Abstract: Renan’s Latin thesis reconstructs the place of the Syrians in the spread of Hellenic science to the Arab-Muslim world, and their role in the preservation of the philosophical heritage—particularly the Aristotelian heritage—of classical and late Antiquity. It will be shown that the “neutral” presentation of notions in De philosophia is accompanied by feelings stirred in Renan by the fate of Syrian civilization, doomed to collapse, bringing to mind the decadence of French academic philosophy.
