself. MacIntyre defends the authority of the Aristotelian tradition as the critical tradition per se. In my own enquiry I defend the authority of the Stoic tradition. I attempt to point out the flaws in MacIntyre’s understanding of the Stoics and argue that in some respects the Stoic tradition is a better alternative to the Aristotelian one. After having justified the authority of the Stoic tradition I take a closer look at what their ethics entail. The Stoics have what Cottingham refers to as a “synoptic” conception of philosophy. This means that they tried to integrate all the aspects of human understanding into a single system. Therefore, if one wishes to give a comprehensive picture of their ethics it is necessary to explain their philosophical work on physics and logic as well. I do so by comparing their understanding of physics to the contemporary understanding thereof. The Stoics believed that philosophy is not an abstract theoretical discipline, but rather a way of life. Theoretical arguments play an important role in so far as it helps us to comprehend the nature of the good, but ultimately philosophy is about helping us to live a good life. In light of this understanding I argue that they conceived of ethics as the art of living. The Stoics also believed that one could practice ethics as a form of therapy for our emotions. They believed that emotions such as anger and depression are caused by misguided ways of thinking and that ultimately the good life would cultivate our spirit and enable us to become more resistant to these types of emotions. Simultaneously it will enable us to experience more rational emotions such as joy. The ultimate aim of my research project is to highlight the important contributions the Stoics can make to the crisis we are currently experiencing in ethical discourse. / Dissertation (MA (Philosophy))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Philosophy / unrestricted

Im neunten Buch von Lucans Bellum civile übernimmt Cato der Jüngere den durch Pompeius´ Ermordung in Ägypten vakant gewordenen Oberbefehl über die bei Pharsalos von Caesar geschlagenen pompejanischen Truppen. Cato versucht die republikanische Verfassung vor dem Tyrannen Caesar zu retten. Aus dem verbrecherischen Bürgerkrieg zweier Despoten, Pompeius und Caesar, ist somit ein bellum iustum geworden (9, 292-293). Nachdem Cato Pompeius durch eine laudatio funebris die letzte Ehre erwiesen hat (9, 190-214), besteht er eine Reihe von Bewährungsproben und erweist sich als idealer Feldherr. Zur Charakterisierung Catos greift Lucan verschiedene literarische Traditionen auf. Cato übertrifft den homerischen Odysseus (9, 294-299. 388-389) und Alexander den Großen (9, 268-269. 493-510. 564-586); er entspricht in vollkommener Weise dem Feldherrenideal, wie es sich bei den römischen Historikern der Republik (Sallust; Livius) findet (9,294-296. 379-406. 587-593). Zentrum und Höhepunkt des neunten Buchs stellt Lucans Bewertung Catos in 9, 587-604 dar. Die Triumphzüge des Pompeius und des Marius sind geringer einzuschätzen als die Leistung Catos, obwohl er schließlich Caesar unterliegt. Entsprechend der stoischen Ethik bemißt sich der Wer einer Leistung nicht nach dem äußeren Erfolg -dieser hängt allein von der Fortuna ab- , sondern nach der vorbehaltlosen Erfüllung des moralisch Gebotenen. Für den Erhalt der Republik ist Cato in den Tod gegangen; er ist mulitärischer Held und pater patriae; er verdient göttliche Verehrung.Die stoische Moralphilosphie ist Kern der Poetik Lucans; daneben greift er jedoch auch auf andere stoische Theoreme zurück. Vor allem die Naturschilderungen (9, 303-318. 420-420-444. 444-492) lehnen sich an stoische Lehre an. Zuweilen finden sich auch Rückgriffe auf Lucrez (9, 76-77. 315-318. 471-472). Lucan ist poeta doctus; er gibt eine wissenschaftlich-rationale Weltdeutung.Der Stil Lucans ist geprägt durch das Paradox und die Sentenz. Dem Leser wird auf diese Weise die Ungerechtigkeit des Schicksals vor Augen geführt, das es zugelassen hat, daß Rom unter die Herrschaft von Tyrannen geraten ist. Lucan beabsichtigt die Empörung seiner Leser hervorzurufen und ermuntert sie, gegen die Kaiser Widerstand zu leisten.

