Parthenon Events Schedule
2011 - 2012 Symposia
Thursday, September 8 – Really, Really Early Music: Songs from Ancient Greece – lecture and concert by the Nashville Early Music Project
The September Symposium has been rescheduled for December 8
Tuesday, October 18 –A Complete Cosmos: the Tomb of an Egyptian Governor and Its Secrets – Dr. Lawrence Berman, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Thursday, October 27 –Greeks and Romans Bearing Gifts: How the Ancients Inspired the Founding Fathers – Dr. Carl J. Richard, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Tuesday, January 24 - Music, Healing and Sacred Space in Classical Greece: A New Interpretation of the Thymele of Epidauros – Dr. Peter Schultz, Concordia College
Wednesday, February 22 –Clear Light and Shining Ruins: William J. Stillman’s Acropolis – Dr. Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, Wesleyan University
Tuesday, March 20 –The Lost Eagle: The Untold Story of the Legionary Eagle on Rome’s Most Famous Statue – Dr. Bridget Buxton, University of Rhode Island
April – TBA
All lectures are sponsored jointly by the Conservancy for the Parthenon and Centennial Park and the Archaeological Institute of America. Unless otherwise noted, the lectures begin at 7:00 p.m. Call 862-8431 for reservations.
2012 Saturday Series
ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY - The Foundations of Western Intellectual History
Time: Saturdays in February, 10:30 AM to 12:00 noonPlace: The Parks and Recreation Board Room, Oman Drive and Park Plaza (next to HCA)
Cost: $60 ($50 for Conservancy members)
Call 862-8431 to register or for additional information
Saturday, February 4: The Presocratic Philosophers - Mark Anderson, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Belmont University
The Presocratics were the earliest Greek philosophers; their work laid the foundations for western science, philosophy, and theology. Chronologically they appear after Homer and before Socrates. Significant figures include Heraclitus, who influenced the ancient Stoics and, much later, Friedrich Nietzsche; Pythagoras, of the Pythagorean Theorem and the idea of the “music of the spheres”; Parmenides, often called “the father of logic”; and Democritus, one of the first to say that nature is composed of atoms.
Saturday, February 11: Plato - Mark Anderson, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Belmont University
Plato was perhaps the most famous and influential follower of Socrates. He founded a school/research institution known as the Academy; he composed over thirty important and influential dialogues; his influence on western philosophy and theology is immeasurable. A famous twentieth century philosopher called the history of western philosophy “a series of footnotes to Plato.”
Saturday, February 18: Aristotle - Andrew Davis, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Belmont University
Aristotle was a student of Plato who later founded his own school (the Lyceum). He exercised an immense influence on medieval Islamic and Christian philosophy; he was the first to systematize the laws of logic; he studied and wrote about everything from Physics and Metaphysics, to Politics, Poetry, and Zoology.
Saturday, February 25: Hellenistic Philosophy - Melanie Walton, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Belmont University
This period is probably the one best known to non-specialists. The major Hellenistic schools were Epicureanism, associated with the doctrine that pleasure is the highest good (hedonism); Stoicism, associated with the doctrine that good and bad are dependent upon human judgment (widely influential among the Romans); and Neoplatonism, deriving from Plotinus and influential to the development of rational mysticism and some aspects of Christian theology (St. Augustine was a Neoplatonist prior to his conversion).