International Plato Society Symposium XIII The Sophist

The International Plato Society is now accepting abstract submissions for our thirteenth triennial symposium, Symposium XIII, on Plato’s Sophist.  This will be the first meeting of the IPS held in the United States.  We are planning an in-person meeting at the University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA, on July 18-22, 2022.  Since Covid remains an issue, we will also have a remote option for presenters and attendees.  However, after what will be more than two years of restricted travel and remote conferences, we look forward to the opportunity for the dynamism and personal exchanges made possible by the speaker’s proximity to the audience as well as those unscheduled, informal conversations that often make conferences so valuable.

Abstracts should be 800-1200 words and written in any two of the Society’s five official languages (Italian, English, French, Spanish, German).  They should be anonymized for blind review, combined into a single file, and sent as pdf or Word attachments to: [email protected] by November 15, 2021.  Your name and academic affiliation should appear in the body of the email.  The Executive Committee will blind review submitted abstracts and announce its decision in January, 2022. For more information on our July, 2022 Symposium, visit the IPS website:  https://platosociety.org/symposium-platonicum-xiii-platos-sophist-in-athens-ga-usa-jul-18-22-2022/

For your abstract to be considered, you must be a current member of the International Plato Society.  Information on membership criteria and on how to join the IPS and how to renew your membership is available at : https://platosociety.org/membership/ 

Plato’s Sophist was, arguably, the most important Platonic dialogue for mid-20th century philosophy.  Anglo-American analytic philosophers looked to it to come to understand Plato’s philosophy of language.  Continental philosophers, inspired by Heidegger’s beginning Being and Time with a quotation from the Sophist, looked to the dialogue to wrestle with Plato’s notion of being.  Not surprisingly, each group found a rich field from which to pursue their mostly non-overlapping interests.  Both sides did agree on the importance of language in the dialogue. However, as if they were re-enacting a portion of the dialogue, they waged a kind of battle of gods and giants against each other.  Now that the barriers between these approaches have begun to break down and interests, on all sides, have broadened, it is time for a new, 21st century look at this puzzling and interesting dialogue.  The dialogue raises many issues that can be fruitfully explored.  Besides questions about the nature and possibility of language, there are issues about definitions, truth, diaresis, interweaving, the five megista gene, separate form, the nature of images, non-being, being, dunamis, the motions of forms, and many, many more.

Our Society does not reflect a single perspective: we welcome representatives of all perspectives—and of none.  Just as the sophist proves wily enough to escape most of the dialogue’s efforts to define him, so has an understanding of the dialogue and many of its details remained frustratingly elusive.  Join us at the Symposium to explore and engage this dialogue. 

Confirmed plenary speakers:

Mauro Bonazzi (Utrecht)

Lesley Brown (Oxford)

Ronna Burger (Tulane)

Paolo Crivelli (Geneva)

Verity Harte (Yale)

Marko Malink (New York University)

Maurizio Migliori (Macerata, Italy)

Monique Dixsaut (Sorbonne)

Noburu Notomi (Tokyo)

Christopher Rowe (Durham)