Contenu du sommaire : Traductions vers le latin au XVIe siècle

The successful introduction of Lucian to Western Europe in late 14th century, which was followed by Latin translations of a number of his works produced in the first half of the 15th century, continued in Italy also in the second half of the century. This attitude subsequently passed to scholars from outside Italy, and by late 15th century almost all of Lucian's texts had met with at least one Latin version and started reaching the printing houses of the time. The edition of the Greek text in 1496 prompted scholars to produce new Latin translations, most of which were soon printed in places all over Europe. The printing boom of the first half of the 16th century facilitated and accelerated their diffusion, and then the gradual decline of the printed editions of Lucian's Latin versions may be attributed to the vernacular translations, which had started appearing already in the 15th century. Tracing the production and diffusion of the Latin versions of Lucian from the late 15th to the late 16th century, both in manuscript and in print, reveals some informative details about the texts that appealed most to humanists of the time, the geographical and chronological fluctuations of their interest in Lucian's texts as these emerge from the printed editions, but also the most influential of the translators and their Latin versions and the reasons for this.

This paper proposes a reflexion on why did scholars continue to traslate Greek into Latin all the sixteenth century long, and how they justifed their works. For example in 1540, J. Perion began a new translation of Aristotle to answer to the needs of a readership who certainly knew Latin better than Greek. Founded on Bruni's ideas on translation, he used Cicero's style because he thought it was the most appropriate to Greek philosophy, as Cicero already translated it into Latin. So did Denis Lambin thirty years later, when he proposed a new translation of his own, without calling into question the choice of the language, that it to say without questionning what language, either latin or vernacular, would be more efficient. He justified his project by the difficulty of the exercise of translation itself, and by the fact that he was the only scholar able to perfectly achieve it.

Translating into latin modern texts was a way Protestants used to enhance the diffusion of their propaganda, first written in a vernacular tongue, and to enlarge their readership, notably from South Europe to North. In the case of the Commentario delle Cose dei Turchi, written by Paolo Giovio in Italian and translated by Francesco Negri, to be turned into latin also contributed to change the way people read this text: the translation cancelled the critical topics on faith, and reduced the text to documentary interests. Later in the century the text in Latin was included in the Opera omnia edition of Giovio, as if it had been written by Giovio himself in this language, and was counted among the historiographic works of this scholar.

This paper aims to show how at the end of the Sixteenth Century, translating in latin modern and comtemporary historiography, first written in Italian, had limits: as S. Lambino saw reading Nicola Stupan's translation into latin of the Dialoghi della historia by Francesco Patrizi, the latin language could not carry out the vivacity and the colours of the modern discourse, and even could not translate exactly the meanings. The modern texts in this kind of translation could acquire a larger audience, but could also lost part of their identity: in this case, the fact does not depend from the ability of the translator but actually from the convenience, or inconvenience, of the ancient language, unable to adapt exactly the modern concepts to ancient ways of thinking and writing.

Le Corbusier, certainly the most iconic representative of modern architecture, always had ambivalent connections with the political power. Although he constantly claimed that he wants to promote the idea of an everyday happiness for the people through architecture, he was in the same time trying very hard to be in the circle of power, regardless of its ideology. Through a series of paradoxes, I aim to show that Le Corbusier's political attitude can not only be explained by historical and empirical arguments, but that it also has to be referred to a particular theoretical and philosophical conception of the nature of power. He always considered power in a purely formal and an extremely individualistic manner. Moreover, he reduced power to a simple means of efficiency in order to realize the only valuable revolution, i. e. the architectural one. Le Corbusier's conception of power thus allies a profound reflection on the potencies of architecture and a noticeable lack of political intelligence.

In the last decades, the relationship between Spinoza and Marx has been addressed by authors such as Louis Althusser, Antonio Negri, and Maximilien Rubel. That said, if a connection between the two can be made at the level of theoretical affinities, an analysis of the correspondence between these affinities and actual references to Spinoza made by Marx is lacking. At this point, we do not know how these references fit (or not) with the philosophical and political objectives Marx set out to achieve throughout his life. The present study, therefore, will review Marx's first works to examine Spinoza's presence and simultaneously demonstrate to which goals this presence was subordinated.

If there is no theory of taste in Rousseau, the question of taste nevertheless is present throughout all his work. It appears at first as a criticism addressed to worldy society, and then gives way, in the writings of his maturity, to an analysis of the social conditions of general good taste. In spite of the classical terminology of its texts, they in fact develop a conception sui generis of taste. Rousseau does not refer to an order of perfection to explain and base the good taste. Taste is, according to him, a collective phenomenon which manifests the state of social affections. The taste, as much the social and the individual, is called “good” when the judgment on what pleases or what displeases is not subject to opinion. Autonomy of taste and good taste are confounded, voluptuousness and relative equality are then the conditions.