Plato on Time, Eternity and the World

The online Symposium entitled “Plato on Time, Eternity and the World” assembles a group of established scholars of Ancient Philosophy in general, and Platonism in particular. They are set to explore a cluster of philosophical issues related to the Platonic understanding of the generation of the physical world and the set of laws operational within it, with a special emphasis on the puzzle of time and its possible point of origin. Further questions that are going to be explored during the two day Symposium and the Round table discussion are: a) the peculiarities of the agency exercised by the Demiurge; b) the status and the ontology of the Timaean pre-cosmic state; c) the Platonic criteria of distinguishing time from eternity. The overall aim of the Symposium is to shed some new light on the old problems of Plato’s cosmogony and cosmology by providing a forum for the presentation of the individual researchers’ findings, as well as by facilitating a lively scholarly debate on the issues.

PROGRAMME

Tuesday, 11 May
3:00-4:15pm Session 1 Barbara Sattler: Temporal Measurement in Society and the Natural World
4:30-5:45pm Session 2 Luc Brisson: Instant (ἐξαίφνης) in Plato’s Parmenides 155e3-157b4

Wednesday, 12 May
11:00-12:15am Session 3 Sarah Broadie: Timaean Demiurgy: Is It All Over and Done With?
12:30-1:45pm Session 4 Federico Petrucci: Plato’s Precosmos
3:00-4:15pm Session 5 Carolina Araujo: Time and Light in Plato’s Timaeus

Thursday, 13 May
3:00-5:00pm Round table

Organizers: Viktor Illievski, Daniel Vazquez, Silvia De Bianchi
Scientific Committee: Silvia De Bianchi, Viktor Illievski, Daniel Vazquez and Francesco Fronterotta