European Humanism and Its Challenges — Ljubljana 2017
(Photos: Matjaž Rebolj, Luka Škulj, Ivo Štefanič, and the symposium participants.)
International Symposium on European Humanism and Its Challenges, which took place in Ljubljana on September 8–9, 2017, was organised by Department of Classical Philology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana; Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest; Faculty of “Artes Liberales,” University of Warsaw; Slovenian Comparative Literature Association; and Vilenica International literary festival. The symposium was under the honorary patronage of His Excellency Mr Borut Pahor, the President of the Republic of Slovenia.
About the Symposium
Aulus Gellius, the Roman antiquarian from the second century AD, wrote that his contemporaries used the term humanitas with the meaning of the Greek word philanthropia, benevolence towards others, even though the masters of Latin language had previously used the noun to mark a special type of education. Even then, the word could mean both an ethical position and a particular cultural and educational model. During subsequent periods, until today, the adjective humanist was associated with these two different areas. But Gellius, as well as his predecessor Cicero, saw both meanings as closely intertwined: he considered such education as necessary to cultivate humanity (humanitas), which is both its foundation and its goal. In the following centuries, it found its expression in the conviction about the fundamental value of each individual; complexity of modern civilisation, diversity of its cultural forms and sensitivity of artistic expressions, as well as human rights and democracy, are largely the result of this process.
If the value of the individual grew from continuous search for integrity as a means of discovering one’s measure, what is the present state of such humanistic attitude? And what are its consequences for education, for art, for understanding of human being, of the world, of life? It seems that recently the question about the fate of humanism has become more difficult, and perhaps more important. How to reconcile the objectivist science with the cultural values, which are rooted in the unique importance of the human person and which, stricto sensu, cannot be claimed scientifically? How come that those anthropological, cultural and educational models, which are related to the humanism of antiquity and of the renaissance, as well as to nineteenth-century neohumanism, so often limit themselves to the apologetic and moralistic discourse when faced with the pragmatist, technicist and economistic ideology?
The purpose of the symposium was to bring together scholars from different fields of humanities, arts and literature, and to investigate the present social and spiritual condition, when it sometimes seems that the role of humanistic tradition is diminishing. The papers shed light on these challenges, discussing the role of the arts and their relevance for the world and the human person, as well as their role in the future of an open and solidarity-based democratic society.
Vilenica International Literary Festival
Vilenica International Literary Festival, a gathering of poets, prose writers, dramatists, essayists, and scholars, is organized by the Slovene Writers’ Association in collaboration with the Cultural Centre Vilenica.
The climax of the event is the presentation of the Vilenica International Literary Prize, awarded by the Slovene Writers’ Association in accordance with its statute to a Central European author for outstanding achievements in the field of literature and essay writing. So far, Vilenica laureates were Yuri Andrukhovych (2017), Dubravka Ugrešić (2016), Jáchym Topol (2015), László Krasznahorkai (2014), Olga Tokarczuk (2013), David Albahari (2012), Mircea Cărtăarescu (2011), Dževad Karahasan (2010), Claudio Magris (2009), Andrzej Stasiuk (2008), Goran Stefanovski (2007), Miodrag Pavlović (2006), Ilma Rakusa in Karl-Markus Gauß (2005), Brigitte Kronauer (2004), Mirko Kovač (2003), Ana Blandiana (2002), Jaan Kaplinski (2001), Slavko Mihalić (2000), Erica Pedretti (1999), Péter Nádas (1998), Pavel Vilikovsky (1997), Adam Zagajewski (1996), Adolf Muschg (1995), Josip Osti (1994), Libuše Moníková (1993), Milan Kundera (1992), Zbigniew Herbert (1991), Tomas Venclova (1990), Jan Skácel (1989), Peter Eszterházy (1988), Peter Handke (1987) and Fulvio Tomizza (1986).
18.30–19.30 Final award ceremony (in Vilenica cave), with literary readings by Inger Elisabeth Hansen (Norway), Kerrie O’Brien (Ireland), Esther Kinsky (Germany) and Fahredin Shehu (Kosovo); and a speech of Vilenica 2017 laureate, Yuri Andrukhovych
19.30 Farewell dinner, together with Vilenica authors in Karst restaurant “Muha” (est. 1679); followed by a musical concert
Gábor Almási is interested mostly in 15–18th-century history of ideas. He published a book on The Uses of Humanism: Johannes Sambucus (1531–1584), Andreas Dudith (1533–1589), and the East Central European Republic of Letters (Leiden: Brill, 2009). He studies intellectual and information networks (the Republic of Letters), intellectual and political ideology, court culture and court careers, patronage, social advancement and mobility, religion and politics, religious attitudes of intellectuals, early modern patriotism and ‘otherness’.
