New book | Brusson: Follow Plato, in search of wisdom

"Following Plato, In Search of Wisdom : Luc Brisson Classical Academic Interviews and Treatises" is a new book produced by Wangjiang Plato Academy, and I hope you will support it.

• Luc Brisson was one of the most important living scholars of the highest academic output and the greatest contribution to Plato and Platonism.
• The book is divided into two parts, the first is a Brisson interview, equivalent to Brisson's brief biography, and the second is selected from four of Brisson's representative papers, covering several areas of his research.
• This book is a phased result of the National Social Science Foundation Youth Project: "Translation and Research of Early Platonic Philosophical Literature" (No. 16CZX044), and is also funded by the "Social Science Elite" Talent Project of the Tianfu Ten Thousand People Program of Sichuan Province.

Wangjiang Plato Research Series

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Follow Plato, in search of wisdom

—Luc Brisson's Classical Academic Interview and Theory

[Law] [plus] by Luc Bresson

Liang Zhonghe Selected

Translated by Sun Ying, Li Bohan, Zhang Wenming, and others

East China Normal University Press / June 2020 / 48.00 YUAN

Synopsis

The book is divided into two parts, the first part is an interview with Brisson, who is an academic who came out of the remote countryside of Quebec, and his 70 years of life and academic experience are full of twists and tribulations, but his main line of thought and academic path are clear and firm. The next paper, four of Brisson's most representative papers, cover several areas of his research, from Socrates to Platonism, enough to serve as a model for future generations of scholars.

About the author and editor

The author, Luc Brisson, has been a perennial fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), a former president of the International Platonic Society (IPS) (2016-2019), an executive vice-president of the International Platonic Society, and a member of the Steering Committee of the International Society for Neoplatonist Studies (ISNS) since 2014. He was one of the most important living scholars with the highest academic output and the greatest contribution to Plato and Platonism.

Editor Liang Zhonghe, born in 1981, male, born in Shanxi, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy Department of Sichuan University; Director of the Institute of Western Classical Philosophy of Sichuan University, Secretary-General of the Sichuan Philosophical Society; Winner of the National Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award, the first batch of social science elites of the "Tianfu Ten Thousand Talents Program" in Sichuan Province; Foreign Cooperative Researcher of the French Academy of Sciences "Centre Pépin au CNRS", "Centre for Traditional Studies" of Trinity College Dublin The Study of the Platonic Tradition, Trinity College Dublin) Overseas Fellow, Distinguished Fellow of the Institute of Ethics and Religion of Tsinghua University; Executive Director of the National Greco-Roman Philosophical Society, Convener of the National Forum on Renaissance Thought; Member of the International Platonic Society (IPS), Member of the American Renaissance Research Society (RSA); Member of the Expert Group on General Education of Sichuan University, In Chengdu, he presided over the classic open reading class "Wangjiang Plato Academy".

Editor (left) and author (right)

directory

Chinese edition order

Previous Interview: Understanding Myths

First, the growth experience

From Plato to the Big Bang

3. Cultural citizens

Next: From Plato to Platonism

Midwives: Socrates

V. What is God in Plato's eyes?

What is Platonism?

Vii. The Formation of Pythagoreanism

Editor's Epilogue

Try reading

(Luc Brisson)

Translated by Sun Ying by Liang Zhonghe

The book may seem strange to a Chinese reader, and you might ask two questions: First, this man has not played much of an important role in human politics and history, so why should we tell his story? Then, even though Plato's writings play a rather important role in the so-called "Western" culture, why should we associate this biography with the history of Platonism? In fact, these two themes are closely related because they enable us to understand, in the light of a particular case, what "Western" people understand through "mythology" and "philosophy", and how the history of philosophy explains the influence of Platonism.

Luc Brisson's life, as we just said, has little to do with popular interest. However, if international and civil wars aside, my life does have many similarities to the daily lives of Chinese people born in the countryside in the late 1940s, where the best children are destined to learn. As I have been trying to explain, in my village everyday life follows a fixed rhythm structured by the stages of life of the holy figures (those Christians who represent Christ), and I quickly distanced myself from Catholicism. When I tried to return to Quebec, it caused me quite a few problems, but the problem doesn't make much sense here.

