Jean Lauxerois's 'La Beauté des mortels' Examines Greek Thought for Modernity

Jean Lauxerois's book 'La Beauté des mortels' (Desclée de Brouwer) collects seven essays subtitled 'Essai sur le monde grec à l'usage des hommes d'aujourd'hui.' Most were written alongside translations of Greek classics by Homer, Sophocles, Plato, and Aristotle. The essays engage with thinkers Friedrich Hölderlin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Walter F. Otto, and Kostas Axelos. Lauxerois argues that modern humans know they will die but no longer understand mortality as their very being, having lost the sense of finitude as a blessing. The world, no longer inhabited, is now a space to be technically mastered and devastated. Beauty, since the birth of aesthetics in 1750, is merely subjective feeling. The book does not mourn a lost past but insists on living a present whose origins are unknown, acknowledging that roots will forever be lacking. However, being cannot exist without memory. Beauty once inhabited the world but has now deserted it; amicability has been replaced by the familiarity of consensus. The book is described as scholarly, readable, and as limpid as the lights we lack. The review is by Francis Wybrands.