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Liberty: an Ancient Idea for the Contemporany World - 05-06/06/2015, London (England)


The event aims to investigate the ancient understandings of liberty in the interconnected societies of the Near East (including ancient Israel), Greece, and Rome as well as to establish the potential impact of the ancient intellectual world on contemporary political debates. It shall focus on the idea of liberty articulated in its constitutional, individual, and religious dimensions and aims to unearth rival understandings of this concept and to explore key episodes in the history of liberty in these ancient societies. Our objective is to bring together scholars of the ancient world, anthropologists, political theorists, philosophers, and legal scholars to formulate the first synchronic account of the ancient notions of liberty, from the Ancient Near East (including ancient Israel) to Greece, Rome, and Byzantium in order to identify rival intellectual understandings of this value and bring intellectual clarity to the conceptualisations of liberty in contemporary political discourse.

FECHA/DATE/DATA: 05-06/06/2015

ORGANIZADOR/ORGANIZER/ORGANIZZATORE: Institute of Classical Studies, University College.

INFO: web - v.arena@ucl.ac.uk

INSCRIPCIÓN/REGISTRATION/REGISTRAZIONE: gratis / free / gratis

PROGRAMA/PROGRAM/PROGRAMMA:

Friday, June 5th Location: UCL, Cruciform, LT2


10.00 Coffee


10.30-12.30 Chair: Ingo Gildenhard

10.30 Clifford Ando (University of Chicago): Religious Liberty and Republican Citizenship under Rome

11.30 Philip Wood (The Aga Khan University): Liberty and non-Chalcedonian Churches


12.30-1.30 Lunch


1.30-3.30 Chair: Martin Goodman

1.30 Eva von Dassow (University of Minnesota): Let My People Go: Liberty, Bondage, and Liberation in the Second Millennium BCE

2.30 David Friedman (Oxford University): Notions of Freedom (and Slavery) in Josephus


3.30-4 Tea/Coffee break


4.00-6.00 Chair: Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe

4.00 Jonathan Stökl (King’s College London): ‘Say, therefore, to the Israelites: I Am the Lord. I Will Free you from the Egyptian Yoke and Deliver You from their Bondage’ (Exod 6:6): Liberty as an unintentional result of multiple statements regarding Liberty

5.00 Anthony Kaldellis: The Rhetoric of Liberty and the Political Periodization of Roman History – Or, Was Byzantium that Unfree?


18.00 Wine Reception


Saturday, 6th June Location: UCL, Cruciform, LT2


9.30 Coffee


10.00-1.00 Chair: Malcolm Schofield

10.00 Jed Atkins (Duke University) (read in absentia): Citizens' Rights and the Libera Res Publica

11.00 Melissa Lane (Princeton University): The Relation between Liberty, Law, and Rule: studies in Athens, Sparta, and Plato

12.00 Benjamin Gray (University of Edinburgh): Freedom, Ethical Choice and the Hellenistic Polis


1.00 Lunch


Location: UCL, Wilkins Haldane Room


2.30 Roundtable discussion with Richard Bellamy (University College London), Kinch Hoekstra (Berkeley University), and Quentin Skinner (Queen Mary, University of London) 3.30 Coffee/tea




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