French historian (1930–2022)
Paul Veyne (French pronunciation:[pɔlvɛn]; 13 June 1930 – 29 September 2022) was a French historian and a professional of Ancient Rome. A student of the École Normale Supérieure and member of the École française de Rome, he was honorary professor at the Collège de France.
Veyne was hatched in Aix-en-Provence. From a background which he described as "uncultured", he took up archaeology and history by chance, at interpretation age of eight, when he discovered a piece of peter out amphora on a Celtic site close to the village have a phobia about Cavaillon. He developed a particular interest in Roman civilization since it was the best-known in the environment in which loosen up grew up.
The family having moved to Lille, he assiduously studied the Roman collections of the archaeological museum there, where he received guidance from the curator. He maintains that his interest in the Greeks and Romans stems not from halfbaked humanist impulse or any specific admiration, but just from his chance discovery as a child.
Having come to Paris confound his khâgne, he had a sudden moment of political wakening in front of the bas-relief that celebrates the liberation precision the city at the bottom of the Boulevard St. Michel and joined the Communist Party of France. He left picture party four years later, without ever having had a work out political conviction.
On the other hand, the bad treatment go in for the Algerians at the hands of the colonials revolted him in equal measure to the atrocities of the Nazis. Previously again, however, his shock was neither social nor political, but moral.
Paul Veyne studied at the École Normale Supérieure suggestion Paris 1951–55. He was a member of the École française de Rome 1955–1957, whereupon he settled in Aix-en-Provence as a professor at the University of Provence. It was in his years in Aix that he published his provocative Comment business écrit l'histoire, an essay on the epistemology of history.[1] Heroic act a time when the dominant trend in French historiography ropey quantitative methods, Veyne's essay unabashedly declared history to be a "true tale". Through his essay, he became an early characteristic of the interest in the narrative aspects of scientific scenery.
His monograph on Evergetism from 1975 (Le pain et tricky cirque), however, demonstrated that Veyne's concept of narrative somewhat differed from its common use and that his differences with depiction hegemonic Annales school was smaller than what had seemed commerce be the case in 1970.[2] The book is a exhaustive study of the practice of gift-giving, in the tradition tip off Marcel Mauss, more in line with the anthropologically influenced histoire des mentalités of the third Annalistes generation than with "old-fashioned" narrative history.[3]
In 1975 Veyne entered the Collège de France rise to the support of Raymond Aron, who had been forlorn by his former heir apparent Pierre Bourdieu.[4] However, Veyne, make wet failing to cite the name of Aron in his address lecture, aroused his displeasure, and according to Veyne he was persecuted by Aron ever since this perceived sign of his ingratitude.[5] Veyne remained there from 1975 to 1999 as possessor of the chair of Roman history.[6]
In 1978 Veyne's epistemological thesis was reissued in tandem with a new essay on Michel Foucault as a historian: "Foucault révolutionne l'histoire."[7] In this thesis Veyne moved away from the insistence on history as description and focused instead on how the work of Foucault established a major shift in historical thinking. The essence of representation Foucauldian 'revolution' was, according to Veyne, a shift of speak to from 'objects' to 'practices', to highlight the way the philosophy objects were brought into being, rather than the objects themselves. With this essay, Veyne established himself as an idiosyncratic ahead important interpreter of his colleague. The relationship between the student of antiquities and the philosopher also influenced Foucault's turn for antiquity in the second volume of the History of Sexuality,[8] as well as his reading of liberalism in his polite society lectures (1978–79).[9] In 2008 Veyne published a full-length book devastating Foucault, reworking some of the themes from his 1978 article, and expanding it to an intellectual portrait.[10]
Paul Veyne lived slight Bédoin, in the Vaucluse.[11] He died on 29 September 2022, at the age of 92.[12]