The purpose of this thesis is to relate the six personalities dealt with by Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Representative Men to such proportions of the essayist's ideas as may be applied to these six representative types, to the end of arriving at an understanding of Emerson's aim in writing about these six men and about great men in general.

The thesis consists of five chapters: the first functions as an overture; the second, third and fourth deal with Plato, Cicero and Montaigne respectively; and the fifth raises some questions. The overture explores the ways in which Odysseus, Lucretius and Seneca approached death, and in the process introduces some obvious distinctions - between death viewed as the act of dying and death viewed as the state of being dead, between the death which comes to everyone and the death which comes to me, between our own death and the death of others - and anticipates certain recurring themes. The second chapter, on Plato, is concerned chiefly with the Phaedo and the question of what is involved in "the practice of death". This entails an examination of related concepts and terminology in the Gorgias and the Republic, and of the whole subject of Platonic myth. The third chapter discusses Cicero's views on death and immortality - both the considered reflections of the philosopher and the spontaneous reactions of the bereaved father - principally as these emerge from the Tusculan Disputations and the letters to Atticus. The fourth chapter approaches Montaigne - his own experiences of death, the relationship between his earlier and later approaches, the tension between his professed Catholicism and his pagan inclinations, the difficulty and perhaps undesirability of extracting a 'message' from the Essais on this or any other subject. The conclusion asks to what extent these various approaches succeed in what they set out to do, and whether any generalised, objective approach to death can ever successfully address the individual predicament, either in relation to one's own death or in facing bereavement.

Nous nous proposons, dans le cadre de cette étude, de démontrer que les Essais de Montaigne contiennent bel et bien, en dépit d’une forme éclatée et d’un propos non systématique, ce qu’il convient d’appeler une morale. Non seulement cette morale ne s’oppose-t-elle pas au scepticisme des Essais, mais elle lui est même d’une certaine façon coextensive : la morale de Montaigne est une morale de l’essai, lequel constitue l’expression la plus achevée de son scepticisme. Ce dernier, pour être bien compris, doit préalablement être mis en parallèle avec la « voie » (ἀγωγή) que propose Sextus Empiricus dans ses Hypotyposes pyrrhoniennes, dont l’influence sur Montaigne pourrait être bien plus importante que ne le laissent croire plusieurs travaux récents. / We will argue, in the following study, that Montaigne’s Essays, despite their fragmented writing and unsystematic form, indeed contain what deserves to be called an ethics. This ethics, far from contradicting his scepticism, identifies with it in a certain way: Montaigne’s ethics is an ethics of the essay, which is the definitive expression of his scepticisim. The latter, to be correctly understood, needs to be compared with Sextus Empiricus’ « way » (ἀγωγή), whose influence on Montaigne may be more important than it has been argued in recent years.

Cette recherche porte sur le rôle joué par la lecture de Montaigne dans la philosophie de Rousseau.Il convenait d’abord de repérer les traces de cette lecture et les différents témoignages qu’en donnent son œuvre publiée ainsi que ses manuscrits, d’établir les éditions dans lesquelles Rousseau lit les Essais et les perspectives dans lesquelles il le fait. Il fallait établir également les médiations qui ont joué un rôle dans la réception de Montaigne par Rousseau. Les Essais sont édités et lus au XVIIIe siècle selon des perspectives auxquelles il ne cesse de se confronter. Nombre d’auteurs du XVIIe siècle sur lesquels il s’appuie dialoguent avec Montaigne. L’étude de la relation que Rousseau entretient avec lui demande donc l’examen de toute une tradition philosophique qui s’appuie elle-même sur Montaigne.Cette dimension de l’héritage conduit à trianguler les références, implicites ou explicites, que Rousseau fait à Montaigne dans son œuvre philosophique. Il lui sert de point d’appui pour dialoguer avec Diderot traducteur de Shaftesbury et pour prendre parti, dès le premier Discours, en faveur de la religion naturelle. La lecture politique des Essais qu’il produit nourrit son opposition à toute forme de domination et lui permet de critiquer la position de Montesquieu sur le luxe. Cette lecture politique se développe dans le second Discours, pour dénoncer les effets de l’intérêt particulier, qui détruit le lien politique. Rousseau s’appuie encore sur les principes de La Boétie qu’il trouve dans les Essais pour penser la dépravation de l’homme en société. Le lien social ne demande pas de suivre une morale opposée à l’intérêt, mais de poursuivre l’intérêt universel qui nous lie aux autres hommes. Montaigne occupe aussi une place déterminante dans le dialogue que Rousseau entretient avec des auteurs comme Barbeyrac, Mandeville ou Locke.Cette thèse montre ainsi que la référence à Montaigne met en jeu les principes fondamentaux de la philosophie politique et morale de Rousseau. / The aim of this study is to analyze the role of Montaigne’s legacy in Rousseau’s philosophy.First, evidences and views of Rousseau’s reading of Montaigne have been examined in his published works and in his manuscripts. Editions in which Rousseau was reading Montaigne have also been identified.Then, mediations between Rousseau and Montaigne’s reception have been reviewed. Rousseau reads the Essais with the 18th century points of view. He relies on 17th century authors who judge Montaigne. Therefore, thanks to this philosophical tradition who deals with Montaigne, links between Montaigne and Rousseau are analysed.The implicit and explicit references to Montaigne in Rousseau’s work are triangulated. Rousseau quotes Montaigne to deal with Diderot, – translator of Shaftesbury, to defend natural religion as early as in his First Discourse on the Sciences and Arts.Rousseau has a political reading of the Essais. He denounces all kind of domination, and criticizes Montesquieu’s apology of luxury. The political reading of Montaigne increases in the second Discourse : the possessive individualism destroys the social link.Rousseau underlines the La Boétie’s principles in the Essais, which show the political depravation of society. The social link does not demand to follow moral rules against citizen’s interests. Humanity has to pursue a universal interest, which establishes a relationship between each human being and the whole humanity.Montaigne has a central position to understand the dialogues between Rousseau and Barbeyrac, Mandeville, and Locke. Rousseau refers to Montaigne when he defends his moral and politic fundamental principles.

