This Is Hungary Calling

On April 26 the students and faculty of ECLA had the privilege of welcoming Agnes Heller, one of the greatest living European intellectuals. Heller has become an outspoken critic of the political changes occurring in her native Hungary, where she now lives after many years teaching at the New School for Social Research in New

Read More

The Fall Of the Roman Empire

“Teacher: How was the Roman Empire cut in half? Pupil: With a pair of Caesars!” On Friday, 4th February, 2011, Professor Peter Heather of King’s College London gave a lecture on the fall of Rome to  students of the ‘Conservatism & Reaction’ course. Professor Heather began by stating that the Roman, Ottoman and British empires

Read More

St. Augustine’s Love

After spending week three deliberating on various part of the Bible for the AY/BA1 core course on Forms of Love, we waded deeper into the ocean of Christian ideals by reading St. Augustine’s Confessions. Acting as an intellectual lifeguard of sorts, Johannes Zachhuber was our guest lecturer for Monday. He studied theology in Rostock, Berlin

Read More

On Love and Friendship

Week Two of the winter term kicked off with a discussion of the Forms of Love. To enhance our perspective on the topic, Craig Williams, who studied Classics at Yale University and is the author of Roman Homosexuality and Reading Roman Friendship (forthcoming), as well as various articles and reviews on Latin poetry and Roman

Read More

Martin Jay on Scopic Regimes Revisited

The second lecturer that was invited to enrich the discussions of the PY Core Progamme – dedicated to the relationship between vision and knowledge – was the distinguished professor and intellectual historian Martin Jay. For three hours of entertaining and fertile thought, Martin Jay presented ideas from one of his yet to be published articles,

Read More

Eros and Tyranny

We all seem to be hardwired to want answers. We started looking for a potential few nine weeks ago in our discourse and contemplation of Plato’s Republic. Each new seminar and guest lecture brought with it the hope of finally reaching a resolution, a culmination of loose ends and meandering dialectic. The expectations from the

Read More

Frank Fehrenbach: Vision and Vivacità

Midway through this semester, ECLA’s PY Core Course on Objectivity invited Professor Fehrenbach to deliver a lecture on his most recent subject of research, the significance of the point in Leonardo’s drawings and its connection to the aesthetical category of vivacità.  This was a subject most appropriate for the students of the PY program, who

Read More