Manca Erzetič is PhD candidate at Faculty of Arts UL and a young researcher at the Nova revija Institute of Humanist Studies; among her awards are Alumnus Primus, Prešeren Award for Master degree from Philosophy and Comparative literature and literary theory; three international awards for essays, Lirikonfestov zlát. She writes critical and research papers; participates in discussions at government sessions about language and culture; and is active as ecologist.
Aleksandar Gatalica has published translations of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, Sappho, Mimnermus, Solon, Archilochus, Hipponax and Anacreon, as well as novels The Lines of Life in 1993 (Miloš Crnjanski Award and Giorgio la Pira Award), Downsides in 1995, The End in 2000, Death of Euripides (Euripidova smrt) in 2003, and The Invisible in 2008 (Stevan Sremac Award), The Great War (NIN Award). He has also authored several books on music. He is editor of numerous anthologies in Serbian and other languages.
Sibil Gruntar Vilfan got her BA and MA in English and Latin Language and Literature and is currently enrolled at the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest. Her undergraduate thesis on Latin Phraseological Units in English and Slovenian: a Study Based on Erasmus’ Adagiorum Chiliades won Prešeren Student Award and in 2017 she won Best Academic Achievement Award at the Department of Medieval Studies at the CEU in Budapest. Her translation of the Dialogues by Sulpicius Severus is to be published in 2017.
Matej Hriberšek is assistant professor for Greek and Latin language at the Department for Classical Philology (Faculty of Arts) at the University of Ljubljana. He got his PhD in Latin in 2003; and has studied in Zürich, Tübingen, Göttingen and Vienna. His main areas of interests are Latin and Greek grammar, ancient rhetoric and metrics, didactics of classical languages, medieval and neo-Latin literature, lexicography, and translation from classical languages (Thomas Aquinas, Tacitus, Plutarch, Galileo, Pliny the Elder, Aristotle, Herberstein etc.).
Katarzyna Jerzak studied Comparative Literature at Brown University and Princeton University (PhD 1995). Between 1995 and 2012 she taught comparative literature at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. In 1999/2000 she was a Rome Prize Fellow in Art History at the American Academy in Rome. In 2013 she was NEH Distinguished Visiting Professor at SUNY Potsdam, NY. She is now Associate Professor of English Philology at the Pomeranian University in Słupsk, Poland. Her main research interest is exile.
Petar Jevremović (born 1964) teaches at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy. Among his research interests are psychoanalysis, philosophy, theology, and literature. Published books: Psychoanalysis and Ontology, Belgrade 1998; Lacan and Psychoanalysis, Belgrade 2000; Psihoanaliza, hermenevtika, cerkveni očetje, Kud Logos, Ljubljana 2006; Body, Phantasm, Symbol, Belgrade 2007; LOGOS/ POLUTROPOS: Towards hermeneutics of the oral discourse, Belgrade 2013; Being/Dispersal, Belgrade 2014.
Markus Kersten studied classics as well as mathematics at the universities of Rostock and Groningen. In 2015 he was based at the University of Oxford as a Visiting Scholar. In 2017, he completed his PhD course at Rostock, focusing on Lucan’s reception of Vergil’s Georgics. He is currently working as a lecturer. His research interests are Roman epic and bucolic poetry, particularly compositional details like metapoetic allusions and cryptogrammes. His new book will investigate Harry Kessler’s reception of classical literature.
Matic Kocijančič is Young Researcher at the Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His research interests include ancient Greek drama, philosophy of tragedy, and Slovenian post-war theatre. He won the Maribor Theatre Festival award for the best essay in 2006. His first book, Knjiga pohval in pritožb – a collection of film, book and theatre reviews – was published in 2016.
