About the Book
English summary: I work for the 21st century. A good reason to endow it again with this short initiation which I had been asked to do in the last century. At that time, we were in those post-war years in which, beyond the imprescriptible disasters and crimes, everyone was rebuilding their health and morale as best they could and trying to restore some sense to humanity. Like everyone else, I was looking for answers, solutions, in short, an absolute which - pardon the modesty of it -could be translated into words. There was no shortage of words. The words in vogue were existentialism, Marxism, personalism, and other words ending in ism. Words and more words, but no absolute - at least, that was my impression, or how I imagined it. That is, until the day when one of Jankelevitch's books fell into my hands. That was in 1949: it was the first edition of Traite des vertus. And at the risk of exaggerating the comparison a little too much, I would say that what happened to me was similar to what happened to Saint Augustine, when he was loaned some texts by Plotinus and Porphyry: my perception of things radically changed. As the years passed, I would not rest until I had read the work in its entirety. Yet at the time, how could I have imagined that, through the years, eleven of those volumes would be gifted to me by their author, inscribed with a personal note from him?
French description: Je travaille pour le XXIe siecle. Bonne raison pour y rendre de nouveau presente cette courte initiation qu'on m'avait demandee au siecle dernier. On etait alors dans ces annees de l'apres-guerre, ou par-dela les desastres et crimes imprescriptibles, chacun se refaisait tant bien que mal une sante et un moral, et tentait de redonner un sens a l'humain. Comme tout un chacun, je cherchais des reponses, des solutions, bref, un absolu, et qui - excusez du peu - se serait traduit en mots. Des mots, on en trouvait. La mode etait a l'existentialisme, au marxisme, au personnalisme et autres mots en isme. Des mots, des mots, mais d'absolu, point. Tel, du moins, que je m'en faisais l'idee - ou l'image. Jusqu'au jour ou me tomba entre les mains un livre de Jankelevitch. Nous etions en 1949: c'etait la premiere edition du
Traite des vertus. Et si je ne craignais de pousser un peu loin le pastiche, je dirais que m'advint ce qui etait arrive a saint Augustin a qui l'on avait prete des textes de Plotin et de Porphyre: ma facon de voir s'en trouvait changee du tout au tout. Je n'aurais de cesse, a mesure que passeraient les annees, que je n'aie lu l'oeuvre en son entier. Mais sur le moment, comment aurais-je imagine que onze de ces volumes me seraient offerts au cours des ans par leur auteur, avec un mot de sa main ?Lucien Jerphagnon, auteur de nombreux ouvrages, a notamment dirige l'edition des
OEuvres de saint Augustin dans la Bibliotheque de la Pleiade.Francois Felix, qui est a l'initiative de la presente edition, enseigne la philosophie moderne et contemporaine a l'universite de Lausanne.
