Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T17:27:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Mariana Goron Tasca.pdf: 684042 bytes, checksum: 7b934d7ee86ea976ec1ad04c2014b226 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-11 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The dissertation undertakes an analysis of the philosophical aspects of the Letters to Lucilius by Lucio Aneu Seneca, Stoic philosopher and Roman politician born in 4 BC. It seeks to investigate, from his work, his understanding regarding life and its finiteness in death. Although his work is extensive, this work will be limited to the Letters wherein the concept of death is more widely dealt with and didactically explained. In the first chapter, the foundations fundamentals of stoic philosophy are explained, which begins in ancient Stoicism through middle stoicism until Roman stoicism, period in which our philosopher is inserted. Thenceforth it deals with the understanding of his life and work in order to comprehend what it means, for Seneca, a good death and how meditating about death assists on the effort to understand it. Throughout this work it is discussed with some interpreters of Seneca's stoicism, with particular focus on the Letters to Lucilius. Finally, after bringing clarity to the above issue, the work seeks to note the resemblance between his thoughts and the theme today / The dissertation undertakes an analysis of the philosophical aspects of the Letters to Lucilius by Lucio Aneu Seneca, Stoic philosopher and Roman politician born in 4 BC. It seeks to investigate, from his work, his understanding regarding life and its finiteness in death. Although his work is extensive, this work will be limited to the Letters wherein the concept of death is more widely dealt with and didactically explained. In the first chapter, the foundations fundamentals of stoic philosophy are explained, which begins in ancient Stoicism through middle stoicism until Roman stoicism, period in which our philosopher is inserted. Thenceforth it deals with the understanding of his life and work in order to comprehend what it means, for Seneca, a good death and how meditating about death assists on the effort to understand it. Throughout this work it is discussed with some interpreters of Seneca's stoicism, with particular focus on the Letters to Lucilius. Finally, after bringing clarity to the above issue, the work seeks to note the resemblance between his thoughts and the theme today / A dissertação empreende uma análise dos aspectos filosóficos das Cartas a Lucílio de Lucio Aneu Sêneca, filósofo estoico e político romano, nascido em 4 a.C. Busca-se investigar, a partir de sua obra, seu entendimento a respeito da vida e da finitude na morte. Apesar de sua obra ser extensa, esta dissertação se limitará às Cartas em que o conceito de morte é mais amplamente tratado e didaticamente explicado. Em um primeiro capítulo, explicitam-se os fundamentos da filosofia estoica, que inicia no estoicismo antigo, passa pelo médio estoicismo até chegar ao estoicismo romano, período em que nosso filósofo está inserido. Passa-se então ao entendimento de sua vida e obra com o objetivo de entender o que é, para Sêneca, a boa morte, e em que medida o meditar sobre a morte auxilia em tal intento. Dialoga-se com alguns intérpretes do estoicismo senequiano ao longo do trabalho, sobretudo no enfoque das Cartas a Lucílio. Ao final, ao clarificar a questão, busca-se aproximar o seu pensamento com a atualidade do tema

In the following thesis, I argue that to contextualize Machiavelli’s republican thought in his Italian humanist heritage permits us to understand how Machiavelli reaches back not only to an Italian pre-humanist inheritance of liberty as freedom from servitude, but to a Stoic conception of agency which he inherits and shapes in that concept of liberty. While my analysis of Machiavelli and his humanist heritage is in fundamental agreement with that of Quentin Skinner in The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, it develops however the implications of two theses that Paul O. Kristeller outlines in his works on Italian humanism: the eclectic nature of humanist ideas and their rhetorical focus. From this I draw a slightly different picture of the humanist heritage and its polemics with Augustine, and from these an understanding about Stoic agency and how it is inherited and shaped in Machiavelli’s conception of the citizen and civic duties.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

