Origins of Political Thought | Ursprünge des politischen Denkens

Organizers: Dr. J. Kerkmann | Dr. D.M. Sailer | Dr. R. Heimann

Organized in cooperation with the Working Group "Philosophical Anthropology in Antiquity" (GANPH), this conference seeks to reconstruct the origins of Western political thought within a broad interdisciplinary framework. It aims both to uncover and critically reassess foundational approaches and to bring them into dialogue across disciplinary boundaries. The proceedings of the conference will be published in an edited volume, to appear in the series "Politisches Denken in Europa / Political Thought in Europe" (Nomos Verlag).

The conference pursues the explicit goal of integrating philosophical, historical, philological, religious-studies, and political-theoretical perspectives. On the one hand, this means placing hitherto marginalized thinkers into focus; on the other, it entails deciphering decisive turning points in the political philosophy of antiquity - and particularly as they emerge from Greek epic, classical tragedy, and lesser-known fragments of the Presocratics.

Above all, the conference is devoted to documenting the richness and depth of political thought before Plato, and thus to generating substantial research results that allow us to systematically conceptualize "prototypes" of European political thought from the early and archaic periods. Importantly, this task is to be undertaken without retroactively assimilating these early formations into modern interpretive frameworks, but instead by appreciating them on their own terms.

You can join the live sessions via

• Webex-Link (Friday): https://fu-berlin.webex.com/fu-berlin/j.php?MTID=m681bde6890fa8cbd26d04b9f7c592ce7 
• Webex-Link (Saturday): https://fu-berlin.webex.com/fu-berlin/j.php?MTID=mbd30227ed686b4f1768d2ba7d7181982