Paul Veyne

Paul Veyne lived in Bédoin, in the Vaucluse. He died on 29 September 2022, at the age of 92.

In 1978 Veyne's epistemological essay was reissued in tandem with a new essay on Michel Foucault as a historian: "Foucault révolutionne l'histoire." In this essay Veyne moved away from the insistence on history as narrative, and focused instead on how the work of Foucault constituted a major shift in historical thinking. The essence of the Foucauldian 'revolution' was, according to Veyne, a shift of attention from 'objects' to 'practices', to highlight the way the epistemological objects were brought into being, rather than the objects themselves. With this essay Veyne established himself as an idiosyncratic and important interpreter of his colleague. The relationship between the historian of antiquities and the philosopher also influenced Foucault's turn towards antiquity in the second volume of the History of Sexuality, as well as his reading of liberalism in his public lectures (1978–79). In 2008 Veyne published a full-length book on Foucault, reworking some of the themes from his 1978 essay, expanding it to an intellectual portrait.

His monograph on Evergetism from 1975 (Le pain et le cirque), however, demonstrated that Veyne's concept of narrative somewhat differed from its common use, and that his differences with the hegemonic Annales school was smaller than what had seemed to be the case in 1970. The book is a comprehensive study of the practice of gift-giving, in the tradition of Marcel Mauss, more in line with the anthropologically influenced histoire des mentalités of the third Annalistes generation than with "old-fashioned" narrative history.

In 1975 Veyne entered the Collège de France thanks to the support of Raymond Aron, who had been abandoned by his former heir apparent Pierre Bourdieu. However, Veyne, by failing to cite the name of Aron in his inaugural lecture, aroused his displeasure, and according to Veyne he was persecuted by Aron ever since this perceived sign of his ingratitude. Veyne remained there from 1975 to 1999 as holder of the chair of Roman history.

Paul Veyne studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris 1951-55. He was a member of the École française de Rome 1955-1957, whereupon he settled in Aix-en-Provence as a professor at the University of Provence. It was in his years in Aix that he published his provocative Comment on écrit l'histoire, an essay on the epistemology of history. At a time when the dominant trend in French historiography favored quantitative methods, Veyne's essay unabashedly declared history to be a "true tale". Through his essay he became an early representative of the interest in the narrative aspects of scientific history.

Paul Veyne (French: [vɛn]; 13 June 1930 – 29 September 2022) was a French archaeologist and historian, and a specialist of Ancient Rome. A student of the École Normale Supérieure and member of the École française de Rome, he was honorary professor at the Collège de France.