Ethical relation of students with a document taken from the history of mathematics

Abstract

Interpretations of a passage from Euler’s Introductio in analysin infinitorum by secondary school students (18-19 years old) allow to highlight various problems concerning a relation based on responsivity and responsibility – which in this article is named ethical – that students have with a mathematical text, specifically with a historical document. The analysis is carried out with reference to the thought of the philosophers Emmanuel Levinas and Hans-Georg Gadamer. The focus is on how students orient their interpretation, how they deal with the experience of otherness – facing the Other’s point of view – and how they follow the author in his reasoning.