The program for the 2019 meeting of the Ancient Philosophy Society, hosted by Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut, is now available.
APS 2019 Conference Program
Yearly Archives: 2019
Becoming Socrates: Political Philosophy in Plato’s Parmenides
Interpreters of Plato’s Parmenides have long agreed that it is a canonical work in the history of ontology. In the first part, the aged Parmenides presents a devastating critique of Platonic ontology, followed in the second by what purports to be a response to that critique. But despite the scholarly agreement as to the general subject matter of the dialogue, what makes it one whole has nevertheless eluded its readers, so much so that some have even speculated it to be a patchwork of two dimly related dialogues.
In Becoming Socrates, Alex Priou shows that the Parmenides’ unity remains elusive due to scholarly neglect of a particular passage in Parmenides’ critique—a passage Parmenides identifies as the hinge between the dialogue’s two parts and as the “greatest impasse” facing Platonic ontology. There Parmenides situates the concern with ontology or the question of being within the concern with political philosophy or the question of good rule. In this way, the Parmenides shows us how a youthful Socrates first learned of the centrality of political philosophy that would become the hallmark of his life—that it, and not ontology, is “first philosophy.”
“Alex Priou addresses here the crucial role that the Parmenides plays in Plato’s account of the ‘Socratic turn,’ that is, in the thinking that led Socrates to turn away from natural philosophy and initiate a new way of philosophizing that we now call political philosophy. This impressive and valuable new interpretation helps us to understand better a notoriously difficult Platonic dialogue about the beginning of both political theory and the tradition of Western rationalism.”
– Mark J. Lutz, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
“For the first time, Plato’s presentation of the young Socrates being schooled by the great Parmenides in ontology is shown to illuminate, and to be illuminated by, Plato’s presentation of the mature Socrates analyzing justice in the Republic. What results is a deeply thought provoking new perspective on Platonic-Socratic political philosophy.”
– Thomas L. Pangle, University of Texas at Austin
Registration for the 2019 Meeting of the APS has Begun
Registration can be completed here.
A Companion to Ancient Philosophy
A Companion to Ancient Philosophy is a collection of essays on a broad range of themes and figures spanning the entire period extending from the Pre-Socratics to Plato, Aristotle, and the Hellenistic thinkers.
Rather than offering synoptic and summary treatments of preestablished positions and themes, these essays engage with the ancient texts directly, focusing attention on concepts that emerge as urgent in the readings themselves and then clarifying those concepts interpretively. Indeed, this is a companion volume that takes a very serious and considered approach to its designated task—accompanying readers as they move through the most crucial passages of the infinitely rich and compelling texts of the ancients. Each essay provides a tutorial in close reading and careful interpretation.
Because it offers foundational treatments of the most important works of ancient philosophy and because it, precisely by doing so, arrives at numerous original interpretive insights and suggests new directions for research in ancient philosophy, this volume should be of great value both to students just starting off reading the ancients and to established scholars still fascinated by philosophy’s deepest abiding questions.
Feminism and Classics Conference Program Committee
Feminism & Classics VIII will take place May 21–24, 2020, in Winston-Salem, hosted by the Department of Classics and the Department of Philosophy of Wake Forest University. (A CFP will come later; abstracts for proposed papers and panels will be due around September 2019.)
The co-organizers, Professor Emily Austin and Professor T. H. M. Gellar-Goad, intend to form a Program Committee not of Wake Forest faculty but of scholars from a diversity of regions, institutions, disciplines, backgrounds, career stages, and theoretical approaches — and we would like YOU to take part!
The Program Committee will have the following responsibilities, in collaboration of course with the co-organizers:
* determine the conference theme, or decide not to have one (FemClas VII was “VISIONS”)
* draft the CFP
* evaluate, accept, and reject abstracts
* assemble sessions and the program more generally
* advise the co-organizers on keynote speakers, breakout sessions, * programming beyond the standard conference-paper format, and so forth
If you are interested in being a member of the FemClas ProgComm, apply by emailing THM at thmgg@wfu.edu<mailto:thmgg@wfu.edu> no later than February 1, 2019, with the following:
* an informal statement of interest (a paragraph or so)
* a current c.v.
* how you’d like your name and affiliation listed
* the best way(s) to contact you
We will acknowledge receipt of applications, and will get back to all applicants by February 15. Please pass the word on to anybody you know of who might be interested!
APS Response to Racist Incidents at SCS 2019
In response to the incidents of overt racism at the 2019 Society for Classical Studies meeting, reported in Inside Higher Ed and in Professor Dan-El Padilla Peralta’s trenchant response, the Ancient Philosophy Society affirms and deepens its commitment, articulated in its statement on diversity, to creating a welcoming and supportive environment for scholars of color, and to fostering critical approaches to the study of Greek and Roman antiquity from a multiplicity of perspectives. We invite all our members and visitors to read Professor Padilla Peralta’s response, and to evaluate and work to transform in its light disciplinary practices at our home institutions (including in hiring, admissions, mentoring, and judgments about what constitutes serious and mainstream versus marginal scholarship), in our editorial and publishing activities, as well as at our scholarly meetings.
APS statement on diversity: The APS values diversity in its membership as well as in its scholarly perspectives. We particularly invite submissions from members of groups underrepresented in philosophy, including women, people of color, LGBTQI individuals, and people with disabilities. The APS conference is wheelchair accessible.
Knowledge and Ignorance of the Self in Platonic Philosophy
This is the first volume of essays dedicated to the whole question of self-knowledge and its role in Platonic philosophy. It brings together established and rising scholars from every interpretative school of Plato studies, and a variety of texts across Plato’s corpus – including the classic discussions of self-knowledge in the Charmides and Alcibiades I, as well as dialogues like the Republic, Theaetetus and Theages, which are not often enough mined for insights on this crucial philosophical topic. The rich variety of readings and hermeneutical methods (together with the comprehensive research bibliography included in the volume) allows for an encompassing view of the relevant scholarly debates. The volume is intended to serve as a standard resource for further research on Platonic self-knowledge and will highlight the relevance of Plato’s thought to contemporary debates on selfhood, reflection and subjectivity.
Contributors: Sara Ahbel-Rappe, James M. Ambury, Jeremy Bell, Sara Brill, Andy German, Lloyd P. Gerson, Drew A. Hyland, Danielle A. Layne, Brian Marrin, Marina McCoy, Eric Sanday, Harold Tarrant, Thomas Tuozzo