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Cycles

The Theory of Incorporeals in Ancient StoicismLogic, Expression, Materialism

By Émile Bréhier

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Published 31 January 2027

About this book

This classic essay from one of the twentieth-century’s leading historians of European philosophy was formative to twentieth-century French thought

  • The first English translation of a seminal text on ancient philosophy
  • Includes two new essays from leading scholars on historical and contemporary French thought
  • Unearths the overlooked influence of Bréhier’s essay on twentieth-century French thinkers
  • Fills in a crucial yet often overlooked chapter in Deleuze Studies
  • Engages one of the most provocative themes in ancient materialism: incorporeality
  • Expands on continental returns to antiquity that focus on metaphysics, e.g., speculative realism, new materialism, affect theory, posthumanism, Althusserian and post-Althusserian approaches

Émile Bréhier’s creative interpretations of Stoicism inspired the next generation of thinkers – from Jean-Paul Sartre to Luce Irigaray – to rethink the history of philosophy. Perhaps most of all, Bréhier’s thinking about the Stoic theory of incorporeality was pivotal to Gilles Deleuze’s understanding of Ancient Greek and Roman thinkers, especially the Stoics, and formative for his own materialistic metaphysics. To understand the metaphysics, philosophy of language, and interpretations of psychoanalysis in Deleuze’s Logic of Sense, Bréhier’s influence remains to be fully elucidated.

Yet such influence has been largely unknown in Anglophone philosophy – until now. For the first time since its publication nearly a century ago, Bréhier’s groundbreaking essay finally appears in English. To frame its history and convey its importance for the future of philosophy, two new essays by a leading French philosopher and a British-Canadian philosopher bookend the translation.

Reviews

Bréhier’s highly clear work on causality in Greek antiquity, on the articulation between Stoic physics and logic, on the enigmatic lekton, is a cult book that has pollinated the contemporary French philosophy of the event. The excellent translation is enriched by excellent essays that allow us to measure and elucidate its legacy.
Table of contents

Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors

Translator's Note
Jared C. Bly and Ryan J. Johnson

Introduction: The Life of the Incorporeal
Michael James Bennett

The Theory of Incorporeals in Ancient Stoicism
Émile Bréhier, Translated by Jared C. Bly and Ryan J. Johnson

Minima Metaphysica: Bréhier Brings Stoicism to the Surface of French Philosophy (1908-2024)
Thomas Bénatouïl

Index

About the contributors

Émile Bréhier

Émile Bréhier (1876-1952) was a Professor at the Universities of Rennes, Bordeaux and directed the Revue d'Histoire de la Philosophie. In 1944 he succeeded Henri Bergson at the Sorbonne and was Lévy-Bruhl's successor as director of the Revue. His most influential works relate to the history of philosophy, and in particular Hellenic, Medieval, and German philosophy. Especially important are his studies of Plotinus, including his French translation of the Enneads. Bréhier’s many seminal works include: The Philosophical and Religious Ideas of Philo of Alexandria (1908); the monumental History of Philosophy, (1926-1932 and constantly reprinted since); The Philosophy of Plotinus (1928); The Philosophy of the Middle Ages (1937); Philosophy and its Past (1940); Transformation of French Philosophy (1950); The Current Themes of Philosophy (1951).

Jared C. Bly

Jared C. Bly holds a PhD in Philosophy from Villanova University, having defended his dissertation in Spring of 2023. He currently works as an instructor in philosophy and humanities at Villanova University, and as an experienced translator of French. Jared’s research concerns social-political philosophy and critical theory as well as aesthetics (the philosophy of the image, photography and film theory). He is the translator of texts by Gilles Deleuze, Elie During and Patrick Vauday among others. Jared is currently spearheading the publication of an edited volume entitled Aesthetics After Althusser and finds himself in the beginning stages of preparing a book manuscript on ideology critique, aesthetics and anti-colonial revolution.

Ryan J. Johnson

Ryan J. Johnson is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Elon University, in North Carolina. Ryan’s early books include The Deleuze-Lucretius Encounter (Edinburgh UP 2016) and Deleuze, A Stoic (Edinburgh UP 2020), as well as the co-edited collections Contemporary Encounters with Ancient Metaphysics (Edinburgh UP 2018) and Nietzsche and Epicurus (Bloomsbury 2020). His recent work includes the co-written Phenomenology of Black Spirit (Edinburgh UP 2023) and the monograph Three American Hegels (Rowman & Littlefield 2024). His future work is on the radical abolitionist John Brown, Spinoza, and John Coltrane.

Michael James Bennett

Michael James Bennett is Faculty Fellow in the Humanities at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is the author of Deleuze and Ancient Greek Physics: The Image of Nature (Bloomsbury 2017) and writes on the intersections between twentieth-century continental thought, the history of philosophy, and the philosophy of biology.

Thomas Bénatouïl

Thomas Bénatouïl is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Université de Lille and Director of the CNRS research center Savoirs, Textes, Langage. He is the author of Faire usage: la pratique du stoïcisme (Vrin, 2006), La Science des hommes libres. La digression du Théétète de Platon (Vrin, 2020) and many articles in French and English about Ancient Stoicism and its reception in 20th-century French philosophy. He co-edited the Cambridge Companion to Cicero’s Philosophy (CUP, 2021).

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