Conference: Philosophy as Transformation: Perspectives from the Platonic Tradition
Plato, and the philosophers who followed him, saw philosophy as a practice for cultivating wiser and kinder individuals and societies. Plato frames this as a transformation toward a divine ideal: never fully attained, but always pursued. This purpose recurs often in Plato’s central dialogues, including the Republic, Theaetetus, and Timaeus; it also motivates his most influential explorations of morality, dialectic, beauty, science, and a fair society.
Keynote Speaker
The conference will open on Friday with a keynote lecture by Michael Griffin: “Ladders of Inspiration: The Psychology of Platonist Receptivity and Creativity”
The transformation of human perception and personality, as Hermias (c. 410-470 CE) comments, can take place in stages or all at once. This talk explores the latter: ancient Platonist discussions of radical receptivity in the creative arts, ritual life, and interpersonal dependency, states of ‘flow’ that are framed as the result of divine inspiration and opening. These experiences, as Hermias explains, can lead to a novel degree of human generosity and altruism and a new vision of nature, as well as a more genuine experience of the self.
Michael Griffin (D.Phil., Oxford) is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of British Columbia, Canada, General Editor of the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle Series (Bloomsbury Academic), and author of several books and articles on ancient Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. He has also recently contributed to a new volume on Platonist-Buddhist philosophical dialogue, Crossing the Stream, Leaving the Cave: Buddhist-Platonist Philosophical Inquiries (Oxford, 2024).
Thomas Taylor Lecture
On Saturday early evening we will have the 18th annual Thomas Taylor Lecture given by Sonsoles Costero-Quiroga “Bridges to the Good: Practices of Self-Transformation in Late Platonism”
Late ancient Platonists frame personal and social transformation as a search for human goodness or virtue (aretē). For philosophers like Porphyry (c. 234-c. 305 CE), Sosipatra (early 4th century CE), and Proclus (412-485 CE), the systematic pedagogy of the ‘scale of virtues’ (scala virtutum) offers a bridge, through which aspirational ideals like beauty, wisdom, justice, and courage can transform the gestures of ordinary life. This talk explores how each degree of aretē – ranging from choice of diet to contemplation – was perceived as allowing the philosopher to recognize a more authentic self, and contribute to her broader community in times of collective challenge.
Sonsoles Costero-Quiroga (Ph.D., Autonomous University of Madrid) is Visiting Scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford, incoming Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Ancient Commentators on Aristotle Series, and former Juan de la Cierva Fellow at the Complutense University of Madrid. She is author of several articles on ancient ethics, developing an interdisciplinary approach to the social and cultural history of Late Antiquity; her dissertation on providence and fate in the Neoplatonism of Proclus, awarded national and international recognition by the Royal Academy of Doctors in Spain (2022), is forthcoming this year (De Gruyter Brill).
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