8-9 October 2025
The purpose of this interdisciplinary, international, multilingual workshop is to explore the diverse ways that ancient authors conceptualized and expressed the idea of (true and good) life. While the concentration on “life” becomes particularly pronounced in the religion and philosophy of the early Roman Imperial era, such that philosophy could be understood as an ars vitae/τέχνη περὶ τὸν βίον and such that one can also speak of the development of a “theology of life” in the New Testament gospels, the preoccupation with life is not at all restricted to this period. (How could it be otherwise with such an existential topic?) Accordingly, a central aim of the workshop is to collaborate in assembling a tableau of the conceptions of life that we find in various ancient Mediterranean cultures. Of course, we will not discuss only the topic of life, but also death, liminal states, and the way in which certain traditions, persons, and rituals are portrayed as reservoirs of (true and good) life.
© Beitragsbild: Gianlorenzo bernini, cappella cornaro, 1644-52, Wikimedia Commons /Sailko