International Plato Society, Newsletter 2019-2022, Issue 1
Edward Halper
International Plato Society, Newsletter 2019-2022, Issue 1
January 6, 2020
Dear Colleagues,
Happy New Year! We had an excellent Symposium XII in Paris last July. Many thanks to Luc Brisson, Arnaud Macé, and Olivier Renaut! They arranged all the details in a way that allowed us to appreciate the papers, to interact with their authors and with each other, and also to enjoy Paris. The range of papers presented was quite diverse in all ways, and the papers themselves were very good. This will be a hard act to follow.
A call to submit the papers presented at the Paris meeting for consideration for publication in our Proceedings has gone out. Please submit your paper.
Paris General Assembly
The General Assembly was held on July 18, 2019. The Assembly accepted the proposal of Beatriz Bossi (Universidad Complutense, Madrid, beab...@yahoo.es) to hold the 2025 Symposium XIV in Madrid, and it accepted her proposal to make the Theaetetus the theme of the conference. She will, accordingly, be the next President of the IPS and will serve on the Executive Committee in the interim.
We also elected regional representatives at the General Assembly. The new representative for Asia, Australia, and Africa is Hua-kuei Ho (Chinese Culture University, Taiwan, h...@faculty.pccu.edu.tw). The new representative for North America is Mary-Louise Gill (Brown University, mlg...@brown.edu). The new representative for Europe is Elisabetta Cattanei (Università degli Studi di Genova, elisabett...@unige.it). (Barbara Sattler [University of St. Andrews, bs...@st-andrews.ac.uk] remains as the second representative from Europe.) The new representative from South America is Ivana Costa (Universidad de Buenos Aires, iva...@hotmail.com).
These regional representatives join the Executive Committee along with our three former Presidents, and the representative of the De Vogel Foundation, Carlos Steel (Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, carlos...@kuleuven.be).
Finally, at the General Assembly the baton of leadership was handed to me. I am particularly grateful that two people agreed to serve as co-Vice Presidents, Irmgard Männlein-Robert, Universität Tübingen, irmgard.maen...@uni-tuebingen.de) and Richard Parry (Agnes Scott College, rpa...@agnesscott.edu). The three of us also serve on the Executive Committee until our next Symposium. Our three former Presidents, Luc Brisson (CNRS, lbri...@agalma.net), Arnaud Macé (Université de Franche-Comté, Besançon, arnaud...@gmail.com), and Olivier Renaut (Université Paris–Nanterre, olivier...@parisnanterre.fr) will also continue to serve on the Executive Committee.
The new Executive Committee met briefly before the end of the Symposium to agree on new members of the Editorial Committee.
Editorial Committee
Our Editorial Committee now consists of: Filip Karfik (Coordinator) (Université de Fribourg), Thomas Tuozzo (University of Kansas), Claudia Marsico (Universidad de Buenos Aires), Francesco Fronterotta (La Sapienza–Università di Roma), and Dimitri El-Murr (Ecole Normale Supérieure). This committee reviews book manuscripts submitted to our series that is now published by Nomos Press. Please consider submitting your book manuscript for our series. Additionally, this committee reviewed submissions for the second edition of the Conrado Eggers Lan Prize, covering dissertations defended between our Brasilia and Paris Symposia.
Conrado Eggers Lan Prize
We our happy to announce that our Editorial Committee has evaluated the dissertations submitted for the Conrado Eggers Lan Prize for the best dissertation on Plato. There were many good submissions. The Committee made the award to:
Evan Glenn Rodriguez for, Exploring Both Sides: Plato's New Method for First Principles, his 2016 doctoral dissertation, supervised by Verity Harte at Yale University.
The Committee has also decided to recognize the merit of two more candidates: Carmen Di Lorenzo (second) and Lorenzo Giovanetti (third). All three dissertations have been recommended to Nomos Press for publication in our series.
We encourage those who have or will have defended dissertations from January 1, 2019 to January 1 2022 to submit their dissertations for review for the third Conrado Eggers Lan Prize.
Interim Meeting
Raul Gutierrez offered to organize the next interim meeting in Lima in 2021. The Executive Committee readily accepted the offer. The theme of the meeting is Koinonia. Any abstract related to the theme will be considered. The deadline for the submission of abstracts is July 31, 2020. Only abstracts from members of the IPS in good standing will be considered.
Other Meetings
In order to increase the IPS’s presence in North America, we are sponsoring sessions at each meeting of the American Philosophical Association this academic year. The first session, on the Republic, is at the APA Eastern meeting in Philadelphia on January 8, 2020. Together with the newly formed International Society for the Study of Socrates, we sponsoring a session at the APA Central in Chicago in February. We have two sessions at the APA Pacific in San Francisco in April. The details of these panels are included in the attachment.
Béatrice Lienemann is organizing a workshop on a portion of the Sophist in Erlangen that is tentatively planned for October 5-9, 2020. She hopes to combine with a language workshop along the lines that Barbara Sattler proposed in Paris. The details will be announced in due course.
Please bring other meetings on Plato or the Platonic tradition to my attention. We can post them on our web site, send out information about them to our members, and, subject to the approval of the executive committee, affiliate them with our Society.
Membership Dues
Please renew your dues and encourage your graduate students to join our organization. Membership dues for full members remain at $100 for the entire triennium, August 2019- August 2022. Membership for Associate Members is $35 for the triennium. (Whereas Full Membership in the Society is reserved for scholars who have published at least one substantial article or have completed a dissertation on Plato or on the Platonic tradition, graduate students working towards a doctoral degree [or the equivalent] on Plato or on the Platonic tradition are eligible to become Associate Members.)
You can pay your membership dues by visiting our website PlatoSociety.org and clicking on the appropriate button. You will be taken to a University of Georgia site where you can pay by credit card. Alternatively, this link will take you directly to the University of Georgia site:
https://estore.uga.edu/C27063_ustores/web/classic/store_cat.jsp?STOREID=387&CATID=1285
Financial Situation
Our previous co-presidents have left the International Plato Society in good financial shape. They were able to secure enough outside support to be able to pass along a positive balance. Because we need to secure grant support to hold our conferences, our future financial position remains precarious.
IPS Website
Olivier Renaut has constructed a beautiful website for the IPS, PlatoSociety.org. I am grateful to him. After many years, Olivier is stepping down. Jonathan Greig is replacing him. I am looking forward to working with Jonathan.
We currently have our Society’s calls for papers and abstracts, notices of publications in our series, and links to the Plato journal. We can post announcements of all Plato conferences, calls for papers, and so forth. People should see our site the place to come for information about Plato scholarship Plato conferences.
Plato Journal
There is a link on our site to the latest issue (July 2019) of the Plato Journal, ably edited by Gabrieli Cornelli. It appears online (and in print by demand) annually. Please consider submitting an article to the journal.
Symposium XIII
As you know the next Symposium, on the Sophist, will be at the University of Georgia in the summer of 2022. At this point, I am considering July 18-22 for the Symposium. I want to make sure to have the Symposium when the University’s bus system and dining facilities will be in operation. That means holding it during our summer term. I have requested rooms from my University. Several offices in my University have also pledged various types of support. But, of course, I will be applying for more. I am now exploring potential sources of funding. If you have insights into possible sources, please share them with me. The Sophist has been studied from a wide variety of different perspectives. My hope is that our Symposium will be an opportunity for representatives of some of those perspectives to engage with each other.
Best wishes for a productive new year,
Edward Halper
President, IPS
Edward Halper
Professor of Philosophy
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602
