Beierwaltes Seminars on Origen and Christian Platonism - call for papers

Dr. Christian Hengstermann has arranged two seminars in Cambridge on Origen and Platonism to take place in July and October 2018. PhD fellows and postdocs are invited to give papers on their current research.

Beierwaltes Seminars on Origen and Christian Platonism

Call for papers: The biannual Beierwaltes Seminars on Origen and Christian Platonism, hosted by the Cambridge Centre, revolve around key concepts of Platonism and their transformation in Christian philosophy from the Alexandrians Clement and Origen to the present day. After reading and discussing excerpts from the work of the eminent scholar Werner Beierwaltes (translated into English for the first time), both PhD students and postdocs give papers on their current research on Origen and Christian Platonism. Everyone interested in and working on Platonism and Origenism is cordially invited to take part. Please send an email to Dr. Christian Hengstermann: hengstec@uni-muenster.de.

7th July, 9–19

Beierwaltes Seminars on Origen and Christian Platonism III
Ex 3:14: “I am that I am“

In their deeply metaphysical readings of Ex. 3:14, the Church Fathers expound the notion of God as “being” per se. Building on W. Beierwaltes’s magisterial account of the patristic exegeses of the divine name in his 1972 Platonismus und Idealismus, the third seminar in the series will trace the development of the ontology of Christian Platonism from its earliest Alexandrians origins to contemporary philosophical readings of Ex. 3:14. 

Please send titles and abstracts by 20th April 2018.

20th October, 9–19

Beierwaltes Seminars on Origen and Christian Platonism IV
The greatest kinds

Among the key tenets of Plato’s late dialogue Sophist is the doctrine of the five “greatest kinds” which his pagan and Christian diadochi in late antiquity and beyond viewed as the key categories of the intelligible world. As has been established by Beierwaltes in his 1980 Identität und Differenz, the five “greatest kinds” provided the Church Fathers with the indispensable conceptual framework for their Trinitarian metaphysics. The fourth seminar will deal with the Christian reception of Plato’s chief metaphysical categories in late antique, medieval, early modern and contemporary Christian Platonism.

Please send titles and abstracts by 17th August 2018