Jean Mathiot (–2002)
Although he never contributed an article to the journal, though he did partially prepare the ‘compte-rendu’ for the reproduction of Serge Leclaire’s seminar in volume one, Jean Mathiot was a member of the Cercle d’Épistémologie from volumes three through ten of the Cahiers pour l’Analyse. A specialist on the thought of Adam Smith, Mathiot taught for many years at the Université de Provence (formerly Aix-Marseille), before his death in 2002. A major concern of Mathiot’s work was the relation between epistemology, specifically the epistemology of biology in the early modern era, and classical political thought. This concern for conceptual transmission, translation, and transformation among heterogeneous theoretical domains was a hallmark of the Cahiers. In addition to his book on Smith, Mathiot also wrote and taught on Rousseau, and contributed to the new French translation of Thomas Hobbes’ works directed by Yves-Charles Zarka and published by Vrin in 1990. In 2004, the Université de Provence held a commemorative ‘journée d’études’ devoted to his thought, which saw contributions by, among others, Jean-Pierre Dupuy and Yves Duroux, the latter of whom was Mathiot’s colleague in the Cercle d’Épistemologie.