Geneviève Lachance
After having initially studied literature as well as translation at both Bachelor and Master levels, I then changed academic course and in 2015 obtained a PhD in ancient philosophy from the Université de Montréal and Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle. My doctoral research pertained to the history of logic, more precisely to the archeology of the notion of formal contradiction in philosophers prior to Aristotle, mostly Plato. During my postdoctoral research, conducted at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Université de Genève and Universiteit Gent, I focussed on antilogic, sophistic and eristic, three intellectual movements that were vital in the emergence of logic as a discipline. Starting from 2011, I began studying Armenian in order to compare the ancient Armenian translations of Plato and Aristotle. I rapidly became interested in ancient commentaries on Aristotle’s Organon that were translated from Greek into Armenian before the 7th-8th century. These commentaries, which preserved in Armenian texts that are now lost in Greek, were rarely studied and mostly escaped the attention of ancient philosophy scholars.
My research project, entitled “Aristotle in Armenian: Between Preservation and Transformation” and funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), is a multidisciplinary project that will focus on the intercultural transmission and academic transformation of logic in Late Antiquity. It will do so by studying highly relevant commentaries on Aristotle’s logical treatises written not only in Greek and Latin but also preserved in old Armenian. Its main objective is to provide a more comprehensive account of the intercultural transmission of logical knowledge in Late Antiquity, one that will include both East and West. The project will lead to the English translation of two anonymous Armenian commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretation, which were originally written in Greek by an author who was not affiliated with the Neoplatonic school of Alexandria. It will also lead to the comparison of the Greek text of Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretation with its Armenian translation in order to identify possible variants.
Selected Publications
“Sur les Catégories 1a1-1b24 d’Aristote, Un commentaire anonyme préservé en arménien”, Studia graeco-arabica, publication in 2023.
“On Isocrates’ Dual Use of the Term Sophist”, Hermes, Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie, 151, 2, 2023, p. 138-54.
“On Aristotle’s Peri Hermeneias 16a1-18: The Case of an Anonymous Armenian Commentary”, The Classical Quarterly, 71, 2, 2021, p. 866-85.
“Aristotle on the Conventionality of Language: The Exegesis of an Anonymous Armenian Commentator”, Studia graeco-arabica, 11, 1, 2021, p. 157-75.
Delcomminette and G. Lachance (eds), L’éristique: Définitions, caractérisations et historicité, Brussels, Ousia, 2021.
“Was Plato an Eristic according to Isocrates?”, Apeiron 53, 1, 2020, p. 81-96.
“De deux expressions utilisées par Platon en contexte réfutatif: ἐναντία λέγειν et ἀντιλέγειν”, Hermes, Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie, 146, 2, 2018, p. 149-65.
“Logical form of the elenchus in Xenophon and Plato”, in G. Danzig, D. Johnson and D. Morrison (eds.), Plato and Xenophon: Comparative Studies, Mnemosyne Supplements, Brill, v. 417, 2018, p. 165-83.
“L’antilogicien ou l’ennemi de la philosophie véritable”, Elenchos, 38, 1-2, 2017, p. 45-59.
“Sur l’unité des Dissoi Logoi”, Phoenix, 70, 3-4, 2016, p. 290-301.
“Platonic Contrariety (enantia): Ancestor of the Aristotelian Notion of Contradiction (antiphasis)?”, Logica Universalis, 10, 2/3, 2016, p. 143-56.
“L’Alcibiade: entre réfutation et enseignement”, Revue de philosophie ancienne, 30, 2, 2012, p. 111-32.