Dean Komel is professor of contemporary philosophy and philosophy of culture at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, and is the head of research activities at the Nova Revija Institute for Humanities. In 2003 he received the Zois Award of the Republic of Slovenia for scholarly achievements in the field of philosophy. He publishes in phenomenological and hermeneutical philosophy, and is also the initiator of several humanistic institutions within scholarly community. He participated in a number of conferences and symposia and has helped organize about forty of them.
Robert Kuret studied Slovenian philology and finished his studies in 2016 with a study on mimetic desire in Vitomil Zupan’s novels. He worked as a journalist and web editor at Infodrom. He writes critiques and essays about literature and film where he tries to fuse psychoanalysis and mimetic theory. Twice he was among the Sodobnost’s nominees for the best Slovenian essay. He is a coorganizer and a founding member of Prebranec, a monthly event dedicated to new Slovenian prose.
Adam Łukaszewicz, archaeologist, papyrologist and historian of antiquity, professor at the University of Warsaw, is head of a Polish archaeological expedition in Egypt, deputy chairman of the Committee for the Study of Antiquity (Polish Academy of Sciences), member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton N.J. etc. Among his published works are Les édifices publics dans les villes de l’Égypte romaine (1986), Aegyptiaca Antoniniana (1993), Świat papirusów (2001), Kleopatra (2005), Egipt Greków i Rzymian (2006).
Ewa A. Łukaszyk (1972), Ph.D. Habil., Romanist and Orientalist, specialized in Portuguese and Lusophone as well as Mediterranean studies and is professor at the Faculty “Artes Liberales” (University of Warsaw) and LE STUDIUM fellow 2017–2018 (Loire Valley, France). Currently she develops a project “The search for the Adamic language and the emergence of transcultural aspiration in the aftermath of the European maritime discoveries”, financed in the framework of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
Marko Marinčič is professor of Roman and Greek literature at the University of Ljubljana. His main fields of interest and publication are Hellenistic and Roman poetry (Catullus, Virgil, Appendix Vergiliana, Ovid, Statius), Greek prose fiction (Life of Aesop, Achilles Tatius) and the reception of ancient literature (e.g. Petrarca, Chénier, Baudelaire, Prešeren). He translates Latin, Greek and French literature into Slovenian (Greek lyric poetry, especially Sappho; Aeschylus, Euripides; Plautus, Terentius, Catullus, Virgil, Ovid, Tertullian; Racine, Claudel).
Olga Markič is professor of philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. She is lecturing at the Philosophy Department and at Mei:CogSci program. Her main areas of research are Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, and Neuroethics. Her two main books are Cognitive science: Philosophical Questions (Aristej, 2011, in Slovenian) and Mind in nature: from science to philosophy (with M. Uršič and A. Ule, Nova Science Publishers, 2012).
Dávid Molnár is a historian of literature and philosophy, interested in Platonic movement in Europe and Hungary. After defending his PhD thesis Furor est cum cantat: Marsilio Ficino and the Hungarian Platonists “in love” in the age of Matthias Corvinus, he has been affiliated as a research fellow in the “Humanism in East Central Europe” Research Group (MTA-ELTE HECE). He is currently working on a monograph on the Sienese Pietro Illicino (Petrus Illicinus).
David Movrin is assistant professor at the Department of Classical Philology at the University of Ljubljana. He holds an MA in Medieval Studies from the CEU in Budapest and a PhD in Classical Philology from the University of Ljubljana. He has published a monograph on the history of translation, translated and adapted a set of Latin textbooks and workbooks, written a monograph on the relationship between pagan and Christian biography in Late Antiquity, and chaired a research project entitled “What Good is Latin to Socialism?” at the Slovenian Research Agency.
Petra Mutlova got her PhD in Historical Sciences (2007, Masaryk University, Brno) and in Medieval Studies (2011, Central European University, Budapest); she is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Classical Philology, Masaryk University in Brno, working on medieval Latin language and literature. She is involved in a long-time project of preparing critical editions of the Magistri Ioannis Hus Opera omnia series for the Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis for the Brepols publishers.
Elżbieta Olechowska is a classical philologist and textual critic (Claudian’s De bello Gildonico publ. by E. J. Brill, Cicero’s manuscript tradition by Ossolineum, three Cicero’s speeches from 54 B. C. in Bibliotheca Teubneriana), as well as media expert (Challenges for International Broadcasting, vol. I‑VI, The Age of International Radio). She worked at the University of Geneva, Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and currently at the University of Warsaw focussing on history of Classics and reception of classical antiquity.
