Didier Ottaviani is Associate Professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Lyon. He is a former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Fontenay-Saint-Cloud, he is a french “Agrégé” and Doctor of philosophy. He is a member of the CNRS research laboratory “Institute of History of Representations and Ideas in Modernities” (IHRIM, UMR 5317).
His doctoral thesis was on Dante’s philosophy, studying the metaphysical status of light and the evolutions of the Poet’s thought on this question between the Convivio and the Divine Comedy. It was published (in french) under the title The Philosophy of Light at Dante. From Convivio to Divine Comedy (Paris, Honoré Champion, 2004, 480p, reissue: Paris, Classics Garnier, 2016, 477p.)
He devoted his “Habilitation to directing research” into the study of the evolution of political science and its displacement from the moral field to that of the natural sciences, especially in the thought of Marsilius of Padua. This work was published (in french) under the title The Birth of Political Science. Around Marsile de Padoue (Paris, Classics Garnier, 2018, 397p.)
His research focuses on the thought of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and more particularly on the existing relations between politics and medicine, as well as on the influence exercised by Arab philosophers on Latin thought. He is particularly interested in the influence of biological and medical thought on philosophy, both in Italian authors of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in Montaigne and Michel Foucault.
Through Dante or Montaigne, he is also interested in the question of writing philosophy in a poetic or literary form, as well as in the practice of philosophical writing.
Research Themes : Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy; Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism; Political philosophy; Philosophy and medicine; Philosophy and literature.