Luc Brisson (born 10 March 1946 in

Saint-Esprit, Quebec Saint-Esprit (, "Holy Spirit") is a municipality in the Lanaudière region of Quebec, Canada, part of the Montcalm Regional County Municipality. It is located on both banks of the Saint-Esprit River, a tributary of the L'Assomption River. His ...

) is a Canadian (and from 1986 also French) historian of philosophy and anthropologist of antiquity. He is emeritus director of research at the

CNRS The French National Centre for Scientific Research (, , CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe. In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 eng ...

in France.

Life

Brisson was born in a small agricultural village in

Québec Quebec is Canada's largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, New Brunswick to the southeast and a coastal border ...

in 1946. All his education was received in the ecclesiastically administered and staffed schools, seminaries, and universities of Québec. At the end of the sixties he joined the general movement of Québec students to Paris, where he undertook a thesis on the '' Timaeus'' of Plato, under the direction of Clémence Ramnoux at Paris X Nanterre. During 1971-1972 he was a visiting scholar at

Balliol College Balliol College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1263 by nobleman John I de Balliol, it has a claim to be the oldest college in Oxford and the English-speaking world. With a governing body of a master and ar ...

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

. His studies include several years of Sanskrit. Upon the completion of his Ph.D. thesis, and through the support of Jean Pépin, who shared his interest in the ancient treatment of myth, Brisson was attached to the

in 1974. In 1975 he was awarded the

Zographos Prize Zografos or Zographos ( , ''painter'') is a Greek surname. Notable people with the surname include: * (1844-1927), Greek MP and academic, after whom the Athens suburb is named * Christakis Zografos (1820-1898), Ottoman Greek banker and benefactor ...

for his systematic commentary on ''Timaeus'', ''Le Même et l’Autre dans la structure ontologique du Timée de Platon''. Despite his wider philosophical interests, he says that "I can be defined as 'an historian of philosophy' whose domain of research is Plato and Platonism." His historical work includes several studies of Neoplatonism including new French translations of

Plotinus Plotinus (; , ''Plōtînos''; – 270 CE) was a Greek Platonist philosopher, born and raised in Roman Egypt. Plotinus is regarded by modern scholarship as the founder of Neoplatonism. His teacher was the self-taught philosopher Ammonius ...

. Brisson's range and quantity of publications has been very large, but the topic of the relation between myth and reason has dominated. At home neither in Québec nor in France, Brisson feels himself to be a kind of Platonic "nomad." For him, as for Pierre Hadot, philosophy is “a spiritual exercise destined to transform the life of the individual who gives himself up to it.”''One Hundred Years of Neoplatonism in France.''

Works

English translations

* ''Inventing the Universe: Plato's Timaeus, the Big Bang, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge'', Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995. * '' Plato the Myth Maker'', Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. . * ''Sexual ambivalence: Androgyny and Hermaphroditism in Graeco-Roman Antiquity'', Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. . * ''How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical Mythology'', University of Chicago Press, 2008. . * ''Plato's Philebus: selected papers from the Eighth Symposium Platonicum'', with

John M. Dillon John Myles Dillon (; born 15 September 1939) is an Irish classicist and philosopher who was Regius Professor of Greek (Trinity), Regius Professor of Greek in Trinity College, Dublin between 1980 and 2006. Prior to that he taught at the Universit ...

, Sankt Augustin: Academia, 2010. * ''Dialogues on Plato's Politeia (Republic): selected papers from the Ninth Symposium Platonicum'', with Noburu Notomi, Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2013. * ''Neoplatonic Demons and Angels'', Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2018.

Original French works

* ''Le mythe de Tirésias, essai d’analyse structurale'', Leiden, Brill, 1976. . * ''Éros'', París, Flammarion, 1980 * ''Lectures de Platon''. Paris, J. Vrin, 2000. . * ''Orphée et l’orphisme dans l’Antiquité greco-romaine'', Londres, Variorum, 1995. . * ''Puissance et limites de la raison. Le probleme des valeurs'', Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1995, with Walter Meyerstein * ''Poèmes magiques et cosmopologiques / Orphée'', Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1995 * ''Le sexe incertain: androgynie et hermaphrodisme dans l’antiquité gréco-romaine'', Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1997. . * ''Matière et devenir dans les philosophies anciennes'', Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2003, joint volume. * ''Etudes platoniciennes VI'', Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2004, with Jean-François Pradeau. * ''Lectures de Platon'', Paris, Vrin, 2000. . * ''Platon 1990-1995: Bibliographie'', Paris, J. Vrin, 1999. , with Frédéric Plin. * ''Introduction a la Philosophie du mythe I et II'', Paris, Vrin, 1997–2000, with Christoph Jamme. * ''Les écrits socratiques de Xénophon'', Paris, Presse Universitaire de France, 2004. . * ''Platon 1995-2000: Bibliographie'', Paris, J. Vrin, 2007. , with B. Castelnerac and F. Plin. * ''Le même et l'autre dans la structure ontologique du Timée de Platon. Un commentaire systématique du Timée de Platon'', Paris, Klincksieck, 1974 (4th edn, with an added bibliography 1998–2015, Sankt Augustin Academia Verlag, 2015). See the French Wikipedia article for a comprehensive list.

Translations of Plato

* ''Lettres'', Paris, Flammarion, 1987. (GF; 466). * ''Apologie de Socrate. Criton'', 3rd ed., Paris, Flammarion, 2005. . * ''Timée. Critias''; 2nd ed., Paris, Garnier-Flammarion, 1995. . * ''Parménide'', Paris, Garnier-Flammarion, 1994. . * ''Le banquet'', 4th ed., Paris, Flammarion, 2005. . * ''Phèdre'', 6th ed., together with ''La pharmacie de Platon'' by

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...

. Paris, Flammarion, 2004. . * ''Le politique'', Paris, Flammarion, 2003. (, with Jean-François Pradeau. * ''Les lois''. I-VI, Paris, Flammarion, 2006. with Jean-François Pradeau. * ''Les lois''. VII-XII; Paris, Flammarion, 2006. , with Jean-François Pradeau. * ''Œuvres complètes'' in one volume, Luc Brisson (ed.), Flammarion, 2011. . * ''Apologie de Socrate, Criton: traductions, introductions, notes, chronologie et bibliographies'' (5th corrected and updated edn), Flammarion, 2017.

References

External links

CNRS personal page

Online lecture: « L'actualité de Platon »
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brisson, Luc 1946 births 20th-century French historians 20th-century French philosophers Canadian historians of philosophy French National Centre for Scientific Research awards École pratique des hautes études alumni Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada French hellenists French philologists French scholars of ancient Greek philosophy Plato scholars Living people Members of the Lincean Academy People from Lanaudière Canadian philosophy academics Université de Montréal alumni University of Paris alumni Canadian emigrants to France Research directors of the French National Centre for Scientific Research