Week 9 of the fall semester brought Martin Puchner to the ECLA students and professors in order to further engage in the study of our core text, Plato’s Republic. We thus discovered Plato in his dramatic dimension, one which can offer an alternative to the Aristotelian paradigm of the theatrical enterprise and under whose influence
TagThe Republic
Guest Lecture: Norbert Blößner On the Formal Aspect of Republic
November 25 brought some fresh air to AY and BA students: Professor Norbert Blößner, guest lecturer at ECLA, addressed the formal aspect of Plato’s Republic. Blößner is a specialist in early and classical philosophy, particularly Plato’s dialogues. He studied at the University of Regensburg, were he received his PhD; and is currently working on Plato’s
Guest Lecture: Dr. David McNeill
“The title of my lecture is going to be ‘Prisoners like us’, the phrase Socrates uses in Republic Book VII when he describes the allegory of the cave”, David McNeill, guest lecturer at ECLA on November 18 began. McNeill received his BA from St. John’s College, in Annapolis MD, and has a PhD from the
ECLA Guest Lecture: Stephen Houlgate on Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy
On Wednesday, December 10, the AY students had the opportunity to attend a lecture on Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy given by Stephen Houlgate of the University of Warwick. The lecture not only addressed issues discussed during the AY core course, but it also incorporated topics that were of interest to students taking the electives on
ECLA Guest Lecture: Devin Stauffer on Justice and the Structure of “The Republic”
Having already adjusted to the academic environment of ECLA, the 2008-09 AY students had the opportunity to accompany their growing familiarity with Plato’s Republic with the lecture of Professor Devin Stauffer, a scholar of classical political philosophy. His impetus for reading and discussing Plato comes from his deeply ingrained belief that Platonic works contain “a
ECLA Core Course on Education
For ten weeks at ECLA, drawing upon the debates of Ancient Greece, students and faculty have been weighing different views of the meaning of education. Students considered their position as learners at the same time as experiencing the ‘other side’ of the educational dialogue in seminars, such that the experience was of self-reflective education. Two
Dr. Klaus Corcilius on ‘instrumentalization of virtue’ in Plato’s Republic
On 12 November 2007 Dr. Klaus Corcilius of Humboldt University presented a guest lecture on Plato’s Republic and the ‘instrumentalization of virtue’ at the European College of Liberal Arts (ECLA). Instrumentalization is, simply put, to use a thing with an intrinsic end for a purpose extrinsic to itself (the example, for clarity, of using a
Spring in Tuscany – Studying Florentine Renaissance at ECLA
By the time spring comes to Berlin, the Academy Year students should know every corner of Florence. This is to do with the fact that the core course this term is devoted entirely to the study of Florentine Renaissance. In the last week of the term, students will be given the opportunity to actually travel to