Áron Orbán is an assistant research fellow in the MTA-ELTE Humanism in East Central Europe Research Group (Budapest). His research area is humanist literature in Hungary, Austria, and Germany, especially its natural philosophical aspects. His publications that have appeared so far focus mainly on astrological matters. His dissertation dealt with “Solar-astral Symbolism and Poetical Self-Representation in Conrad Celtis and his humanist circles.”
Žarko Paić is associate professor at the School of Fashion Design at the Faculty of Textile Technology, University of Zagreb, where he teaches aesthetics, fashion and media theory and visual communication. He is the editor of Fort, journal for theory, culture and visual arts. He has won several international awards for literature. His research interests are comprehensive and range from theories of globalisation and identities, aesthetics, philosophy of art, philosophy of politics, and media philosophy.
Edoardo Pecchini is a child neuropsychiatrist, working at the Bolzano Hospital within the Specialist Psychiatric Health Clinic during the Childhood and Development Period, taking care of children and young people with depressions, suicidal disorders, disturbances of perception of reality, attention deficit disorders, disturbances of social behavior, and autistic spectrum disorders. He is also a doctoral student at the faculty of Artes liberales, University of Warsaw.
Gregor Pobežin obtained his PhD in 2009 with his thesis on narrative focus in Sallust’s Conspiracy of Catiline and War of Jugurtha. Since 2008 he has been employed by the University of Primorska, where he holds the position of Associate Professor, and by the Institute of Cultural History of the Research Centre of SAZU in Ljubljana, where he holds the position of the head of department. He concentrates mostly on the research of Greek and Roman historiography and the question of sources employed by Greek and Roman historians.
Marco Russo is Assistant Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at University of Salerno (Italy). He studied in Naples (MA), Catania (Phd), Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (Phd), Technische Universität Darmstadt (Post-graduate Fellowship), and Freie Universität Berlin (Post-doc). His works join the theoretical analysis with historical expertise. His areas of competence are Philosophical Anthropology, Epistemology of Human Science, and Metaphysics. Since 2011 he is Vice Prasident of Helmuth Plessner Gesellschaft, an international network for the promotion of the Philosophical Anthropology.
Brane Senegačnik is a classical philologist, poet, essayist, translator and editor. He has PhD from Universtiy of Ljubljana and is currently assistant professor at the Department of Classical Philology. His main research interest is Greek tragedy. He published translations of several Greek and Roman tragedies, works of late Stoic and Renessaince philosophers and complete extant poems of Pindar. In addition to six collections of poems he authored and co-authored several monographs on Slovenian culture.
György E. Szönyi is professor of English and cultural/intellectual history. His interests include cultural theory, the Renaissance, the Western esoteric traditions, and conventions of symbolization – early modern and (post)modern. Among his recent monographs are Pictura & Scriptura: 20th-Century Theories of Cultural Representations (Szeged, 2004); Gli angeli di John Dee (Rome, 2004); John Dee’s Occultism (Albany, 2004, paperback 2010). He is on the editorial board of Aries and Aries Monograph Series (E. J. Brill) and several other national and international journals.
Alen Širca, PhD, is the assistant professor of comparative literature and literary theory at the Faculty of Arts at University of Ljubljana. His research focuses on premodern Western literary history and methodology of literary studies. He is the author of two scholarly monographs on mystical poetry.
Igor Škamperle is an assistant professor in Sociology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. His research fields are Renaissance culture, sociology of knowledge and science, epistemology, and theory of symbolic fomations. Apart from his studies on various authors in the field of philosophy (Cusanus, Pico della Mirandola, Eugenio Garin, Corpus hermeticum, Hans Blumenberg, Augustine, Jeleazar M. Meletinski, Gaston Bachelard) he published several novels and screenplays.
Andrej Tomažin graduated in Comparative Literature and Slovenian Language and Literature from the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana. He is a writer and a comparativist as well as coeditor of Idiot, a literary magazine, and Šum, a magazine for contemporary art. To date he published two books. His research focuses on the sociology of literature, especially as it concerns questions of the twentieth-century Slovenian novel and contemporary world literatures in relation to the philosophy of technology.