"Are the Letters of Horace Satires?" (Hendrickson 1897: 313). In response to this question, this thesis investigates whether Horace's Sermones and Epistulae 1 all belong to the genre of satura. Ancient and modern evidence from the use of the terms Sermones, Epistulae, and satura, is surveyed, and is found to be inconclusive, but not to preclude Epist. 1 as satura. The nature of specifically Horatian satura is ascertained from the text of Serm. 1, especially Serm. 1.1 and the explicitly literary Serm. 1.4 and 1.10. The redefinition of Lucilian satura, and its political implications are also considered. To confirm Epist. 1 as satura a sequential reading of the three libelli is undertaken, tracing the evolution of the theme of locus: place, both as geographical location, and as status, place in the social hierarchy, in the context of the socio-political environment of the time of composition. Serm. 1.1 as a programmatic poem is shown to establish Epicurean moderation as a prerequisite for a vita beata. In Serm. 1 Horace's status as client-poet of Maecenas and Octavian initially permits this ideal lifestyle in the Urbs. The misperceptions of outsiders lead to a preference for a life of Epicurean quietude in the rus in Serm. 2, although Horace's aequanimitas is disturbed by urban officia, and abuse of libertas dicendi associated particularly with Stoicism. The ideal of rural withdrawal is reinforced in Epist. 1 through an exploration of appropriate behaviour in relationships with potentes amici. Horace's addressees cover the entire range of the social hierarchy, and in his letters he utilizes the arguments of moral philosophy, thus reconciling poetry and philosophy. He achieves a pragmatic compromise whereby he can enjoy libertas in his role as a poet, while acknowledging that personal libertas and true aequanimitas are still to be attained.

Sénèque respecte scrupuleusement l’orthodoxie stoïcienne en affirmant à plusieurs reprises que la santé physique, en tant qu’« indifférent » moral, ne doit en aucun cas être un objet d’attention. Toutefois, parallèlement à ces considérations, il compose une œuvre dans laquelle la souffrance physique occupe une place considérable. La présente étude, à travers l’examen des théories et des représentations du dolor physique dans l’œuvre philosophique de Sénèque, se propose de résoudre ce paradoxe apparent et de déterminer précisément les fonctions d’un tel emploi. Dans un premier moment, après avoir défini la notion de dolor physique et établi une typologie précise, nous démontrons l’omniprésence du motif du corps souffrant et en dégageons les raisons externes, qu’elles soient socio-anthropologiques et culturelles, politiques, littéraires et même personnelles. Dans un deuxième temps, nous étudions la dimension médicale des représentations de la souffrance, afin de définir chez le philosophe le niveau de sa connaissance des auteurs spécialisés et l’origine possible des théories pathologiques et thérapeutiques qui affleurent dans son œuvre. Dans un troisième temps, nous envisageons le dolor physique au sein de la pensée philosophique de Sénèque. Nous nous employons à démontrer que le dolor physique possède une fonction éthique de premier ordre et que Sénèque ne se limite à présenter des éléments dogmatiques, mais développe également une série d’exercices pratiques permettant de sortir vainqueur du combat contre la douleur physique. / Seneca scrupulously respects Stoic orthodoxy by repeatedly asserting that physical health, as a moral “indifferent”, should never be an object of attention. However, alongside these considerations, he composed a work in which physical suffering holds an important place. The intent of this study, through the analysis of theories and representations of physical dolor in Seneca’s philosophical works, is to solve this apparent paradox and to accurately establish the functions of such use. In a first time, after having defined the notion of physical dolor and established a precise typology, we demonstrate the omnipresence of the pattern of the suffering body and draw external reasons for it, whether they might be socio-anthropological and cultural, political, literary and even personal. In a second time, we study the medical aspect of the representations of suffering in order to define in the philosopher the level of his knowledge of specialized authors and the possible origin of the pathological and therapeutic theories that emerge in his work. In a third time, we consider the physical dolor in Seneca’s philosophical thought. We apply to demonstrate that the physical dolor has a first order ethical function and that Seneca does not confine himself to submitting dogmatic elements, but he also develops a series of practical exercises that allow to emerge victorious from the fight against physical pain.

