Heidegger and the Classics

The Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome (CRGR) at Royal Holloway, University of London is pleased to announce that a one-day workshop on the relationship between Martin Heidegger and the Classics will be held at Senate House, London on November 8^th2018.

** Registration is now open. Prospective participants can find details on how to register, as well as the full programme and list of confirmed participants, on the workshop’s website**

Martin Heidegger remains a controversial figure not just in the history of western philosophy but in just about every school of thought that his philosophy pervades. He is widely regarded, along with Wittgenstein, as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century and the limit of his influence, encompassing the likes of Gadamer, Foucault, Arendt, Koselleck, Derrida, and Sartre, is beyond measure. The source of Heidegger’s controversy, notwithstanding his political views and allegiances, is the radical nature of his appropriation and reformulation of practically every major philosophical development since antiquity. He conceived of his project as the overcoming of metaphysics that was initiated by Plato, advanced through Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, and Hegel, and brought to completion by Nietzsche. In doing so, he upturned nearly 2,500 years of western thought in order to turn philosophy back to what he conceived to be its fundamental, yet forgotten, question: the question of Being. In the Classics, Heidegger is largely ignored. This is perhaps somewhat puzzling given the extent to which the evolution of Classical scholarship over the past century has been grounded in precisely those conceptual developments – hermeneutics, experientialism, intertextuality, narratology, and postmodernism – that Heidegger has, to some degree or another, influenced. It is the purpose of this workshop to assess the nature and legitimacy of Heidegger’s broad exclusion from Classical discourse and to determine how, if at all, his philosophy might be reconciled with modern studies of the ancient world.

The workshop will focus on the following three core points of discussion, which inevitably interrelate, but all the same require definition:

1)     The Classics in Heidegger

What is the nature of Heidegger’s engagement with the Classics?
To what extent does Heidegger misappropriate the Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle?
How are they incorporated into his work and what do they contribute to his overall project?
What is Heidegger’s interest in the wider Classical literature (tragedy, poetry, history)?
How is Greek language employed/manipulated by Heidegger?

2)     The Classics against Heidegger

Does the Classics have a bad relationship with Heidegger?
Why does such a paucity of Heideggerian philosophy in modern studies of the ancient world endure?

3)     Heidegger in Classical Scholarship

In what ways has Heidegger so far contributed to modern Classical scholarship?
To what extent can a reading of Heideggerian philosophy, encompassing his observations on concepts such as time, truth, subjectivity, method, and history, inform our understanding of ancient thought?

The workshop consists of four individual papers and three roundtable discussion sessions corresponding to the above divisions. Below is a list of confirmed participants so far:

Confirmed Speakers

Prof. Andrew Benjamin (Kingston University)
Prof. Robert Eaglestone (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Dr. Katherine Fleming (Queen Mary, University of London)
Prof. Denis McManus (University of Southampton)

Confirmed Discussants

Prof. Emanuela Bianchi (NYU)
Prof. William Fitzgerald (Kings College London)
Prof. Laurence Hemming (Lancaster University)
Prof. Brooke Holmes (Princeton University)
Dr. Kurt Lampe (University of Bristol)
Prof. Miriam Leonard (UCL)
Dr. Daniel Orrells (Kings College London)
Prof. Mark Payne (University of Chicago)
Prof. Thomas Sheehan (Stanford University)

Organisers:
Dr. Aaron Turner (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Prof. Ahuvia Kahane (Royal Holloway, University of London)