André Laks

André Laks, born in 1950, studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, the Sorbonne, and the University of Lille. He was a professor first of Greek, then of Ancient Philosophy, at the University of Lille (1983–90 and 1994–2007), at Princeton University (1990–94), and at the University of Paris-Sorbonne (2007–11). He has been a fellow at the Center of Hellenic Sudies in Washington (1988/89) and the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin (2000/01) and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France (1998–2008). Since his retirement from the Sorbonne in 2011, André Laks has been teaching at the Universidad Panamericana, Mexico City.

Alongside his work on ancient Greek philosophy (especially Presocratic thinkers), Plato’s political philosophy (especially the Laws), Aristotle’s and Theophrast’s Metaphysics, and the history of the transmission of ancient philosophy, he is interested in the history of hermeneutics (especially philological hermeneutics) and philosophical strategies to deal with its past. His current research bears on the history of doxography and on the disciplinary status of ancient philosophy after the influential “anthropological turn” in Classical Studies. The project he will pursue at the MPIWG concerns the relationship between philosophical and scientific histories of philosophy in ancient and modern times.   

                                                     Publications

• Plato’s Second Republic: An Essay on the Laws, Princeton University Press, 2022.

• The Concept of Presocratic Philosophy. Its Origin, Development, and Significance, Princeton University Press, 2016.

• Historiographies de la philosophie antique. Neuf Études, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2021.

• (with Glenn W. Most), Early Greek Philosophy, Harvard University Press (Loeb Collection), 2016. Also in French, published by Fayard.

• Histoire, Doxographie, Vérité. Études sur Aristote, Théophraste, et la philosophie présocratique, Leuven : Peeters, 2007.