Mentions des zoophytes chez Platon, Aristote et certains commentateurs byzantins : l’occasion d’un discours sur l’homme

Abstract

This article sets out to explore different roles that the mention of zoophytes can play into some texts of Plato, Aristotle and byzantine commentators. Thus, the staging of the life of the marine lung in the Philebus represents a possible horizon of regression to be kept in mind, and not, as in John Philopon, a stage of man's formation that will necessarily be surpassed. For the latter, as for Aristotle, evoking zoophytes is a way of resolving the question of the frontier between living animals and plants by postulating the continuity between the plant and animal orders.