Rubens is known as a painter; he should also be defined as an art theorist. Following Robert Williams’ theory that Early Modern art became philosophical, I believe that style can connote art theoretical interests and philosophical models, and that in Rubens’s case, these included the classical Stoic. While it would be possible to trace Rubens’s commitment to Stoicism in his subject matter, I investigate it in his style, taking a Baxandalian approach to inferential criticism. I focus on Rubens’s formal choices, his varied brushwork, and his ability to create a vibrant picture plane. My study is divided into chapters on Ethics, Logic, and Physics. In Chapter One I treat Stoic moral philosophy as an influence in the design of Rubens’s paintings, consider similarities between classical and Early Modern interest in viewer/reader response, and argue that Baroque artists could use style to avoid dogma while targeting viewers’ personal transformation. In Chapter Two I focus on Rhetoric, a section of the Stoic philosophy of Logic. Stoic Logic privileged truth: that is, it centred on investigating existing reality. As such, Stoic rhetorical theory and the classical literature influenced by it promoted a style that is complex and nuanced. I relate this to the Early Modern interest in copia, arguing that this includes Rubens’s painterly style which, apropos copia, should be better termed the Abundant Style. In Chapter Three I explore similarities between Stoic Natural Philosophy and the Early Modern artistic interest in the unified visual field. The Stoics defined the natural world as eternally moving and mixing; with force fields, energy, and elements in constant relationships of cause/effect. The Stoic concept of natural sympathy was a notion of material/energetic interrelatedness in which the world was seen as a living body, and the divine inhered in matter. I consider ways that these classical Stoic concepts of transformation, realism, and vivified matter might be discerned in Rubens’s style. / Graduate / 2023-12-14

Cette recherche vise à cerner la complexité du concept du soi (heauton) dans la philosophie stoïcienne de l’empereur Marc Aurèle. Dans un premier temps, il s’agira de poser les bases de la physique stoïcienne qui nous permettent de saisir le paradoxe de l’existence d’individualités singulières au sein du grand Tout universel. Nous étudierons, pour ce faire, la théorie corporéiste stoïcienne ainsi que les concepts d’idia poiotês et d’oikeiôsis forgés par l’ancien stoïcisme, mais aussi la prohairesis épictéenne. Cela nous conduira à traiter du concept d’hêgemonikon central dans la conception du soi chez Marc Aurèle. Dans un deuxième temps, nous aborderons les caractéristiques de la partie dirigeante de l’âme par l’entremise de l’étude des disciplines du soi et de son altérité intérieure. Ainsi nous verrons comment le soi ne se présente pas comme un donné fixe, mais comme un espace relationnel en développement constant. Finalement, nous nous pencherons sur la question de la construction du soi, ce qui nous mènera à considérer l’importance du travail sur soi pour l’empereur Marc Aurèle. La problématique qui guidera notre recherche est celle qui vise à saisir ce qui constitue essentiellement le soi alors que celui-ci se présente comme un espace en aménagement constant, ouvert à l’altérité et qui n’est pas donné une fois pour toutes, mais construit. / This research aims to identify the complexity of the concept of the self in the Stoic philosophy of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. First, we will lay the bases of Stoic physics which allow us to grasp the paradox of the existence of singular individualities within the great universal Whole. To do this, we will study the Stoic corporeist theory as well as the concepts of idia poiotês and oikeiôsis forged by ancient Stoicism, but also the Epictean prohairesis. This will lead us to address the concept of hêgemonikon which is central in the conception of the self for Marcus Aurelius. Secondly, we will approach the characteristics of the ruling part of the soul through the study of the disciplines of the self and its interior otherness. Thus, we will see how the self is not a fixed datum, but a relational space in constant evolution. Finally, we will address the question of self-construction, which will lead us to consider the importance of the work on oneself for Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The question that will guide our research is to grasp what essentially constitutes the self when it is presented as a space in constant development, open to otherness and which is not given once and for all but constructed.

No / This book takes a novel approach to the study of male eating disorders – an area that is often dominated by clinical discourses. The study of eating disorders in men has purportedly suffered from a lack of dedicated attention to personal and socio-cultural aspects. Delderfield tackles this deficiency by spotlighting a set of personal accounts written by a group of men who have experiences of disordered eating. The text presents critical interpretations that aim to situate these experiences in the social and cultural context in which these disorders occur. This discursive work is underpinned by an eclectic scholarly engagement with social psychology and sociology literature around masculinities, embodiment and fatness, belonging, punishment, stigma, and control; leading to understandings about relationships with food, body and self. This is undertaken with a reflexive element, as the personal intersects with the professional. This text will appeal to students, scholars and clinicians in social sciences, humanities, and healthcare studies, including public health.

