Louis-Jules Gernet

Louis-Jules Gernet (* 1882 in Paris ; † 1962 there ) was a French Graecist and anthropologist .

Louis-Jules Gernet was Professor of Classical Philology in Algiers until after the Second World War . In 1948 he was appointed to the seminar for legal sociology of the École pratique des hautes études in Paris, where he taught historical anthropology of ancient Greece. Gernet was editor of the journal L'Année sociologique from 1949 to 1961 , on whose column for "legal and ethical sociology" he also worked.

Gernet is considered to be the founder of the historical anthropology of antiquity. Based on the application of the principles of Durkheim's sociology, he developed methods for the interpretation of the historical and anthropological data of ancient Greece, which do not attempt to reduce the diversity of manifestations into generally applicable categories. The comparative approach in the interpretation of mythological traditions, religious customs and - above all - legally fixed institutions and legal practice is a constant of Gernets' anthropological approach: the inconsistencies can only be explained in the historical perspective that emerges in such a comparison which often shaped the organizational forms of ancient societies and are often symptoms of change and times of crisis.

Gernet's approach had a major influence on later anthropological research in France. This was explicitly continued by Jean-Pierre Vernant and the exponents of the so-called École de Paris , but anthropologists such as Claude Lévi-Strauss and René Girard also relied directly or indirectly on his studies.

Gernet's translations and commentaries on the Attic speakers Antiphon , Demosthenes , Lysias and von Plato's Nomoi are also valued .

The Center Louis Gernet in Paris is named after him .

Fonts

• Research on the development of the pensée juridique et morale en Grèce. Etude semantique . Leroux, Paris: 1917
• Discours / Lysias . Le Belles Lettres, Paris: 1924–1962
• Discours / suivis des fragments d'Antiphon le sophiste . Le Belles Lettres, Paris 1954
• Demostène: plaidoyers civils . Le Belles Lettres, Paris 1954–1960
• Droit et société dans la Grèce ancienne , Paris: 1955
• Anthropologie de la Grèce Antique . Flammarion, Paris: 1999, ISBN 2080811053
• R. Di Donato (Ed.), Les Grecs sans Miracle . La Découverte, Paris: 1983
• A. Soldani (Ed.), Polyvalence des images . ETS, Pisa: 2004, ISBN 8846709454
• R. Di Donato (Ed.), La famiglia nella Grecia antica . Manifestolibri, Rome: 1997

literature

• R. Di Donato, "L'anthropologie historique de Louis Gernet" in Annales ESC , 5/6, 1982, pp. 984-996.
• A. Taddei, Louis Gernet e le tecniche del diritto ateniese . Biblioteca di Studi Antichi, 85, Pisa 2001

Web links

• Center Louis Gernet (Homepage)