In Breaking Light: Toward a Poetics of Opacity in Early Greek Thinking (May 2026 on SUNY Press’s series in Ancient Philosophy), D. M. Spitzer develops interpretive channels and linkages joining the Milesian thinkers Thales, Anaximandros, Anaximenes and the 20th century Martinican philosopher and poet Édouard Glissant. Engaging a wide range of texts from the archaic Mediterranean and beyond–including Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, India–alongside modern and contemporary sources,  the book opens a way toward dynamic, diverse, and ecologically-oriented perspectives on the first stirrings of philosophy among the Greeks and what they might suggest for the 21st century.
https://sunypress.edu/Books/B/Breaking-Light

Dear friends of the Ancient Philosophy Society,

Registration for our 2026 meeting at New York University is now open. Note that APS membership is required to register for the meeting. We strongly encourage you to register for the APS banquet on the night of Saturday April 18th as well.

Historically, the banquet has been a great chance to get to know other participants, and we hope to continue that tradition this year. You can pay membership dues and register for the meeting and banquet at the following link:

Registration: https://www.pdcnet.org/wp/registrations/2026-aps/.

We have reserved a block of rooms at the Washington Square Hotel at a discounted rate. The hotel is across the park from the meeting venue, NYU’s Silver Center. You can reserve a room by clicking the following link. The deadline for reservations is March 6, 2026 so please act sooner rather than later:

https://gettaroom.b4checkin.com/washingtonsquarehotel/rlp/AncientPhilosophySocietyconference.

For those of you who would prefer to make an alternative lodging arrangement, please be aware that short lets/Airbnbs are illegal in NYC. Decent “budget” hotels within reasonable travel distance include the Jane Hotel and Orchard St Hotel. The NowNow Noho and CityNest Hotels are nearby capsule/hostel style hotels — others can be found through online booking services. We recommend early booking due to algorithmic pricing.

In an effort to minimize our environmental impact, the APS encourages you to use public transit. We will release a prospective program shortly, with the names and affiliations of conference participants. We encourage you to reach out to others on the program who may be traveling from the same area, if you wish to coordinate your travel plans.

We plan to have a book table, where participants can show off recent publications. If you have published a book within the last five years, please consider bringing a copy, as well as a flyer to advertise your book. If you choose to do so, please send me the title of your book.

Keynote RSVP:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe3bZwCDXo-E3OMdyXG5H52HvT-LADGk9TecEwg7K_YOZBn7w/viewform

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions or concerns.

APS2026@nyu.edu

The Cosmology of Dike in Aeschylus’s Oresteia

By Kalliopi Nikolopoulou

Subjects: Ancient Greek Philosophy, Classics, Comparative Literature, Drama, Religion, Violence
Series: SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy

Hardcover : 9798855801286, 264 pages, March 2025
Paperback : 9798855801279, 264 pages, September 2025

A purely political understanding of justice does not convey the cosmological origins of the ancient conception of justice, Dikē, in Aeschylus’s Oresteia. Drawing from Walter Burkert’s anthropology of the hunt in Homo Necans, which articulates an ancient cosmology and implies a theory of (tragic) seriousness that parallels Aristotle’s naturalist interpretation of tragedy, Hunting for Justice argues that justice is rooted in predation as exemplified by the Furies. Although the Oresteia has been read as the passage from the violence of nature to civic justice, Kalliopi Nikolopoulou offers an original interpretation of the trilogy: the ending of the feud is less an instance of political deliberation (as Hegel maintained), and more an instance of nature’s necessary halting of its own destructiven’ess for life to resume. Extending to contemporary contexts, she argues that nature’s arbitrariness continues to underpin our notions of justice, albeit in a distorted form. In this sense, Hunting for Justice offers a critique of the political infinitization and idealization of justice that permeates our current discourses of activism and social justice.

Kalliopi Nikolopoulou is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. She is the author of Tragically Speaking: On the Use and Abuse of Theory for Life.

Reviews

“Nikolopoulou’s insightful work shows how we might still read the ancients productively. She looks to Aeschylus not as confirmation or precursor of our strongest commitments and most cherished values but shows how his tragedies can help us understand the limits of our politics, instrumental rationality, and progressive sense of history. That Aeschylus does so precisely through an account of justice that is constantly grounded in cosmological necessity proves instructive for recognizing the remnant of injustice that resides even in our best efforts of righting past wrongs. The scholarship is impressive and wide-ranging, the concerns never more relevant: this book tarries with the inherent violence of justice and the importance of nature’s capacity for regeneration in the face of an all-too-human hubris.” — Jason Winfree, coeditor of The Obsessions of Georges Bataille: Community and Communication

The deadline to submit a chapter to the upcoming volume “Magic in Ancient Greek Culture and Philosophy” has been extended from January 15th to February 1st. Please consider submitting a potential chapter.

Join the Ancient Philosophy Society for a virtual panel discussion featuring current and recently graduated doctoral students working in ancient philosophy, moderated by Norah Woodcock. 

Magic in Ancient Greek Culture and Philosophy

Deadline: January 15, 2026 

Magic has often been deeply misunderstood in the philosophical tradition—it has been dismissed as primitive, derided as ‘mystical,’ and stigmatized as unphilosophical by influential figures such as Aristotle and later Christian thinkers. Traditions of magical practice in Ancient Greek culture and thought often reveal deep understanding of the natural, physical world and the forces at work within it. In this volume, the term ‘magic’ refers to an array of diverse practices including but not limited to divination, dream work/healing, spell casting (erotic/curse tablets, etc), the use of pharmakons, thelxis, ritual, necromancy, sacred objects/amulets, necromancy, theurgy, and mystery traditions (such as Orphic, Eleusinian). We especially welcome submissions that engage with magical practices and philosophical pursuits; in other words, how are magical practices aimed towards love of wisdom? How do magical practices or magical thinking influence the philosophical tradition? 

The legendary Orpheus was renowned for enchantment through music, Pythagoras performed miracles and had a ‘golden thigh,’ Parmenides (the ‘Father of Logic’) presents his poem as a teaching he learned from a goddess when his thumos led him to her, Empedocles declares himself immortal and claims that his teachings will allow the practitioner to control the weather and bring back the menos of a man who has died from the underworld, and Plato often portrays Socrates as an enchanter. Since Dodds wrote The Greeks and the Irrational, there has been some attention paid to the philosophical value of early magical thinkers but sustained attention to this topic is warranted particularly because of the rationalistic bias that has often pervaded scholarship on Ancient Greek texts. We welcome submissions on any texts in Ancient Greek magic and philosophy, including but not limited to: Homer, Hesiod, Greek Magical Papyri, Pythagorean sources, Orphics, Eleusinian mysteries, Presocratic/’Post-Hesiodic’ philosophers, Plato, Artemidorus, and Neoplatonists. 

Submissions should be 5000-8000 words inclusive of footnotes and bibliography. Send submissions, along with a 300 word abstract, by January 15, 2026 to: ancientmagicphilosophybook@gmail.com 

John Sallis (1938-2025), the “dean” of continental philosophy in the United States and one of the foremost thinkers in the phenomenological, hermeneutic and deconstructive traditions of philosophy, died on February 18, 2025.  His life and his work had an unparalleled impact upon philosophy in our times, shaping discussions and opening avenues for thinking.  His many works on imagination constitute some of the most original and creative treatments of this topic, but the span and breadth of his work ranges beyond this central interest of his to include seminal works on nature, art, music and painting.  In regard to his work on nature, his recent analysis of the elemental in its relationship to sensible being is particularly striking.  Sallis has shown in many of his works that unearthing original insights goes hand in hand with careful readings of the history of philosophy. His many works on Plato are particularly noteworthy in this regard, but one found an equally brilliant originality in his writings on Nietzsche, Hegel, Fichte, Merleau-Ponty and others in the history of Western philosophy.  Sallis’ formative works on Heidegger and later on Derrida helped set the stage for the reception of these authors in the United States.  He is the author of over forty books.  His writings have been translated into more than a dozen languages.  He lectured extensively in Europe and Asia.  In short, his impact upon philosophy today is extensive and will shape philosophy in the future.

John Sallis received his doctorate from Tulane University in 1964.  For twenty years, he held the Frederick J. Adelmann Chair at Boston College.  Before that he was full professor and chair at Duquesne University and then held research chairs at Loyola University of Chicago, Vanderbilt University, and Pennsylvania State University. Sallis was also a Visiting Professor at Warwick University (UK), Staffordshire University (UK), Universität Freiburg (Germany), and University of Bergen (Norway).  In 2007 he received a doctorate honoris causa from Universität Freiburg. In 2012 he was the recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize. 

John Sallis was the founding editor of Research in Phenomenology, the premiere Journal in this field of research.  He also co-founded the Ancient Philosophy Society,which has grown in membership and influence over its 25 years in existence, thanks in no small part to the participation of many of John’s students. In the mid-1970s, he co-founded and remained at the helm of the Collegium Phaenomenologicum, which has gathered leading scholars of continental European philosophy and graduate students from around the world, each year in Umbria, Italy.  John Sallis was a generous host and organized countless conferences over the years.  In 2012 he curated a major exhibition of works by Paul Klee at the McMullen Museum of Art in Boston and in 2018, at this same museum, he curated Hymns to Nature, renowned Chinese artist Cao Jun’s first exhibition of his work in the United States.

John Sallis had a lifelong commitment to the interpretation of the Platonic texts.  His early monumental work, Being and Logos: Reading the Platonic Dialogue is a classic that has influenced generations of scholars and students.  Sallis speaks about what it is that he wishes students and colleagues will take away from his studies of Platonic dialogues.  He says that he hoped through his writings and seminars that philosophers would be provoked to “an engagement in that movement which the dialogues themselves aim to provoke, the movement into philosophy, the movement which coincides with the beginning of philosophy.”  His work, Chorology: On Beginning in Plato’s Timaeus is one of his many texts in which his treatments of Plato speak profoundly to contemporary philosophical issues.  Sallis’ work on phusis in ancient thought is intimately connected to his contemporary work on cosmology. His recent attention to earthbound thought—stones and landscapes—is an example of his insistence that what is needed for thought today is a return to the sensible.  One might say that all of Sallis’ work in one way or another is committed to the recovery of archaic beginnings and their power to open up new vistas for us.

One cannot underestimate the importance of Sallis’ scholarship for an appreciation of music, painting, and sculpture, and for his capacity to bring philosophy back together with poetry and literature. His love for the arts was visceral and permeated much of his philosophical work.  John Sallis’ mind and eyes sparkled with the wonder that Aristotle says is the core element of philosophizing. That wonder had a captivating effect on his students. Despite the necessary emphasis on scholarship when speaking of one of the most eminent philosophers of our time, it would not be wrong to say that Sallis was first and foremost a teacher.  He directed over sixty dissertations.  That is an amazing fact, but even more amazing is the quality of his students’ work and their unfailing gratitude and appreciation of his mentorship.  His current students at Boston College, as well as his colleagues and all of us who knew him, now have the responsibility to carry forward his contributions to philosophy. John Sallis knew about the intimate connection between philosophy and friendship and we are all grateful for his presence in our lives.