Bojana Tomc teaches Spanish and Latin language at the Diocesan Classical Gymnasium in Ljubljana. She is co-author of the Latin-Slovenian dictionary and of the handbook El cuento hispanoamericano en el examen de matura (Carlos Fuentes y Gabriel García Márquez). Her research focuses on reading strategies in teaching literature as well as on reception of Antiquity in later periods, and particularly on ancient motifs in the Spanish drama of the Golden age, which was also the topic of her PhD thesis, defended in 2016.
Tomaž Toporišič is a dramaturge and theatre theoretician, as well as professor in Drama and Performance Studies at Academy for Theatre and Faculty of Arts at University of Ljubljana. He is author of four books. His latest essays include: The new Slovenian theatre and italian futurism: Delak, Černigoj and the historical avant-garde in Venezia Giulia (2014); (Re)staging the rhetorics of space (Neohelicon, 2014); and Deconstructive readings of the avant-garde tradition in post-socialist retro-avant-garde theatre (Aesthetics of Matter, 2013).
Marko Uršič (1951), PhD., is professor of logic, philosophy of nature and the Renaissance studies in the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. He wrote on Matrices of Logos (1987), Pilgrimage to Anima (1988), and Gnostic Essays (1994). His recent work is the tetralogy Four Seasons, series of philosophical dialogues and monologues between theoretic discourse and literature, published between 2002 and 2015 by Cankarjeva založba. He is co-author of Mind in Nature, from Science to Philosophy (New York, 2012).
Sonja Weiss is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Classics, University of Ljubljana. Her research focuses on ancient philosophy, particularly on the Pythagorean, Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophical traditions, and on their reception in medieval and humanistic literature. She wrote a monograph on the role of Myth in Plotinus, and is currently working on the first integral Slovenian translation of the Enneads.
Blaž Zabel is a graduate student at the Durham University, Faculty of Classics. Previously, he was a researcher at the University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Education. His research interests include Homeric scholarship, world literature, and philosophy of education. His current research projects focus on “Homeric Epic and World Literature: A Comparative Study of Method, and Values,” as well as social cohesion in education.
Neža Zajc got her PhD in Cultural History at University of Nova Gorica and is Research Fellow at the Institute of Cultural History at Scientific-Research Centre of Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. She wrote five books on old Slavic history, culture, and language: The Hagiography of the Protopope Avvakum (2009); The Worldviews of Slavic Word in 16th Century (2011); The Image of Slavic Word in Christian Texts of 16th Century (2012); The Introduction to the Poetics of Anna A. Akhmatova (2015); The Etudes, Variations and Rhymes of A. V. Issatchenko (2015).
Rafał Zawisza is a doctoral student at the University of Warsaw (Faculty of “Artes Liberales”) and a former junior fellow in the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. He is currently working on the thesis entitled “Cryptotheological defence of the secular: Hannah Arendt’s anthropology and the secularisation thesis”.
Staying in Ljubljana
All our international guests were staying in Postgraduate Students Home (“Dom podiplomcev”), Gosarjeva 9, Ljubljana, telephone +386–1‑580–56-00, where our visiting professors usually stay. The home is located near one of the main arterial roads (Dunajska cesta) and is reachable by city busses 6, 8 and 11. As a small token of welcome to all the visiting Latinists, the bus stop has a Latin name, Mercator. To reach it from the airport, one can use public bus service no. 28 which operates between Ljubljana train and bus station and the airport and which runs every hour. (Departures from Ljubljana airport: 5.00, 6.05, 7.00, 8.00, 9.00, 10.00, 11.00, 12.00, 13.00, 14.00, 15.00, 16.00, 17.00, 18.00, 19.00, 20.00.) If you let the driver know, the airport bus will also make a stop at the Mercator stop; you only need to cross the road (via subway), go around the grey building (“Dunajska 106”) – and you are there. The ride from the airport takes about 40 minutes, the cost is around 4 Euros and you buy your tickets directly from the driver. There is also a private shuttle service, which is running less frequently, but is a bit faster. If you take a taxi from the airport, it should cost you about 35 euros.
Organizing Committee
The Organizing Committee includes Dejan Kos, Slovenian Comparative Literature Association; David Movrin, Department of Classical Philology, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts; Elżbieta Olechowska, Faculty of “Artes Liberales,” University of Warsaw; Brane Senegačnik, Department of Classical Philology, University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts; and Katalin Szende, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest.
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