Nous nous proposons, dans le cadre de cette étude, de démontrer que les Essais de Montaigne contiennent bel et bien, en dépit d’une forme éclatée et d’un propos non systématique, ce qu’il convient d’appeler une morale. Non seulement cette morale ne s’oppose-t-elle pas au scepticisme des Essais, mais elle lui est même d’une certaine façon coextensive : la morale de Montaigne est une morale de l’essai, lequel constitue l’expression la plus achevée de son scepticisme. Ce dernier, pour être bien compris, doit préalablement être mis en parallèle avec la « voie » (ἀγωγή) que propose Sextus Empiricus dans ses Hypotyposes pyrrhoniennes, dont l’influence sur Montaigne pourrait être bien plus importante que ne le laissent croire plusieurs travaux récents. / We will argue, in the following study, that Montaigne’s Essays, despite their fragmented writing and unsystematic form, indeed contain what deserves to be called an ethics. This ethics, far from contradicting his scepticism, identifies with it in a certain way: Montaigne’s ethics is an ethics of the essay, which is the definitive expression of his scepticisim. The latter, to be correctly understood, needs to be compared with Sextus Empiricus’ « way » (ἀγωγή), whose influence on Montaigne may be more important than it has been argued in recent years.

[pt] Sexto Empírico não fala de dúvida, e não faz uso deste conceito em sua clássica descrição do cético pirrônico. No entanto, desde a sua redescoberta na década de 1430 no contexto do humanismo florentino e até os dias atuais, o ceticismo é interpretado através da dúvida. Na presente tese, primeiramente mostramos que não há uma conexão direta entre o ceticismo pirrônico e o conceito de dúvida. Em seguida, analisamos alguns dos modos pelos quais a dúvida é introduzida no ceticismo, particularmente no período que vai do início do século XV ao final do século XVI, conhecido como ceticismo renascentista. Sexto Empírico não fala de dúvida, e não faz uso deste conceito em sua clássica descrição do cético pirrônico. No entanto, desde a sua redescoberta na década de 1430 no contexto do humanismo florentino e até os dias atuais, o ceticismo é interpretado através da dúvida. Na presente tese, primeiramente mostramos que não há uma conexão direta entre o ceticismo pirrônico e o conceito de dúvida. Em seguida, analisamos alguns dos modos pelos quais a dúvida é introduzida no ceticismo, particularmente no período que vai do início do século XV ao final do século XVI, conhecido como ceticismo renascentista. / [en] Sextus Empiricus does not speak of doubt, nor does he use this concept in his exposition of Pyrrhonian skepticism. However, since its rediscovery in the 1430s to the present day, skepticism has been interpreted through the concept of doubt. In the present thesis, we showed first that there is no explicit connection between Pyrrhonian skepticism and doubt. Then, we analyzed some ways through which the concept of doubt was introduced into skepticism, especially in the period from the beginning of the 15th to the end of the 16th century, known as Renaissance skepticism.

The aim of this essay is to show how the relationship between credit and critique is important for Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of law. I will start from Force of Law, in which law, as well as justice, is deconstructed by Derrida. My purpose is further to show how the two concepts, credit and critique, are intertwined in the discourse of law and thereby crucial for Derrida’s deconstruction. As Derrida always states, the rational projects need to have a master concept, which the project revolves around, and this master concept needs at least one other subordinate concept to contrast itself against. In this context, I argue that critique can be that master concept. I base this argument upon the fact that critique in its ancient Greek sense, krinein, can be translated into the verb ‘to separate’, ‘to decide’ or ‘to judge’, which shows that there is an obvious link to the task of a judge. This puts critique in center of the discourse of law. Credit on the other hand is not rational, which makes it opposed to critique, but it is still important for law. It is a typical subordinated concept that just appears in the discourse without any further explanation but is present by its implicit importance to the discourse. I argue that credit is the subordinate concept that is needed for the concept of critique to be a master concept. Both concepts are important for the foundation of law, and this is why I believe that Derrida in the end states the importance to take responsibility for the law. In other words, one must take responsibility for both founding aspects of credit and critique when deconstructing the law.