For me, the goal is not to get rid of those ritualistic dramatizations that repeat every year, but to understand why most people not only accept, but even seek to arrange their lives in this way, and I especially want to understand the latter. When agriculture, handicrafts, and commerce are all intimately related to reality, why would one want to place the experience within the framework of a story (in the proper sense of the term, in the context of a myth), and whether the story is true or false cannot be confirmed. Even, why does everyone tie their fate to this story, in which only conversion to God will give them eternal life? Finally, why do people believe that our world was created out of thin air by God and then dominated by Him?

Mosaics of Monreale Cathedral (Duo di Monreale), Sicily, Italy

The reason why I went to France can be largely explained by the rejection of this. Since the French Revolution of 1789, France has had a secular constitution. I believe that there I can find a way beyond the stages of mythology and acquire true knowledge—the kind of knowledge that has been called "philosophy" since Plato and has been constantly changing ever since. In ancient times, philosophy could be described as a coherent set of statements about the world, human beings, and society that defined a way of life. So I think I could move aside from the myths that performed this function in my childhood and turn to philosophy. However, I soon realized that the starting point of philosophical thought did not belong to itself, but came from mythology; in short, philosophy was not autonomous, because it was rooted in tradition. All of this explains why I would be interested in a mythological tradition that can go back to India (which is why I studied Sanskrit), yet the pinnacle of its prosperity was in ancient Greece— I was fluent in ancient Greek and familiar with this history. Greek mythology tells the origins of the world, the gods, the spirits, the heroes, and the people of the past. These transcendent beings—poets love to tell stories about their adventures, especially in poetry and drama—are used as role models by those who reproduce them. They thus play an important educational role. However, unlike the Xianban figures in Chinese mythology, the words and deeds of the greek mythological figures are often disgraceful: they wage war against each other, they lie, they rape, they lie again, and so on. This is also why Plato was so harshly critical of the poets who shaped these myths, and he wanted to promote a new ethic and politics that would make it possible to live together without conflict. Similarly, Plato questioned the stories about the origins of our world, which, in the eyes of poets like Hesiod, were a series of atrocities that culminated in the reign of Zeus. Zeus was a god who preached justice, but he himself often violated the moral principles that Plato wanted to practice. This explains why, in the dialogues of the Republic and the Dhamma, Plato depicts a world guided by the rational universal law, represented by a soul endowed with wisdom, which society and individuals use as a model for their actions, a bit like the relationship between man and the Tao in Chinese world.

1st century AD Gakuen mosaic statue

Plato died in 348 BC, but Platonism (Old School, New School, Middle Platonism, Neoplatonism) continued as a school of interpretation of his writings until 529 AD, and it took almost a thousand years to infiltrate the Byzantine Empire and then the European Renaissance. Soon, the question of mythology became very important. The Platonists, hoping to accept Plato's criticism of the mythical tradition while remaining faithful to it, resorted to another interpretation, which later became "allegory." According to this method of exegesis, discourse takes on two levels of meaning: the former conveys meaning that all people can understand, and the latter points to a deeper meaning that conveys truth to the initiator. Let's take some examples. If Zeus and his wife were sexually bound, this was meant to show that the world around us was formed by a combination of finite (masculine principle) and infinity (feminine principle). The same applies to the soul, which is depicted as two horses pulling a chariot with a coachman sitting on it. As the Platonists (i.e., Plato's followers throughout the ages) taught, Plato's words conveyed the truth, and so did the words of the gods, and philosophical discourses must be placed in parallel with the myths created by homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and Chaldean oracles. This step was taken to save the myth in response to criticism from the Christians who came to power in the Roman Empire in the 4th century AD. As a result, you will find that this book mentions various topics that Western philosophy no longer considers, such as transcendent existence, the soul, the fate of the world domination, reincarnation, and the principle of vegetarianism.

