A seismic shift in thinking about the environment from the 1960s onwards can blind us to the fact that inhabitants of the ancient world (c. 800 BCE - 400 CE) were also acutely aware that they existed as part of an ecological system. Yet for these thinkers it was not rapidly melting icecaps which made examining their relationship with the environment so urgent\, but the theological questions it raised. This conference will embrace pagan\, Jewish and Christian thinking about the intersection of theology and ecology\, whether expressed in sources we might now label philosophy\, scripture\, natural history\, science\, liturgy or folklore. How did these thinkers understand their natural environment to stand in relation to the divine? And how did this understanding condition human interaction with the natural world? By bringing together biblical scholars\, classicists\, philosophers and theologians the first aim of this conference is to paint a cohesive and multi-disciplinary picture of the theological sophistication of ancient thinking about nature.
\nAt the same time\, the conference will not lose sight of our current ecological crisis. What impact\, if any\, should ancient thinking about the environment have on our own ecological thinking? While individual advances have been made in theorising how ancient thinking might inform modern responses to ecological issues\, there is still vital need for cross-disciplinary discussion of the impact of such thinking on relatively new disciplines such as environmental philosophy and eco-theology\, and on contemporary calls to environmental action. As such this conference aims\, in a mutually reinforcing process\, to shape both our knowledge of the ancient world and the work of those who are writing the theology\, philosophy and ethics of the twenty-first century.
\nThe delegate fee is £\;40\, or £\;25 for students and the unwaged. Please use the following link to register: https://www.faraday.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/Conference_apply.php?CourseID=60.
\n\nPlease find the programme below:
\n\nTuesday 18th March
\n\n09.00-09.30 \; \; \; \; Registration
\n09:30-11.00 \; \; \; \; Plenary \; \; \; \; \; \; \; \; \; \; \;
\nMichael Northcott (Edinburgh): Learning from Ancient Mesopotamia about Climate Change Mitigation
\nHelen Van Noorden (Cambridge): The Sibylline Oracles and Apocalyptic Discourse
\n\n11.00-11.30 \; \; \; \; Coffee
\n\n11.30-13.00 \; \; \; \; Panel A
\n\nJula Wildberger (American University of Paris): Beauty and Sociability in Stoic Accounts of Providence and Human Nature: A Foundation for an Environmental Ethic as Love of the Other?
\nGeorgia Tsouni (Bern): The argument of oikeiotes (relatedness): Theophrastus against the Stoics in Porphyry
\nChristoph Jedan (Groningen): Stoic Eco-Theology? A Cautionary Tale
\n\n13.00-14.00 \; \; \; \; Lunch
\n\n14.00-15.30 \; \; \; \; Plenary
\n\nEmmanuela Bakola (KCL): Earth as oikos and oikos as Earth: Interiority and the Eco-logical Discourse in Aeschylus' Oresteia
\nRichard Seaford (Exeter): Limiting the Unlimited in Ancient Greek Thought and Practice
\n\n15.30-16.00 \; \; \; \; Coffee
\n\n16.00-17.15 \; \; \; \; Research Presentations
\n\nTanhum Yoreh (York\, Canada): Creating Boundaries\, Creating Ethics: The Shaping of Jewish Environmental Attitudes
\nAnnette Mosher (VU University Amsterdam): Genesis 8 and 9: For the Sake of the Earth
\nMatt Humphrey (A Rocha\, Canada): At the edge of Civilization: a Primitivist reading of the Hebrew Bible as a resource for the food movements of tomorrow
\nKristel Clayville (Chicago): The Ecological Imagination: Reading the Bible through Environmental Ethics
\nJohannes Kleiner (Emory): Cult and Intact Ecosystems: Nature's Grip on Israel's Relationship with God
\n\n17.30-18.30 \; \; \; \; Keynote Address
\n\nMelissa Lane (Princeton): Sustainable Citizenship
\n\n19.15 \; \; \; \; \; \; \; \; \; \; \; \; \; \; Drinks Reception and Conference Dinner at Fitzwilliam College
\n\n\n\nWednesday 19th March
\n\n09.00-10.30 \; \; \; \; Panel B
\n\nTua Korhonen (Helsinki): Joys of virtuous (and ecological?) living: Plato's Laws
\nDavid Sedley (Cambridge): Self-Sufficiency as a Divine Attribute in Greek Philosophy
\nLucio Florio (Buenos Aires): Ecological perspectives of the idea of God as communion according to the primitive Christian Theology
\n\n10.30-11.00 \; \; \; \; Coffee
\n\n11.00-12.30 \; \; \; \; Plenary
\n\nRobin Attfield (Cardiff): The Treatment and Deployment of Ancient Thought by Environmental Philosophers
\nEdward Adams (KCL): Platonic worldviews and the cosmos
\n\n12.30-13.30 \; \; \; \; Lunch
\n\n13.30-14.30 \; \; \; \; Research Presentations
\n\nRebecca Taylor (Warwick): The emergence of man from the natural environment: theories concerning the body and soul and their relation to the natural world in the fifth and fourth centuries BC
\nClara Bosak-Schroeder (Michigan): Natura Divina and Classical Anthropocentrism
\nAikaterini-Iliana Rassia (KCL): Greek leges sacrae concerning sacred groves of the gods
\nBarbara del Giovane (Florence): In fundum telluris intimae mersit: Seneca and the effects of mining. An exegesis.
\n\n14.30-15.00 \; \; \; \; Coffee
\n\n15.00-16.30 \; \; \; \; Panel C
\n\nHilary Marlow (Cambridge): &ldquo\;Why is the Land Ruined?&rdquo\; Social\, Political and Religious Disjuncture in the Hebrew Bible
\nHolmes Rolston\, III (Colorado): Loving Nature: Christian Environmental Ethics
\nRebecca Watson (Cambridge): Creatures in Creation: Human Perceptions of the Sea in the Hebrew Bible as Conducive to Environmental Health
ORGANIZER: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR