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La lumiere est la, mais en elle-meme qui la voit ? Conditionnelle pour tout ce que la lumiere n'est pas-le visible, l'etre, la vie, la pensee-sa phenomenalite s'avere immanente a la saisie sensible, tandis que la lumiere elle-meme demeure etrangere a tout ce qu'elle devoile. La connaitre exige de saisir son effet, a la fois unique et multiple, a travers le rendu infini du visible et de l'anime. Cette pierre m'est lumiere (lapis iste ... mihi lumen est), disait un philosophe irlandais a la croisee de l'Antiquite tardive et du Moyen Age. C'est en regardant que l'oeil recouvre la puissance du fiat lux : il engendre la visibilite comme expression universelle de l'etre, en laissant se reveler en meme temps la lumiere comme condition transcendante de l'apparaissant.
Platon, Aristote et Plotin evoquent la lumiere en parlant du toucher qui definit la vue. C'est l'experience sensible la plus directe qui conduit a saisir la lumiere en tant que principe du vivant et condition de l'intellection. A l'aube de l'histoire premoderne, deux de leurs heritiers tardifs, Dante et Marsile Ficin, decrivent la lumiere comme ce qui se tient au-dela des aspects tout en les determinant. Avant Kepler et Newton, la lumiere est irreductible au phenomene physique. Pour saisir les enjeux de ce statut aporetique aux consequences fondatrices pour la philosophie, relisons le Timee, la Republique, le Phedre, le Banquet, le De anima aristotelicien, ainsi que certains traites de Plotin.

Light is present, yet who sees it in itself? It is the condition for everything it is not-for the visible, for being, for life, for thought. Luminous phenomena are immanent to sensible apprehension while light remains wholly foreign to everything that it reveals. Knowing it requires that one grasp its effect, at once singular and manifold, through the infinite unfolding of the visible and the living. "This stone is light to me" (lapis iste ... mihi lumen est), said an Irish philosopher situated at the crossroads of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. It is by seeing that the eye recovers the power of the fiat lux: the eye constitutes visibility as the universal expression of being, while at the same time allowing light to be disclosed as the transcendent condition of appearing.
Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus evoke light by speaking of the kind of touch that defines sight. It is the most immediate sensible experience that leads to the apprehension of light as a principle of life and a condition of knowledge. At the dawn of premodern history, two of their later heirs, Dante and Marsilio Ficino, describe light as that which stands beyond appearances, and yet determine them. Prior to Kepler and Newton, light is irreducible to a merely physical phenomenon. To grasp the stakes of this aporetic status, whose consequences are foundational for philosophy, let us read once again the Timaeus, the Republic, the Phaedrus, the Symposium, Aristotle's De anima, as well as some of Plotinus' treatises.