La statuaire morale de Platon est l'activité "modelant par la parole" (République, IX, 588 b 10) de "multiples statues de l'excellence" (Banquet, 222 a 3-4) et consistant aussi à "se façonner soi-même" (République, VI, 500 d 6) d'après elles. Elle implique donc un double cheminement: l'un va des images contenues dans les Dialogues, aux valeurs qu'elles désignent, tandis que l'autre conduit à envisager l'éthique platonicienne comme une forme particulière d'art de l'existence. Sur ce second point, la thèse soutenue se situe ainsi dans l'optique de la pensée de Michel Foucault. Sur le premier point en revanche, elle a consisté à interroger le statut du langage platonicien, la nature des procédés rhétoriques mis en œuvre, ainsi que celle des figures utilisées. Ce double examen permet d'affirmer que la définition de l'éthique platonicienne comme statuaire morale n'est pas une simple métaphore: c'est une image, mais qu'il faut situer parmi les multiples images forgées par Platon. Elle se révèle alors apte à orienter la lecture et la compréhension des Dialogues. / Plato's moral statuary is the act that "moulds in words" (Republic, IX, 588 b 10) "many statues of excellence" (Symposium, 222 a 3-4) and consists of "modeling oneself" (Republic, VI, 500 d 6) on these images. Thus the statuary implies a process that is twofold: on the one hand there is a progress from the images contained in the dialogues to the values they refer to, while, on the other hand, it leads to a conception of platonic ethics as a particular art of living. This second approach follows Michel Foucault's analysis, whereas the first approach stems from an examination of the status of platonic language, a study of the rhetoric used in the dialogues as well as the figures of speech that are resorted to. This twofold approach enables to conclude that defining platonic ethics as ethical statuary is not merely a metaphor; it is an image that must be identified amidst the numerous images created by Plato, so as to provide a key to the reading and understanding of the Dialogues.

Inwiefern, so konnte man sich zu Beginn dieses renditeorientierten, hoch kapitalistischen und allzeit praxisbezogenen 21. Jahrhunderts durchaus zu Recht fragen, gehört Kunst überhaupt zum Leben, inwiefern gehört Literatur zur Lebenskunst, und inwiefern trifft dies im Besonderen auch auf den Akt der Lektüre selbst zu? [...] Im Mittelpunkt der Analyse steht deshalb Jude the Obscure als 'medialer', fast schon medientheoretischer Roman, in dem es primär um den gelungenen oder gescheiterten Lektüreprozess von Zeichen geht, wobei gezeigt werden soll, dass Hardys letzter Roman gleich auf mehreren Textebenen sehr dezidiert verdeutlicht, wie Literatur gelesen werden und welche Kriterien eine adäquate Lektüre erfüllen sollte.

L’objet de ce travail est d’éclairer l’esthétique et l’éthique de la poétique de Francis Ponge à partir de la notion de Nature. La première partie étudie la notion de Nature chez Ponge en tant que monde extérieur et son matérialisme qui, fortement influencé par le matérialisme antique, est caractérisé par l’antimétaphysique. Cette partie met également en relief le rapport étroit entre sa pensée matérialiste et la pensée immanente spinoziste, résumée dans l’expression de « Dieu ou la Nature ». Les aspects immanents des choses dans ses œuvres peuvent être mieux saisis, en effet, à l’aide de la notion d’« immanence » spinoziste. La deuxième partie explore, quant à elle, la relation entre la Nature et la littérature et le développement d’un nouveau lyrisme matérialiste chez Ponge. Pour lui, la littérature se naturalise et la Nature se littérarise. Son approbation de la Nature se traduit par sa contresignature apposée aux choses.Son nouveau lyrisme matérialiste, qui s’oppose au lyrisme traditionnel, se caractérise autour de notions telles que la vibration, l’aspiration, ou la « réson ». La troisième partie, enfin, examine le nouvel humanisme de Ponge ainsi que son éthique.La relation entre la Nature et l’homme s’articulera autour de thèmes éthiques essentiels comme l’altérité, le nouvel humanisme et le salut de l’homme. Son éthique consiste à vivre heureux. Nous l’aborderons à travers différents thèmes tels que la sagesse antique, l’harmonie du « non-soi » et du « soi », l’éthique de la joie, le hasard et la liberté. / The purpose of this study is to examine the aesthetics and the ethics of Francis Ponge’s poetry through the notion of Nature. The first part examines the concept of Nature in Ponge as the outside world and his materialism which, heavily influenced by ancient materialism, is characterized by the anti-metaphysical. This part also explore the close relationship between his idea and Spinoza’s immanent idea, summarized in the expression of "God, or Nature". The immanent aspects of things in his work can be fully understood with the help of the concept of "immanence" of Spinoza. The second part examines the relationship between Nature and literature and the development of Ponge’s new materialist lyricism. For him, literature becomes naturalized and nature becomes literarized. The approval of nature is reflected in his countersignature for things. His new materialist lyricism, contrasted with the traditional lyricism, is characterized by notions such as vibration, aspiration, "réson". The third part will focus on the new humanism and the ethics of Ponge. The relationship between Nature and man will be treated primarily on certain essential themes of ethics such as otherness, the new humanism and the salvation of man. His ethics is to live à happy life. Various topics, such as ancient wisdom, the harmony of the "non-self" and the "self", the ethics of joy, chance and freedom, will be discussed.

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

A Sceptical Aesthetics of Existence: The Case of Michel Foucault Emmanouil Simos (Hughes Hall) Michel Foucault's genealogical investigations constitute a specific historical discourse that challenges the metaphysical hypostatisation of concepts and methodological approaches as unique devices for tracking metaphysically objective truths. Foucault's notion of aesthetics of existence, his elaboration of the ancient conceptualisation of ethics as an 'art of living' (a technē tou biou), along with a series of interconnected notions (such as the care of the self) that he developed in his later work, have a triple aspect. First, these notions are constitutive parts of his later genealogies of subjectivity. Second, they show that Foucault contemplates the possibility of understanding ethics differently, opposed to, for example, the traditional Kantian conceptualisation of morality: he envisages ethics in terms of self-fashioning, of aesthetic transformation, of turning one's life into a work of art. Third, Foucault employs these notions in self-referential way: they are considered to describe his own genealogical work. This thesis attempts to show two things. First, I defend the idea that the notion of aesthetics of existence was already present in a constitutive way from the beginning of his work, and, specifically, I argue that it can be traced in earlier moments of his work. Second, I defend the idea that this notion of aesthetics of existence is best understood in terms of the sceptical stance of Sextus Empiricus. It describes an ethics of critique of metaphysics that can be understood as a nominalist, contextualist, and particularist stance. The first chapter discusses Foucault's late genealogy of the subject. It formulates the interpretative framework within which Foucault's own conceptualisation of the aesthetics of existence can be understood as a sceptical stance, itself conceived as nominalist, contextualist and particularist. As the practice of an aesthetics of existence is not abstract and ahistorical but the engagement with the specific historical circumstances within which this practice is undertaken, the second chapter reconstructs the intellectual context from which Foucault's thought has emerged (Heidegger, Blanchot, and Nietzsche). The third chapter discusses representative examples of different periods of Foucault's thought -such as the "Introduction" to Binswanger's "Traum und Existenz" (1954), Histoire de la folie (1961), and Histoire de la sexualité I. La volonté de savoir (1976)- and shows in which way they constitute concrete instantiations of his sceptical aesthetics of existence. The thesis concludes with responses to a number of objections to the sceptical stance here defended.