[MGSA-L] Workshop on Time as a Factor of Change in the Neohellenic Enlightenment

[Roland Moore]

From:    anthony.hirst at btinternet.com


Although the general deadline for submission of abstracts for the conference was 31st January, abstracts for this workshop can be submitted up to 31st March 2011.


CALL FOR PAPERS

13th International Congress for Eighteenth Century Studies
http://www.18thcenturycongress-graz2011.at/
Graz, Austria, 25-29 July 2011

WORKSHOP: Time as a Factor of Change in the Neohellenic Enlightenment
http://www.18thcenturycongress-graz2011.at/sections/section_BW007.html
Organizer/Moderator: Prof. Athanasia Glycofrydi-Leontsini (Athens)

Concepts of time are of fundamental importance in the study of religion, philosophy, science, literature, history, and mythology. Time as a factor of structure and change is an essential consideration in the biological and physical sciences; it has also been an important factor of change in social, political, educational, and cultural matters. In the age of the Enlightenment change in perceptions, attitudes and life has been the main prerequisite of the Western world. Change and innovation have also been adopted by many Greek scholars who tried to disseminate modern philosophical and scientific achievements in Eastern Europe in the 18th century. This workshop intends to approach the reception of the ideas of the European Enlightenment by the Greek enlighteners who expressed their admiration for modern philosophical and scientific thinking as they tried to infuse them in wide audiences through publishing and teaching activities during the 18th century.
 This workshop aims to explore the different and conflicting attitudes of the Eastern enlighteners as far as the teaching of philosophy and the literary arts is concerned, an area including a broad range of subjects, such as metaphysics, mathematical disciplines, ethics, politics, logic, rhetoric, grammar, poetics and history; it will also examine curricula plans designed for specific schools and Academies within the Ottoman occupied Greek and Balkan territories as well as the translation and publication of Western books. In addition, the workshop will focus on the cultural situation of the Occident and on topics related to the three major religions of that region, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Islam. The Orthodox Church, after the fall of Constantinople, has exclusively undertaken the education of the Greeks. The political authority of the Orthodox clergy has been discredited by the reforming spirit of the time and by the enlighteners that have seen the
 changing ideas as a keystone for the political radicalization, freedom from superstition and ignorance and for the shaping of national identity. 

The aim of this workshop is to examine the conflicts between the progressive and the conservative men of letters and clergymen that led to a critique of the traditional thinking and of the Enlightenment ideas. Although Modern philosophy and science were prosecuted as hostile to faith and Aristotelianism, the adoption and the spread-out of the new ideas led to changes of attitudes, thinking, and society, which in the case of Greece resulted to the War of Independence (1821) and the establishment of a new nation-state. The effects of the Enlightenment that have remained to this day in Greek culture and society (e.g. questions related to Greek national identity, culture, and statecraft) will also be considered. For example, have all these Enlightenments ideas contributed towards the modernization of Greek society and to the establishment of firm state institutions?  

We invite papers that respond to these topics related to the Enlightenments of South-Eastern Europe and in particular to the Neohellenic Enlightenment. Within this workshop, key concepts and ideological influences will be discussed as well as textual scholarship and book history. Meanwhile the effects of the Enlightenment in the Eastern World and the conflicts between East and West, tradition and innovation will be the major topic for discussion.
Abstracts (in English) have to be submitted to the general organizers of the congress using the application form provided here: 
http://www.18thcenturycongress-graz2011.at/congressprogramme.html. 
The deadline for submitting abstracts for this workshop is 31st March 2011.

Please, direct informal expressions of interest or queries to Prof. Athanasia Glycofrydi-Leontsini (aleon at ppp.uoa.gr)