La volonté : peu de termes reviennent dans des débats aussi nombreux et aussi divers ; peu se prêtent à un aussi large éventail de registres, de l’ordinaire au sacré. Mon travail voudrait introduire à la notion de volonté chez Cicéron, et aux nouveaux champs sémantiques ouverts par lui pour la postérité. Le rôle accordé à lui jusqu’ici dans les généalogies de la volonté a été au mieux mineur. Mais les archives numériques confirment un fait curieux : tout le corpus latin antérieur à Cicéron contient environ 25 occurrences de voluntas ou de ses formes déclinées. Dans le seul corpus cicéronien, le mot apparaît 644 fois. Sa théologie pense l’univers en tant qu’il est déterminé par la mens ac voluntas des dieux, et fait passer le progrès de l’âme par la contemplation de la volonté divine. La voluntas est centrale dans sa réflexion sur l’émotion et la responsabilité en contexte judiciaire. Dans ses traités philosophiques, il adapte l’éthique stoïcienne et fait de la volonté le siège de la progression morale. En outre, c’est Cicéron et non Lucrèce qui a le premier examiné la liberté du vouloir humain : lorsqu’il entreprit, à trente-six ans, l’accusation de Verrès, puis dans le De fato, où sa défense de la libera voluntas mobilise le Portique et l’Académie contre le Jardin. Enfin, Cicéron invente la volonté du peuple telle que nous la connaissons. Le plus grand orateur romain, pionnier de la pensée politique de langue latine, fait de la voluntas populi la force agissante d’une république souveraine. Son idée de la volonté populaire contient d’ailleurs en germe les problèmes de représentativité des élites que nos démocraties électorales cherchent encore à résoudre. / The will : few words feature in so many distinct debates, nor range so vastly from the simple to the sacred. This thesis is intended to provide a thorough study of the notion of will in Cicero, and of the new semantic pathways he opens for posterity. The role attributed to him in genealogies of the will has been relatively minor. But digital archives confirm a curious fact: all extant Latin texts prior to his lifetime yield around two dozen occurrences of voluntas and its cognates. In the texts we have, Cicero uses the word 644 times. His theology examines the character of the world determined by the mens ac voluntas of the gods, and the improvement of the soul in the contemplation of divine will. Voluntas propels and inspires Cicero’s study of emotion in criminal liability. In the Tusculan Disputations and De officiis, he adapts Stoic ethics to propose the will as locus of moral progress. Further, it was Cicero, not Lucretius as some have argued, who first considered the “freedom” of human will – as a 36-year-old prosecutor, and then in the De fato, where his argument for libera voluntas marshals the Stoa and Academy to repudiate the Epicureans. Finally, Cicero invents “the will of the people” as we know it. Rome’s greatest orator and the pioneer of political thought in Latin, he makes voluntas populi the catalyzing force of a sovereign republic. So too does he sow problems of elite “trusteeship” into his notion of popular will, problems which electoral democracies still struggle to resolve.

In the following thesis, I argue that to contextualize Machiavelli’s republican thought in his Italian humanist heritage permits us to understand how Machiavelli reaches back not only to an Italian pre-humanist inheritance of liberty as freedom from servitude, but to a Stoic conception of agency which he inherits and shapes in that concept of liberty. While my analysis of Machiavelli and his humanist heritage is in fundamental agreement with that of Quentin Skinner in The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, it develops however the implications of two theses that Paul O. Kristeller outlines in his works on Italian humanism: the eclectic nature of humanist ideas and their rhetorical focus. From this I draw a slightly different picture of the humanist heritage and its polemics with Augustine, and from these an understanding about Stoic agency and how it is inherited and shaped in Machiavelli’s conception of the citizen and civic duties.

