André Laks

André Laks, born 1950, was taught at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and at the University of Lille 3, where he studied with Jean Bollack. Having spent most of his career as Professor of Greek, and then of Ancient Philosophy, at the University of Lille 3, he also was Professor of Ancient philosophy in the Department of Classics Princeton University from 1990 to 1994. He retired from the University of Paris-Sorbonne, where he had been appointed in 2007, in 2011 and is currently Professor for Ancient Philosophy at the Universidad Panamericana, Mexico, D.F.

Alongside his works on ancient Greek philosophy, especially Presocratic philosophers, Plato’s Laws, Aristotle’s philosophy, and doxography, he has studied the conceptual genesis and hermeneutic implications of the term “Presocratic” (Introduction à la ‘philosophie présocratique’, 2004) and published a number of articles about the philosophical reception of ancient philosophy that explore various philosophical strategies – from Antiquity onwards – to deal with what is “ancient.” He is interested in the current trend of hermeneutical studies that resolutely parts ways with the Gadamerian revision of hermeneutics and assesses the fertility of Schleiermacher’s positions. Hence also his general interest in the extent of Heidegger’s influence, in the status of a post-modern subject and more specifically in the role philology, conceived as an art of reading, can play in this landscape. Some titles relevant to the Postclassicisms group are:

« Histoire critique et doxographie. Pour une histoire de l’historiographie de la philosophie », Etudes philosophiques, 1999, p. 465-477, in Histoire, Doxographie, Vérité. Etudes sur Aristote, Théophraste, et la philosophie présocratique, Louvain-la-Neuve, 2007.

« Plato between Cohen and Natorp » (Postface of : P. Natorp, Plato’s Theory of Ideas, ed. by V. Politis), Sankt Augustin, 2004, p. 453-483.

« Gadamer et les Présocratiques », in J.-C. Gens et alii (eds.), Gadamer et les Grecs, Paris, 2004, p. 13-29.

« Jacob le Cynique : philosophes et philosophie dans la Griechische Culturgeschichte», in L. Burckhardt & H. Gercke (éds.), Jacob Burckhardt und die Griechen , Basel/ Münich, 2006, p. 325-335.

Review of : M. Leonard, Athens in Paris. Ancient Greece and the Political in Post-War French Thought (2005), Classical Review, 57/2, 2007, p. 286-290.

La Naissance du paradigme herméneutique (ed., in collaboration with A. Neschke), Lille, 20082.

«Eclairer l’obscurité. Brucker et le syncrétisme platonicien », in A. Neschke- Hentschke (ed.), Argumenta in dialogos Platonis. Teil I: Platoninterpretation und ihre Hermeneutik von der Antike bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts, Bâle, 2010, p. 351-369.

« Nietzsche et la question des successions des anciens philosophes. Vers un réexamen du statut de la philologie chez le jeune Nietzsche », Nietzsche-Studien 39, 2010, p. 244-254.

« Le désenclavement de la Grèce : le triangle français », Cités 59, 2014, p. 143-148.