Simona NICOLAE (Université de Bucarest / Institut d’Études Sud-Est Européennes),
Marc Aurèle : penser la liberté dans le sillage de la philosophie païenne, à l’avènement du Christianisme [Marcus Aurelius: Thinking Liberty in the Wake of Pagan Philosophy at the Dawn of Christianity]
Keywords : ἐλευθερία, liberty, freedom, stoicism, Marcus Aurelius, Ad se ipsum.
Abstract : Marcus Aurelius: Thinking Liberty in the Wake of Pagan Philosophy at the Dawn of Christianity. The concept of liberty emerged in the Greek world in contrast to that of slavery and referred to a social reality, to wit, that of rights warranted by the people’ belonging to a race. This type of liberty, which is tantamount to indigenousness, evolved afterwards into a political concept that underlies democracy. The philosophical traditions of cynicism and stoicism have turned the collective liberty of the demos into individual liberty and tried to define its character and its limits. Representing the third stoicism, Marcus Aurelius employs the word liberty with various meanings that sum up and tint the previous meanings. The present paper reaches across the plethora of meanings of this word by analysing the occurrences of ἐλευθερία in Ad se ipsum and trying to tease apart the inherited meanings and those that the emperor-philosopher contributes as a personal and innovative touch.
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