Empeiria in Plato: Empirical Experience, Evaluative Issues

The aim of this conference is to explore the multiple meanings of experience, paying particular attention to the normative dimension of each of Plato’s more or less explicit investigations of experience. Plato seems to have constantly set himself the task of criticizing the misuses to which experience gives rise, all the better to revalue certain very specific types of experience to which he recognizes a practical utility. From here, is there one or more concepts in Plato's dialogues? The aim of this conference is to complement the critique of a deficient familiarity with the sensible, often referred to in dialogues as ἐμπειρία, with a careful study of the revaluation of experience. Two different axes stand out in this direction: on the one hand, the question of practical utility and concrete action, as long as we are able to account for its correctness, and on the other, the irreducibility of a certain type of practice that must operate in the first person and that it is possible to isolate through experiential qualification. Here is the program:
Friday June 14th, 2024  ENS, 29 rue d‘Ulm PARIS 5 Amphithéâtre Jean Jaurès  3pm-3.15 Welcome 3.15-4.30 Marie-Noëlle RIBAS, ‘Expérience philosophique et expérience ordinaire’ Coffee break 5.00-6.15 Marta JIMENEZ, ‘Plato on why some experiences are better than others’ Saturday June 15th, 2024  ENS, 45 rue d’Ulm PARIS 5 Amphithéâtre Evariste Galois  9.30-10.45 Pedro DOTTO, ‘The Analogy between medicine and rhetoric in Plato’s dialogues’ 10.45-12.00 Marion POLLAERT, ‘Experience and Politics in Plato’   2.00-3.15 Paulo LIMA, ‘The Tragic Passions Do Not Teach: Plato’s implicit reassessment of the pathei mathos tradition in Republic X’ Coffee break 3.15-4.30 Nicolas LE MERRER, ‘L’expérience « avilissante » du plaisir tragique et la critique platonicienne de la poésie dans la République’ 4.30-5.00 Closing roundtable
  Please register in advance by writing to me at the following address to gain access to the building: [email protected]. For further information, please visit this page.