Events
Here you can find CFPs, announcements, and reports of upcoming and past events that I organize or co-organize. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you require further information.
Upcoming Events
Journée d’étude "Void in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy"
21st-22nd June 2024
Université de Fribourg
organized by James Fisher & Thomas Seissl
Speakers include Barbara M. Sattler (Bochum), Tiziana Suarez-Nani (Fribourg),
and Dominic O'Meara (Fribourg). More information will be online soon.
Past Events
Workshop: "Definitions between Plato and Aristotle"
17th-18th November 2023
Université de Fribourg
organized by Béatrice Lienemann & David Meißner
Definitions clearly play a pivotal role in Plato’s and Aristotle’s thinking. Both believe that definitions are a – if not the – main goal (and, at the same time, an indispensable prerequisite) of philosophical and scientific inquiry. They are both preoccupied with similar issues: Which method(s) should we use in searching for definitions? What things are suitable to be defined? What is the special ontological status of definable objects? What are the requirements for an appropriate definition?
On the other hand, there are also important discontinuities between Aristotle’s and Plato’s approach to definitions. Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s account of definition shows that he rejects some of the core tenets of this account. Our workshop aims to illuminate the complicated relation between the Platonic and the Aristotelian perspective on definitions.
Conference: "Now, Exaiphnês, and the Present Moment in Ancient Philosophy"
24th-25th & 28th-29th March 2022
Ruhr Universität Bochum
organized by Barbara M. Sattler, Anna Pavani, Celso Vieira & Thomas Seissl
The experience of time is among the most fundamental features of human existence. The present thereby serves as a basis by means of which we can make sense of both past and future; thus our experience of the present, which we capture in notions like “the now”, “the instant of time”, or “the present moment”, is of special concern. We are made aware of the moment of time through motion and changes, and since the present moment seems to be when we experience these changes, our conception of the “now” is strongly connected with the notion of change. But experiencing a change means experiencing that something turns from being F to not being F, or from F to not-F. If the instants when something is F and not-F are the same instant, however, then the thing seems to be both F and not-F at the same time, and we seem to end up with a contradiction. This threatening inconsistency prompted several influential answers in ancient times: for example, Heraclitus may seem to endorse this inconsistency, while Parmenides seems to have concluded that time and change are thus unreal. Plato develops the notion of exaiphnês to suggest that the turning from F to not-F occurs outside of time. And Aristotle develops both Parmenidean and Platonic intuitions to argue that change is continuous and the segmentation of time into ‘nows’ occurs in thought.
The problem of the present moment remains a source of lively philosophical debate and the ancient ideas are still a constitutive part of it, which is the motivation for organizing the conference “Now, Exaiphnes and the Present Moment in Ancient Philosophy”. The conference will bring together an international group of leading scholars working on these problems in different authors and traditions. Among the confirmed speakers are Ursula Coope (Oxford), Salvatore Lavecchia (Udine), Walter Mesch (Münster), Alex Pleshkov (Moscow), Spyridon Rangos (Patras), Mark Sentesy (Penn State), and Niko Strobach (Münster).