La considération des passions dans les Essais met au jour un phénomène complexe et transversal, où se manifeste le grand présupposé de l’anthropologie de Montaigne : l’homme est une unité indivisible de corps et d’âme. Comme l’homme, les passions sont des phénomènes mixtes qui ont une double étiologie : elle peuvent naître dans le corps ou dans l’âme. Par sa propre constitution, l’homme est donc naturellement sujet à un « nombre infiny des passions », et la sagesse des Essais n’est que la capacité de gouverner et modérer les forces passionnelles pour réaliser la perfection humaine qui seule soit possible : savoir « jouyr » de son propre être singulier. L’éthique demandera ainsi une connaissance préalable des limites et des pouvoirs physiologiques et psychologiques qui sont propres à l’homme, car la sagesse doit être efficace et réellement utile. La connaissance du corps conduira à une critique de l’hylémorphisme psychologique et à l’affirmation de l’indépendance des dynamiques corporelles : l’expérience des actes involontaires, l’affectivité organique, les passions sensibles se développent sans aucune référence animique mais, au contraire, ils affectent profondément l’âme. La connaissance psychologique, quant à elle, cherchera à saisir, par l’introspection directe, les dynamiques qui constituent les passions de l’âme. Cette connaissance permettra à l’âme de découvrir son propre pouvoir d’engendrer des passions, ce qui lui permettra de gérer les conflits et les tensions entre les passions par le moyen d’autres passions. Se dessine ainsi, dans le livre III des Essais, une discipline de l’âme qui est une gestion de ses propres mouvements passionnels mais aussi des passions corporelles : l’âme doit en fait pratiquer un constant retour à son corps, et par cela intensifier l’unité psychosomatique. C’est dans cette unité, toujours à rétablir, que l’homme a accès à la jouissance de son être et à la perfection morale. / The study of the emotions in the Essais of Montaigne shows a complex phenomenon, which demonstrate the great assumption of the Montaigne’s anthropology: man is an undividable unity of body and soul. Like human being, the emotion is a mixture experience that has a double aetiology: it raise in the body and in the soul. For his particular constitution, man is naturally subject to « nombre infiny des passions », and the wisdom of the Essais is nothing else that the ability of governing and harmonising the emotional forces, for realise the only human possible perfection: enjoy the proper life in his immanent singularity (sçavoir jouyr loiallement de son estre). For that goal, the moral philosophy needs to know the real physiological and psychological powers and limits of human being, because wisdom must be useful et practicable. The knowing of the body in the Essais will lead to a deconstruction of the hylomorphic psychology and to the affirmation of the independence and autonomy of the body’s dynamism: the experience of the involuntary actions and sensible emotions arise without any reference to the aristotelic psyché, and the soul fell this events as affections. On the other side, the psychological knowledge tries to understand, b the introspection, the psychological acts (linked to imagination and judgement) that constitutes the emotions of the soul. By that understanding, the soul discover his power of arising the emotions, that witch give him the concrete possibility of manage the conflicts and the tensions between passions, using the power of other different passions. This process, in the third book of the Essais, sketch a real discipline of the soul that is an administration of the soul’s emotions («passions de l’ âme») and of the body’s emotions («passions corporelles»): the soul has to rest in connection with his body, and in doing so it can intensify the psychosomatic unity. It is in that unity, constantly reaffirmed, that man has access to the enjoyment of his proper being and to the moral perfection.

Cette recherche prend pour objet d’étude la conception stoïcienne de la responsabilité, éclairée par la thématique contemporaine de l’engagement. Les différents niveaux du discours – ontologique, physique, psychologique, moral et politique – réinterrogent également, par leur articulation problématique, l’unité des stoïciens. On résume traditionnellement leur fatalisme à un «compatibilisme», dans la mesure où ils conjuguaient liberté et déterminisme. Cette compatibilité est au principe même de la notion de responsabilité, dont il s’agit de comprendre comment, de la physique à la morale, mais aussi, du stoïcisme hellénistique au stoïcien impérial, elle reçoit un traitement autant inédit qu’équivoque. On s’interrogera ainsi sur l’articulation du concept de «cause» (αἴτιον) avec celui de «ἐφ' ἡμῖν» (ce qui dépend de nous), concepts qui mettent en jeu la problématique de l’imputation – où il s’agit de fonder la responsabilité humaine – dans son lien avec celle de l’assomption, où il s’agit de la reprendre à son propre compte en accomplissant