Abstract

The works of jurist Louis Le Caron are part of a body of doxological writings by a school of humanists who repudiated Aristotelian scholasticism. In the Dialogues , Le Caron elaborated a theory of poetics as well as a vision of the cosmos and of man encompassing political, aesthetic, ethical and epistemological perspectives. The Dialogues can be regarded as an example of absolute idealism because their philosophical underpinnings echo the neo-Platonic tradition. This being said, the way the book's arguments are organized into dialogues demonstrates an ideological shift which, in the middle of the century, progressively undermined the current monolithic vision rooted in theology. Thus, the structure of the Dialogues reveals a new emphasis on a field of knowledge largely ignored by Platonism: that of transformation and becoming, the object of opinion rather than of rational certainty