L’éthique de Démocrite : équilibre psychique et crédibilité morale

Résumé En

Democritus' moral fragments, far from exclusively promoting an ideal of exceptional wisdom, hold the attention of the ordinary man, and this for three reasons: rather than absolute and definitive self-mastery, they advocate an ethic of psychic well-being and equilibrium through the measurement of pleasures and a lucid perception of our situation and our capacities; they envisage moral interiority as a sphere of relative autonomy, strengthened by the exercise of rationality and continuous effort, without claiming to free the decision-making authority from the relationship with the body; they conceive of the individual as a social being, engaged in interpersonal relations, under the guidance of rules that are easy to grasp. In short, Democritus' ethics bases moral conduct on our concrete possibilities, rather than on atemporal ideals, without abandoning the ambition of a genuine moral prescription.