Noticias

XI Symposium Platonicum (Tokyo, 2-7 Aug. 2010)

Alessandro Stavru*

* Profesor de Filosofía antigua en la Universitá degli Studi di Napoli "L'Oriéntale"; se interesa por la estética antigua y moderna, así como por las relaciones entre mito y filosofía. Correo electrónico: stavru@libero.it.

The International Plato Society, which now counts some 270 paid up members, has celebrated its IX Symposium Platonicum, wholly devoted to Plato's Republic, on August 2010. After Mexico City, Perugia, Bristol, Granada, Toronto, Jerusalem, Wiirzburg, and Dublin, the IX triennial meeting took place at the Mita Campus of Keio University in Tokyo, with some 180 participants, some 20 papers read in plenary sessions and some 90 shorter papers read in parallel sessions, the whole being wisely steered by the President Noburu Notomi (Keio University) and the co-President Shinro Kato (Tokyo Metropolitan University). As customary, papers were read in one of the five official languages (English, Italian, French, German and Spanish).

"How and why did the Republic become unpolitical?" was the title of the opening lecture, entitled to Cornelia J. De Vogel and entrusted to Professor Mario Vegetti (Universita di Pavia), the scholar who in recent years authored or edited a number of books devoted to Plato's Republic, and especially a detailed commentary to this dialogue in seven volumes (Napoli 1998-2007). The text of his paper has been circulated in English and in a Japanese translation especially prepared for this occasion with the support of the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici (Naples) and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura (Tokyo). Other invited papers were the one by Gerard Boter (Vrije University of Amsterdam) on "Reading Plato's Republic in the New OCT" and the one by Myles Burnyeat (Cambridge University) on "Re-Reading Republic I". The plenary sessions included two special ones devoted to the Polis and the Psyche themes. At the end of the conference, another four hour special session, named "Public Symposium on the Significance of Plato's Philosophy in the Contemporary World: Reconsidering the Politeia", has been planned especially for the Japanese learned public, with Teruo Mishima (Aoyama Gakuyin University of Tokyo) as coordinator, and papers read by Shinro Kato, Noburu Notomi, Livio Rossetti (Universita di Perugia), Yasuo Iwata (Tohoku University of Tokyo), Luc Brisson (CNRS Paris) and Takeshi Sasaki (Gakushuin University of Tokyo).

A selection of the papers read in this occasion will give rise to a book of proceedings, expected to be published by Academia Verlag, as customary. A further selection is expected to appear in Plato, the electronic journal of the IPS (www.platosociety.org).

According to the rules of the IPS, the office of President of the Society and host of the next symposium has been passed on to Prof. Mauro Tulli, Universita di Pisa, whose designation took place on the occasion of the Dublin Symposium. So the X Symposium Platonicum is expected to take place in Pisa, Italy, at some date in summer 2013. During the general assembly it has been decided that the XI Symposium will take place at Brasilia and the Society will have as President, for the triennium 2014-2016, Professor Gabriele Cornelli (Universidade de Brasilia) and co-President Professor Francisco Bravo (Universidad Central de Venezuela). It is good news that this Symposium will take place in the south of the world and, as the very first one, in Latin America. As a matter of fact, the IPS is well rooted in at least four continents, and that the list of those who attended the Tokyo Symposium and read papers there includes scholars coming from South Korea, China, Turkey, Russia, Estonia, Peru.