son rôle et ses devoirs. Ces deux versants de la responsabilité mobilisent toutes les branches du système stoïcien, et leur caractère organique. On montre que la responsabilité reçoit une extension maximale, parce que son analyse est synthétique. Le passage de la responsivité ontologique à l’assomption morale, qui ouvre, de Chrysippe à Épictète et Marc Aurèle, à une éthique de la responsabilité et à un engagement philosophique, qui fait fond sur l’idée d’acceptation et de renversement, constituera le point de mire de notre questionnement. / This research studies the Stoic conception of responsibility, informed by the contemporary theme of commitment. Different levels of the discourse - ontological, physical, psychological, moral and political - will also question anew, by their problematic articulation, the unity of the Stoics. Traditionally, their fatalism is summarized by a "compatibilism", insofar as they associate freedom and determinism. This compatibility is at the very principle of the concept of responsibility, which we should understand by how it receives a treatment as unique as equivocal, from its physics to its morals, but also from the Hellenistic to the Imperial stoicism. We will thus wonder about the articulation of the concept of "cause" (αἴτιον) with that of "ἐφ' ἡμῖν" (that which is up to us), concepts that involve the issues of attribution - where it comes to build up human responsibility - and assumption, where it comes to seize it again by performing one's role and duties. Those both sides of responsibility mobilize all the branches of the Stoic system and their organic character. We show that responsibility receives a maximal extension, because its analysis is synthetic. The shift from ontological responsiveness to moral assumption that leads, from Chrysippus to Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, towards an ethics of the responsibility and a philosophical commitment, which builds on the idea of acceptance and overthrow, will be the focus of our inquiry.

Dans le présent mémoire, je revisite l’oeuvre de Foucault à la lumière des analyses qu’il offre entre 1981 et 1984 dans ses derniers cours au Collège de France. À l’encontre de l’avis qui voit une rupture dans la pensée foucaldienne – opinion justifiée par la transition radicale qu’opère Foucault depuis l’étude de la relation entre pouvoir et savoir à l’analyse des techniques de subjectivation dans l’Antiquité – j’illustre qu’il y a continuité et complémentarité entre ses analyses des années 1970 et ses démonstrations des années 1980. Foucault trouve, au fondement de la pratique politique gréco-romaine, une éthique définie comme travail de soi sur soi. Aussi tente-t il, au travers de ses dernières analyses, de réactualiser l’askêsis comme fondement oublié de l’éthique, et l’êthos comme condition d’efficacité de la politique. Si, jusqu’en 1980, Foucault s’intéresse aux mécanismes et aux dispositifs permettant le gouvernement de la population, à partir de 1980, c’est la question du gouvernement de soi comme condition nécessaire du gouvernement des autres qui investit ses analyses. L’objectif de ce mémoire est d’illustrer, à partir de la redéfinition foucaldienne de l’éthique, la présence d’une nouvelle théorie de la résistance dans ses derniers cours au Collège de France. Par voie de conséquence, je propose implicitement des éclaircissements sur la fonction qu’occupent L’Usage des plaisirs et le Souci de soi, ultimes publications de l’auteur, au sein de son oeuvre. / In this dissertation, I revisit Foucault’s work through the various analyses he offered between 1981 and 1984 while teaching at the Collège de France. Against the opinion which sees a radical turn in Foucault’s thought – opinion which is seemingly justified by the author’s break with his past demonstrations on the relation between power and knowledge, and his shift towards the study of the various spiritual exercises in Antiquity – I illustrate that there is a continuity and a complementarity between his earlier studies and his later interests. Foucault uncovers, at the basis of Greco-roman political practice, an ethics defined as an exercise of the self. He then attempts, throughout his last years at the Collège de France, to reinstate askêsis as the long forgotten foundation of ethics, and the êthos as the condition of political efficiency. Until 1980, Foucault is mainly interested by the mechanisms and devices enabling the government of populations. From 1980 on, it is the question of the government of self as a necessary condition for the government of others which invests his analyses. My objective, throughout this dissertation, is to illustrate how Foucault’s redefinition of ethics allows him to advocate a new theory of resistance in his last years at the Collège de France. This dissertation therefore implicitly suggests further clarification pertaining to the function of Foucault’s last two publications (L’usage de plaisir and Le souci de soi) within his work understood as a whole.