This thesis provides a full-length critical treatment of the Essayes (1600-01) of Sir William Cornwallis (c.1579-1614). Cornwallis' Essayes are the first examples of the ‘familiar’ essay in English: to which the rhetorical shaping of persona and the use of the personal voice are central. This is the first such study of Cornwallis since the first half of the twentieth century, and situates his Essayes within their cultural, social, and material contexts. The thesis draws upon previous work on Cornwallis and his Essayes from the 1930s and 1940s, but also on recent developments in early-modern English studies, especially in the fields of the history of rhetoric and the history of reading. The thesis challenges the assumptions behind two major critical approaches to the early-modern essay: firstly that it is a form in which the personal voice can be unambiguously expressed, and secondly that it is an essentially unoriginal genre which is more closely related to reading than to writing. This thesis qualifies these approaches, while demonstrating that the origins of each are found in the rhetorical practices of early English essays. This thesis argues however that Cornwallis’s essays are elaborate fusions of classical commonplaces, humanistic rhetoric, and ethical theories of how to live, resulting from complex interactions between different strands of humanistic educative practices, and that Cornwallis’s use of the personal voice is shaped by ethically-inflected rhetorical theories of affect and imitation. The thesis further attempts to think about how essays were being read in this period, and to do so offers a study of the material traces of reading, in the form of annotations and commonplace books, left by early-modern readers of John Florio’s English translation of Montaigne (1603).

Att måla essäistisktDenna uppsats beskriver hur ett konstnärligt samarbetsprojekt utvecklades mellan två konstnärer.Målet med projektet var att komma fram till ett dialogiskt arbetssätt utan att använda det verbalaspråket och beskriver hur arbetet förvandlades från egna monologer till ett måleriskt samtal.Med utgångspunkt i renässansförfattaren Michel de Montaigne och hans arbete med att iessäform reflektera och få kunskap om tillvaron undersöks essäskrivandet både somforskningsmetod och förhållningssätt. Centrala begrepp är Friedrich Nietschzes apollinskt kontradionysiskt och Friedrich Schillers beskrivningar av form-, sinnlig- och lekdrift. Uppsatsen är enmeta-essä med syfte att visa hur ett essäistist arbetssätt kan reflektera och lyfta fram den egna levdapraktiska kunskapen. / Painting essayisticThis essay-form paper depicts the development of an artistic collaboration between two artistswhere the purpose was to come up with a dialogical way of working without using verballanguage. It describes how this work developed from separate monologues to a conversation inpainting.Based in the the renaissance essayist Michel de Montagne and his reflections over andattempts to understand our existence I try to approach the essay as a form that can be utilized asa method as well as an attitude towards this. Central concepts are Friedrich Nietzsche´s »theApollonian» versus »the Dionysian» as well as Friedrich Schiller's descriptions of the formaldrive, the sensuous drive and the play drive. The paper is a “meta essay” about how theessayistic method can be used to reflect over and emphasize personal practical knowledge.Keywords:Essay,

This thesis provides an interpretative study of Augustine of Hippo’s City of God, book 14. The introduction explains how the thesis demonstrates that Augustine only partially endorses a model of emotional control through reason, and asserts that the key to his emotions doctrine is not to be found in an affections-passions dichotomy. It also addresses Augustine’s engagement with Platonism in the text, and, using work by Volker Drecoll, explains how the commentary-style project is able to situate City 14 within the Pelagian controversy ca. A.D. 419. The following seven chapters proceed uninterruptedly through City 14, clarifying Augustine’s argumentative aims and making use of secondary scholarship and philological tools to investigate points of fine detail. Chapter 1 explores City 14.1, his recapitulation of City 11-13 and his setting out of the initial two-cities dichotomy. Chapter 2 explores City 14.2-5, in which Augustine critiques Manichean or Platonist positions that the body is bad or evil. Chapter 3 explores City 14.6-9, and Augustine’s explication of the Biblical doctrine of emotions. Chapter 4 explores City 14.10-15, and the theme of the primal Fall and the will being ‘spontaneous’. Chapter 5 explores City 14.16-20, and Augustine’s exploration of the disobedience of the genitals in all forms of sex, including married life. Chapter 6 explores City 14.21-25, in which Augustine discusses the workings of Adam and Eve’s hypothetical sexual experience in the Pre-Fall Paradise. Chapter 7 explores City 14.26-28, in which Augustine recapitulates City 14.10-25, and comments on the workings of Providence, before hurtling towards the final dichotomy about the two cities being separated by their ‘loves’. A conclusion reviews the main points of the thesis. The thesis makes extensive use of German and French scholarship, of the CCL 48 Latin text, and the tools of the CAG 3 Augustine database; it occasionally contests the chapter divisions found in modern editions.