Mohamed Ben Mansour

Associate professor

Mohamed Ben Mansour is Senior Lecturer (Maître de conférences) in Arabic Studies at the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) de Lyon since 2018, and a permanent member of the Triangle research laboratory (UMR 5206 CNRS).

Holder of the agrégation in Arabic and a doctorate in the humanities (philosophy, epistemology), he defended his thesis in 2017 at the ENS de Lyon, on the relations between poetry and power in the Abbasid period (750-965). His monograph Le poète et le Prince. Couleurs de l’éloge et du blâme à l’époque abbasside, drawn from this research, was published by Geuthner in 2021.

His work explores political philosophy and rhetoric in classical Islam, medieval Arabic literary criticism, and the performativity of poetic speech in the face of caliphal authority. He has notably published « Parole ouverte, parole cryptée. Essai sur la parrêsia poétique à l’époque abbasside » in Liberté de parole. La critique politique des élites religieuses, Islam, Byzance, Occident (VIIIe-XIIIe siècle) (Brepols, 2022), as well as an annotated translation of a 10th-11th century mirror for princes in the journal Éthique, politique, religions (no. 18, 2021). He is currently preparing a translation and commentary of Ṯaʿlab’s Qawāʿid al-šiʿr (Rules of Poetry).

His research also extends to translation and the circulation of knowledge between Greek philosophy and Arabic thought, a topic he addressed in « al-Tarjama al-khallāqa: manifestations of Arab identity in Greek philosophy » (Doha, 2024). He is also the author of the essay « Rire en Islam » published in La Vie des idées in 2016.

At the ENS de Lyon, he has directed both the Arabic Studies and the Middle Eastern Studies master’s programmes since 2019-2021, and is a tenured member of the 15th section of the French National Council of Universities (CNU).

At the Pluriel Congress in Cordoba in February 2026, he delivered a paper entitled : « Defining beauty in Islam: oscillation between submission to and transgression of ethical norms ».

Disciplines

History Philosophy

Thématiques

Comparative Studies Ethics

Resources related toPhilosophy

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Spiritual eroticism and erotic spirituality in Sufi mystical thought

Paper presented at the 5th international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel), held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme "Ethics and Aesthetics in Isla...

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Defining the beautiful in Islam: between submission to and transgression of ethical norms

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The gnostic constitution of aesthetic values in Ibn ʿArabī

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Art in the face of authoritarian discourse: the contribution of Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd

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Ethics and aesthetics in the thought of Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (d. 414/1023)

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Annihilation in beauty, subsistence in ethics: the unity of unveiling and ethics in Ibn ʿArabī

Paper presented at the fifth international congress of the University Platform for Research on Islam (Pluriel), held in Cordoba from 10 to 14 February 2026 on the theme "Ethics and Aesthetics in Is...

videos

Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī: from bodily healing to the aesthetics of the soul — a study of the “Risālat Dhamm Ladhdhāt al-Dunyā”

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Beyond the licitness of ecstasy: the poetry of samāʿ as an aesthetic and cognitive experience in al-Ghazālī