Soul carriage

So you can better understand that my reaction to Christianity has set the course for me to study Plato and Platonism in their relationship to mythology. In this way, I returned to the source of the culture on which I depended. By exploring a very different culture, my trip to China greatly broadened my horizons. Chinese culture is also concerned with its relationship with tradition, which is rooted in Confucianism and Taoism. I reiterate once again that philosophical and public morality have roots in an extremely distant past, and they are passed on by tradition. This past inspires our present behavior and allows us to think about a different future by being different from it.

Mr. Luc Bresson has been a principal investigator of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) for many years, is currently President of the International Plato Association (IPS) (2016-2019), and has long been the Executive Vice-President of the International Plato Society. Since 2014, he has been a member of the Steering Committee of the International Association for The Study of Neoplatonism (ISNS). He is the most active academic output, Mr. Brisson's latest academic resume, because the content is very much, we do not attach it to this book, interested readers can be found in the WeChat public account of sichuan university academic society "Jiang'an Plato Society". One of the most important scholars to Plato and Platonism.

In 2014, Mr. and Mrs. Brisson went to Chengdu for a week, and in addition to holding a series of lectures, we exchanged a lot of ideas, which directly led us to organize the translation of his masterpieces and collections of papers. Before we met, I liked his unadorned, clear and complete style of writing, admired his attitude towards learning, and after the meeting, I was even more impressed by his extraordinary courage and unremitting efforts to devote all his life to Plato. In order to understand his path of study, I specifically offered to interview him, and Mr. Brisson gave me the interview that he had already published in 1999. In 2016, we began to organize translations, and in 2017 I selected several of his introductions to Plato and Platonism as the next part, making it easier for beginners to climb the ladder. Completed at the end of 2018, at the beginning of 2019, I unified the whole manuscript and determined the final form and content.

In the process of selection and publication, Mr. Brisson gave great support, gave free copyright, provided revised versions of various manuscripts, and took great pains to inquire about the translation process, which made us very moved. The translator Chen Ningxin is a doctoral candidate for philosophy at Zhejiang University, and Sun Ying is a master's degree in philosophy from Chinese Min University, and they were both important students of our Wangjiang Plato Academy. The translator Zhang Haoran graduated from the Department of Philosophy of Sichuan University with a master's degree, and Li Bohan and Zhang Wenming are both graduate students in the direction of foreign philosophy in the Department of Philosophy of Sichuan University, and they are also the main research force of Wangjiang Plato Academy. Our main work in recent years has been to introduce and study Platonic philosophy together.

Wangjiang Plato Academy emblem, lin chuan design and production

Mr. Brisson was a moderate holismist in the study of Plato, and this is my personal position. He believes that many of Plato's current research has gone too far and too far, away from platonic texts, caught up in the complicated debate of second-hand literature rather than calculating Plato's own views, he reminds us to return to the text, to abstain from fancy theoretical cutting, to have a point of content to say a point, in the context of history, in philosophical speculation, the deep meaning of Plato and ancient Platonist words is clearly presented. This is the example he has set, and it is also the direction we will learn later.

We can feel Mr. Brisson's difficult path to study from the interview section of this book, and we can also feel the crampedness of scholars in a complex secular environment, which later generations have learned. At the same time, his affectionate and sharp academic comments always jump on the paper, allowing us to see that rigorous scholars have a touching side in addition to their sharp academic vision.

Finally, we would like to revisit his words:

I remain convinced that, together with the philosophers of antiquity, the search for beauty, goodness, virtue, and happiness would only make one a better person. This can make people realize that the practical necessity of life and competition cannot constitute the boundaries of existence. Especially in order to live together, one must acknowledge the principles that guide one's existence, and one must remain faithful to the pain of falling into meaninglessness, which also implies respect for the principles that guide the existence of others.

This book commemorates the 10th anniversary of the founding of Wangjiang Plato Academy.

Beam neutralization

July 6

Chengdu Wangjiang Plato Academy

Wangjiang Park Day Shadow