IX Symposium Platonicum

IX Symposium Platonicum in Tokyo in 2010

(1) General information
The IX Symposium Platonicum will be held at the Mita Campus of Keio
University (2-15-45 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo). Please note that the IPS
Tokyo office is located at another campus, i.e. Notomi’s Office in Hiyoshi
Campus, while the Mita Campus is in central Tokyo. The dates are 2-7
August, 2010. The registration and hotel booking will start in mid
January 2010, about which the information will be circulated late this
year.
The topic of the Symposium is the “Republic”, and the program will follow
the custom of the past symposia; the sessions are held from the afternoon
of Monday to the morning of Saturday, with one afternoon for excursion (a
Tokyo City Trip). The General Assembly will be held on one late afternoon
(probably Thursday). The TOC is inviting, as guest speakers, Mario
Vegetti (Pavia), Gerald Boter (Amsterdam), and Myles Burnyeat (Cambridge).

(2) Call for papers
The deadlines and other conditions for the submission of abstracts of
proposed papers were fixed at the mid-term meeting of the Executive
Committee.
Submissions are received between 14 September, Monday, and 16 October,
Friday. Abstracts should be between 300 and 500 words in length
(including bibliography, if any); applicants should indicate preference
between the “shorter” paper (presentation of 20 minutes) for the
“Parallel” session and the “longer” paper (of 40 minutes) for the
“Plenary/Panel” sessions. The Executive Committee will establish two
Panels on the general topics of the “Republic”, for which three papers for
each (total six) are selected out of the “longer papers”.
Judging from the previous symposia, a larger number of papers may be
submitted than we can accommodate. In that case, the evaluation by the
Executive Committee will become crucial, so we advise all applicants to
write abstracts clearly and carefully.
The privilege of submitting papers is confined to paid-up members of the
Society: each member can submit one abstract, written in any of the five
official languages. The author’s information (contact address, e-mail
address, fax, and affiliation) should be attached to the abstract (not
included in the word limit).
The abstract can be submitted through the “IPS 2010” conference website
(to start in summer; it will be indicated on the site how to submit the
file), or sent to the following e-mail address / fax / postal address of
the IPS Tokyo Office at Keio.
Website: http://phil.flet.keio.ac.jp/ips2010/
E-mail: ips2010@phil.flet.keio.ac.jp
Fax: +81-(0)45-566-1102 (addressed to Notomi at Keio University)
Postal Address: IPS Tokyo Organizing Committee,c/o Noburu Notomi, Faculty
of Letters, Keio University, 4-1-1, Hiyoshi, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama,
223-8521, Japan

We will acknowledge the receipt by e-mail or surface mail (the latter only
for those who do not use e-mail), so if you do not receive any response
over a week, please contact the TOC (ips2010@phil.flet.keio.ac.jp /
notomi@z8.keio.jp).

All papers will be evaluated by the Executive Committee in the last two
months of 2009, and notifications will be sent out early in January 2010.
Those whose abstracts are accepted for presentation are next requested to
submit enlarged abstracts in two languages (e.g. German & English, Italian
& French) by mid April. Full papers should be sent to the TOC by June
2010, to be posted on the website in the “pdf” file for “download”.

(3) Election of new Regional Representatives, and choice of venue for the
2016 Symposium
Two members of the committee, François Renaud (representing North
America) and Álvaro Vallejo Campos (one of the two members
representing Europe) are due to retire in 2010, and must be replaced. The
other regional representatives will be re-elected automatically unless
other candidates are nominated. The election will be held at the General
Assembly in the Tokyo Symposium, and nominations, signed by at least two
members in good standing, may be sent to the TOC by the end of June 2010.
Proposals are also invited for a venue for the meeting of 2016, after the
X Symposium Platonicum in Pisa in 2013. Statements of willingness to host
such a meeting should be submitted to the TOC with the details of the
venue proposed and the expected degree of support, by the end of March
2010. The proposal(s) will be circulated well in advance, and the venue
will be decided, in accordance with the Statutes, by a vote of the members
present at the General Assembly.

Cicero rewriting Plato: three exploratory seminars

The Durham Centre for the Study of the Classical Tradition (http://www.dur.ac.uk/classical.tradition/) is in the early stage of developing a research project tentatively entitled ŒCiceroniani sumus: the influence of Cicero on the cultural imaginary of the West¹. A central theme here is Cicero¹s role in mediating and transforming Greek philosophy, not least through his translations and adaptations of Plato. As a first sounding of this territory, the Centre will sponsor three exploratory seminars in Epiphany term 2009 that will look at Cicero¹s engagement with Plato in the de Republica:

Seminar 1: Cicero, de Republica 1.65-67 ~ Plato, Politeia 8. 562c - 563c.

Seminar 2: Cicero, de Republica 3.27 ~ Plato, Politeia 2.360e - 362b.

Seminar 3: Cicero, de Republica 6.26-29 ~ Plato, Phaidros 245cff.

The seminars are open to all. Indeed, an analysis of Cicero¹s reception of Plato should ideally draw on expertise in an unusually wide range of areas within the field: ancient Greek, Greek philosophy, Latin, Roman history, and political theory, among others. The seminars are designed to bring together experts in all of these areas, in what we hope will be a mutually illuminating conversation. We shall work with the original texts, but also translations, and, even though we shall be discussing points arising from the Greek and the Latin, there is no expectation that participants have these languages.

Dates and times:

Seminar 1: Friday, 6 February, 1 - 2.30 pm
Seminar 2: Friday, 27 February, 1 - 2.30 pm
Seminar 3: Friday, 13 March, 1 - 2.30 pm


If you are interested in joining, please contact either Louise Hodgson
(l.l.hodgson@durham.ac.uk) or Ingo Gildenhard (ingo.gildenhard@dur.ac.uk).

We shall distribute readings (original texts, translations, commentaries) to all participants early next week.

Louise Hodgson
Ingo Gildenhard

Platonic Colloquia, IX (2008), Phaedrus

The conference will take place in the Kłodzka Valley in OCTOBER 2008. The papers should be submitted in one of the following languages: English, German, Polish. They will be qualified the ground of the abstracts. Papers written in Polish should be accompanied by the abstract translated into another language, preferably English. The texts will be published in the Conference Proceedings. The abstracts should be sent no later than 30th April 2008. All participants will be notified by mail and e-mail before 31th May 2008. The registration fee is 350 PLN (about 80€).

The abstracts please send to:
Dr. Artur Pacewicz
University of Wroclaw
Institute of Philosophy
ul. Koszarowa 3
51-149 Wrocław
art_pac@wp.pl

Annual Arizona Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy

It is very interesting to see that the last four and the current "Annual Arizona Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy" are all about Plato:

13th Annual Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy - Plato's "Republic" (2008)
12th Annual Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy - Plato and Socrates on the Nature and Teaching of Virtue (2007)
11th Annual Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy - Plato on Poetry, Rhetoric, and Therapy. (2006)
10th Annual Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy - The Socratic Legacy (2005)
9th Annual Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy - Plato on Method and Plato's Methods (2004)

I am very curious to find out the reason for such orientation. Are they engaged in a long-term project on Plato's work? If you do have information about this issue, please share it with us using the comments section.