THURSDAY, FEB 2 2023
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In his Essays , Montaigne gives a very special place to the death of his friend Etienne de La Boétie. This place crosses Les Essais right through, it is the main subject of chapter 28 of book I, entitled "On friendship", and represents this mourning, or infinite sadness, which pushed Montaigne to write. But this place is also the atopic place of a "soul in two bodies", harmony of minds, confusion of wills, indivisible sovereignty of lovers, which makes us think again about the "secret" foundations of any community, whether domestic or Politics. I will approach these questions, linked to the death of the friend, through a detailed analysis of the chapter on friendship, which unfolds itself like so many readings of Aristotle, Cicero and Saint Augustine.
SERGE MARGEL
Serge Margel is a philosopher and philologist. He teaches Hebrew language, biblical sciences and exegesis of ancient texts at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. He is a researcher at the Swiss National Fund for Scientific Research and for several years he has been a visiting professor at the Department of Literary Theory and French Literature at the University of Brasilia. He recently published, with Editions Hermann, in Paris, Otherness of literature, Philosophy, ethnography, cinema , in 2021, and Philosophy in the mirror. Literature, religion, cinema , in 2023.