Guest fellowship in Jerusalem - and introducing Dr. Christian Hengstermann

Prof., Dr. Dr., Alfons Fürst has accepted the opportunity to become member of a research group at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem from September 2017 to July 2018, focused on the following research topic:

The Subject of Antiquity: Contours and Expressions of the Self in Ancient Mediterranean Cultures

There is a growing scholarly consensus that new notions of the self emerged in Greco-Roman Antiquity, which prompted philosophers, artists, lawmakers and biographers to conceive of human beings as individuated selves, situated in specific cultural and historical contexts. We wish to examine these emerging discourses of the self, and their interaction and expressions in the material and textual culture of Greeks and Romans, Jews and Christians. While such an intellectual project seems very much a scholarly desideratum, it is also a complex challenge, since its successful achievement is contingent upon bringing together scholars from disparate disciplines. The research group consists of leading experts and one young scholar in the fields of Greek philosophy, Roman law and literature, Early Christianity, Jewish Hellenism and rabbinics. Read more on http://ias.huji.ac.il

During this period, Fürst will continue his duties in the ITN, including written and personal supervision of the three ESRs in Münster. However, a substitute researcher- Dr. Christian Hengstermann from Cambridge University - has kindly accepted to transfer to Münster so that he can offer additional supervision and handle other tasks there.

Introducing Christian Hengstermann

Christian Hengstermann works as a research associate on the project "Cambridge Platonism at the Origins of the Enlightenment" at the University of Cambridge. He has written a monograph on Origen's freedom metaphysics and translated the Homilies of Isaiah. At present, he is writing a book on Origen's reception in early modern Cambridge and translating texts of the Cambridge Platonists into English, notably Henry More's critiques of Jakob Böhme and Baruch de Spinoza and his correspondence with Descartes. You can find his profile here under Associated Researchers.