Presentation

Welcome to the Eighth International Symposium on Ancient Studies, titled Socrates, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Nietzsche: Interdisciplinary Dialogues under the Auspices of Dionysus.

Every two years, the Ancient and Medieval Programme in the Philosophy Department at UFMG holds its Symposium on Ancient Studies. This year, the symposium will take place on 2-4 February in a virtual format, on Zoom. This event is accessible and free of charge to anyone interested.

The theme of choice highlights the complex proximity between Socrates and Euripides that Friedrich Nietzsche established in The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche was in part following the brothers August and Friedrich Schlegel, who emphasized the role of Aristophanic criticism of Greek dramatists. The symposium’s focus on Socrates also reflects the effort to increase the visibility of Socratic studies, which have recently benefitted from the foundation of the International Society for Socratic Studies, thus we welcome any opportunity to reflect on the figure of Socrates himself, whom we know mainly from Plato. The invocation of Dionysus, on the other hand, recognizes the deity’s importance for ancient as well as contemporary philosophy, above all due to Nietzsche’s reading of The Bacchae in the Birth of Tragedy. In this respect, we all conduct our research under the auspices of this god.

Nietzsche’s views of Dionysus, as well as of Euripides, Socrates, and Aristophanes, will be only one part of the discussion, however. It is unnecessary to defend here the importance of analysing the liaisons — perhaps even liaisons dangereuses — among these ancient authors from a Nietzschean perspective. It is likewise important to appreciate the ways in which these the impact of these authors on philosophy are interwoven. Accordingly, we acknowledge the Platonic perspective and emphasize the contact with other texts that allude to Socrates and Socratic themes — not least the plays of Aristophanes and Euripides.

In this symposium, we will revisit aspects of Socrates’ thought from perspectives on ancient philosophy that have emerged in the past few decades regarding the sophistic movement and rhetoric in general. As is well known, since Plato, the distinction between Socrates and the Sophists has received emphasis. Nietzsche not only problematized this distinction but also redeployed it in his construction of an image of a Dionysus drawn largely from the Bacchae. However, even as Nietzsche correlated Euripides to rhetoric, he also portrayed Socrates as a sophist, thereby following in the footsteps of Aristophanes in The Clouds,  and presenting the philosopher as the voice that whispered in the dramatist’s  ears.

The concepts of rationality and irrationality, morality, and emotional experience are, from the perspective advanced in this symposium, the keys to a nuanced understanding of Socrates’ image — or, rather, images — as a model philosopher from antiquity through the German Enlightenment and beyond. In order to arrive at such an understanding, it is of paramount importance to analyse his connections with Aristophanes and Euripides from Nietzsche’s perspective as well.

The combined contributions of researchers in the fields of Literature, Philosophy, History, and Archaeology are fundamental to the interdisciplinary spirit of our symposium. As the structure of universities increasingly forces scholars into rigid disciplinary categories, events such as this continue to provide opportunities for us to come together in interdisciplinary dialogues that shed fresh light on the ancient world and the challenges involved in studying it.

At UFMG, an initiative emphasizing interdisciplinary interactions is already underway. Thanks to the vision of Marcelo Marques and Jacyntho Brandão, to whom we are grateful, the courses offered by the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy have been organized in a manner that encourages cooperation among scholars from various fields who share interests. In particular, as a result of this initiative, the Fundamentals of Greek Literature, offered by our colleagues from FALE  (Faculty of Letters)/UFMG, became a required course for first-semester philosophy students.

I express here — and I know that I speak for my colleagues and students — my special thanks to Professor Marques and Professor Brandão. In gratitude for their exemplary efforts in defence of the public university system in general and the study of classical antiquity in particular, we dedicate the present symposium to them both.

It is our hope that this symposium — in keeping with the spirit of Plato’s foundational dialogue of that name, which brought together numerous voices to discuss a common theme — will be an occasion for many fruitful discussions that will advance our understanding of ancient philosophy and literature and their reception.