Cet ouvrage d’Emile Bréhier trouve son premier point de départ dans un cours donné à la Sorbonne dans l’hiver 1921-1922. Il a principallement porté son attention sur l’intelligible : l’Un, l’Intelligence, l’Ame; mais la réalité intelligible chez Plotin garde toujours un caractère sensuel : « la contemplation de l’intelligible est sur la même ligne que la contemplation du sensible; elle la continue directement sans passer du tout par l’intermédiaire d’idées logiquement enchaînées. […] Ce que l’expression est au visage, la réalité (...) intelligible tout entière l’est à l’ensemble du monde sensible; cette réalité est comme la physionomie de l’univers, l’expression du visage qu’il montre à nos sens. »En cherchant à dégager le problème fondamental de la philosophie de Plotin, cet ouvrage d’introduction aura contribué à en faire apparaître l’arrière-plan religieux et jusqu’à l’orientalisme, et parfaitement réussi à caractériser l’originalité de cet idéalisme que Hegel avait qualifié d’“élevé”. (shrink)

One of the foremost contributions to the study of the history of ideas. Examines ancient sources pertaining to the original condition of mankind.

Originally published in 1961. Greek philosophers were concerned with the distinction between appearance and reality, and all the differences in their philosophic systems were ultimately predicated on their different views of this distinction. The history of Greek rationalism is, then, a study of the changing basis of Greek philosophy. George Boas provides a historical account of rationalism in classical philosophy. He focuses on four central topics: the distinction between appearance and reality, the method used to establish the distinction, (...) the appraisal of life made by the philosophers studied, and their ethical theories. (shrink)

Originally published in 1969. The proverb vox populi, vox Dei first appeared in a work by Alcuin (ca. 798), who wrote that "the people [] are to be led, not followed. [] Nor are those to be listened to who are accustomed to say, 'The voice of the people is the voice of God.'" Tracing the changing meaning of the saying through European history, George Boas finds that "the people" are not an easily identifiable group. For many centuries (...) the butt of jokes and the substance of comic relief in serious drama, the people became in time an object of pity and, later, of aesthetic appeal. Popular opinion, despised in ancient Rome, was something sought, after the French Revolution. The first essay documents the use of the titular proverb through the eighteenth century. In the next six essays, Boas attempts to determine who the people were and how writers and philosophers have regarded them throughout history. He also examines the people as the creators of literature, art, and music, and as the subject of others' artistic representations. In a final essay, he discusses egalitarianism, which has given a voice to the common person. Animating Boas's account is his own belief in the importance of the individual's voice—as opposed to the voice of the masses, which is by no means necessarily that of God or reason. (shrink)