Ordre cosmique et «isonomia»: en repensant Les Origines de la pensée grecque de Jean-Pierre Vernant

My aim is to examine in detail the arguments put forward by Vernant in the early sixties of the past century, when he famously characterized Greek philosophy as « fille de la Cité » (daughter of the polis). My main point is that the category of isonomia, which is central in the political debate of Athens only since the last decades of the sixth century, cannot be easily used to explain the new conception of physical space, which emerges in Miletos at the beginning of that century.