Lorsque, au IVe siècle, les Romains rendirent hommage à la sagesse, ils érigèrent une statue de Pythagore. Pline l’Ancien s’en étonne : pourquoi n’a-t-on pas plutôt choisi Socrate ? Cette interrogation reflète l’intégration progressive de la figure du philosophe athénien à Rome, depuis le IIe siècle av. J.C. jusqu’à l’œuvre de Sénèque qui intériorise le modèle socratique d’enseignement.Est d’abord réuni le corpus exhaustif des occurrences de Socrate dans une perspective diachronique. Les passages sont contextualisés dans l’économie de l’œuvre, son genre et les objectifs de chaque auteur. La source grecque est, si possible, identifiée : la présence de Socrate sert alors de marqueur de la lecture des textes de Platon, de Xénophon, mais aussi d’autres Socratiques comme Eschine.Dans un second temps, les textes sont étudiés selon des regroupements chronologiques et thématiques : est alors définie une double réception de Socrate, entre valorisation et mépris, qui s’articule autour de sa grandeur, son rôle fondateur pour les écoles de pensée hellénistiques, sa mort courageuse et, à rebours, sa dénonciation de la rhétorique ou le caractère inutile des propos des Socratiques pour lutter contre les passions. Au mode de vie philosophique qu’incarne Socrate s’oppose parfois celui défini par le mos maiorum, ou encore par le poète élégiaque. Se dévoilent différentes interprétations de Socrate, ancêtre du cynisme et du stoïcisme, probabiliste ou transcendantaliste, ouvrant ainsi la voie à un transfert culturel des œuvres, mais aussi de leurs exégèses. Que ce soit dans une perspective historiographique, philosophique ou littéraire, Socrate devient peu à peu un exemplum, un modèle de vie. / When, in 343 B.C., the Romans paid tribute to wisdom, they built a statue of Pythagoras. Why was not Socrates chosen instead ? Pliny the Elder wonders. This interrogation reflects the progressive integration of the figure of the Athenian philosopher in Rome, from the second century B.C. until the work of Seneca which internalises the Socratic teaching model.At first, the exhaustive corpus of the occurrences of Socrates is gathered in a diachronic perspective. The passages are contextualized in the entire work, its genre and the purposes of every author. The Greek sources are, when possible, identified : the presence of Socrates serves then as a marker for the reading of the texts of Plato, Xenophon, but also other Socratics like Aeschines.Secondly, the texts are studied according to chronological and thematic groupings : a double reception of Socrates is then defined, between praise and contempt, which articulates around his greatness, his founding role for the Hellenistic philosophic schools, his courageous death and, on the contrary, his denunciation of rhetoric or the fact that Socratics’ theories are useless to fight against passions. The philosophic lifestyle embodied by Socrates sometimes contrasts with the one defined by the mos maiorum, or by the elegiac poets. Various interpretations of Socrates come to light, as an ancestor of Cynicism and Stoicism, as a sceptic or a transcendentalist, paving the way for a cultural transfer of the Greek philosophical works but also of their exegeses. Whether it be in an historiographic, philosophic or literary perspective, Socrates gradually becomes an exemplum, a model of life.

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Cette étude de philosophie comparée propose une herméneutique de l’idée de soi à partir d’une analyse de la dimension ascétique de la question « quel soi ? », qui se manifeste à travers les disciplines de libération mises en place par les traditions du Portique et du Zen. Déclinée sous différentes formes, cette question constitue la pierre angulaire des pratiques de soi propres aux deux traditions. Il apparaît que sa principale fonction est celle d’orienter l’idée de soi, eu égard à une polarité soi ↔ non-soi, afin de parvenir à la condition du sage, celle d’un accord libérateur avec une nature originelle commune à tous. Ainsi, au lieu de désigner simplement un fondement ontologique – réel ou supposé – l’idée de soi joue alors bien plutôt un rôle de vecteur, qui, selon son orientation,permet ou non d’actualiser cet accord. Par la prise en compte comparative du rôle de la négation (détachement) de soi, cette étude cherche donc à élargir le spectre des processus de subjectivation ou des pratiques de soi et, ainsi, de mettre au jour un aspect assez négligé par l’histoire occidentale de la subjectivité. Par là même, cette thèse permet de mieux comprendre comment une (méta)physique stoïcienne du plein peut être à même de penser la négation (détachement) de soi et, inversement, comment une métaphysique bouddhiste de la vacuité peut développer une pensée de la subjectivité morale et de la responsabilité / This study in comparative philosophy offers a hermeneutics of the idea of self. It explores the ascetic dimension of the question “what self?” apparent across the various disciplines of liberation developed by the Stoic and Zen traditions. In its diverse guises, this question is the cornerstone of specific practices of the self within these traditions. As such, its main function is to guide the idea of self, with regard to the polarity self ↔ non-self, in order to achieve the status of the sage, which represents a kind of harmony with an original nature that is common to all individuals. Therefore, rather than simply designating an ontological foundation – real or alleged – the idea of self has the role of a vector, which, depending on its orientation, allows one to actualise (or not) this harmony. Through comparative analysis of the role of negation (detachment) of the self, this study seeks to broaden the spectrum of the processes of subjectification or practices of the self and, thus, to bring to light an aspect that has been somewhat neglected by the Western history of subjectivity. In doing so, this thesis enables better understanding of how the full-bodied (meta)physics of the Stoics is able to think the negation (detachment) of the self and, conversely, of how the Buddhist metaphysics of emptiness can develop an idea of moral subjectivity and responsibility