Anca Vasiliu, Between Ancient Philosophy and the Testimony of the Modern Self
Among our contemporaries live people who do not bear their destiny as a merely personal path, but as a duty to the universal spirit. Anca Vasiliu belongs to this rare family of consciences. In her writings, always imbued with lucidity and delicacy, one perceives a constant tension between the hardships of material life and the salvation offered by ancient philosophy: “as in a magical forest or a starry sky, moving with regularity and harmony.”
Educated between 1987 and 1998 at the Institute of Art History of the Romanian Academy, Anca Vasiliu defended her doctoral thesis in 1996 at Paris X-Nanterre University under the supervision of Jean-Luc Marion. Today, she is Director of Research at the CNRS, within the Léon-Robin Center for Ancient Thought at the Paris-Sorbonne University. She has been awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca and by the University of Ioannina in Greece. In 2022, she received the Grand Philosophy Prize of the French Academy for her entire body of work, a recognition that places her name among the major landmarks of contemporary philosophy.
Anca Vasiliu’s writings are devoted to exploring the self within the horizon of the universal. From Montrer l’âme and Toucher par la vue to her most recent volume, Images of the Self in Late Antiquity, her oeuvre traces a path in which human beings come to recognize themselves through the mirror of the other and through the light of the great philosophical traditions.
In 2025, she launched Chora 23, dedicated to the reception of Avicenna. At the same time, volumes such as Platon et la pensée de l’image (Vrin, 2023, co-authored with Elsa Grasso) and Démiurge du réel. Le langage de l’être dans le Sophiste de Platon (PUF, 2024) have sparked extensive reviews and scholarly debates. A new volume is already in preparation with the prestigious Brill publishing house, her eleventh. Yet beyond her overwhelming erudition, what remains is her personal voice. For Anca Vasiliu, philosophy is not merely an object of study but a way of life: an exercise in inner freedom, a reconciliation between limits and transcendence, between the “natural” and the “cultural.” To understand the self does not mean to enclose it in tautology, but to offer it to the other as a “fraternal alterity.”
For us in the diaspora, Anca Vasiliu’s example holds a particular resonance. In a world where the risk of mimicry is ever-present, she shows us that authenticity is defended through inner searching and through cultivating the universal. Her words, addressed to the Romanian community in the West, speak of a tragic yet fertile confrontation between the “self” and a world that does not naturally belong to you. From this confrontation is born the depth of being and the strength to remain dignified, even in exile. Anca Vasiliu reminds us that the diaspora is not merely a geography of departure, but also a school of the self: a school where truth is forged through struggle, and where philosophy becomes, beyond disciplines and institutions, an expression of dignity and hope.
Founder of Occidentul Românesc, journalist and editor with a public vocation, Kasandra is a lucid and consistent voice of responsible and dignified journalism in the diaspora. Since 2010, she has been steadily building a bridge between Romania and the West, offering readers not only information but also guidance, not only articles but also conscience. Through every signed text, she promotes essential values: dignity, responsibility, and mutual respect, within a landscape where clear voices are becoming ever rarer, yet all the more necessary.