The Bogazici University Byzantine Studies Research Center cordially invites you to a lecture by Dr. Fabio Pagani. The lecture, entitled "Plato and Pletho," will be held in a hybrid format; virtually via Zoom, and in-person at the Byzantine Studies Research Center, on Thursday, April 28, 2022, at 5 PM.

To register, please write to byzantinestudies@boun.edu.tr, indicating your preference for in-person or online attendance.

For more information, please click here.

Konuşma dili İngilizce olup, simültane çeviri yapılmayacaktır.

Abstract

Even though the existence of a Byzantine philosophy is currently a matter of disagreement among specialists, a general scholarly consensus ranks Gemistos Pletho as the most original thinker of Late Byzantium. Still, the core of his philosophical thought has been interpreted in different and often conflicting ways, even in recent years. The main problem that has split modern interpreters is the issue of Gemistos' religious outlook, i.e. his alleged paganism. Against conflicting (and often a-priori) philosophical and theological interpretations, the goal of this lecture, part of an ongoing book-project, is to present a paleographical and philological analysis of Gemistos' own books, especially his working edition of Plato (in three volumes). Far from being a place where pagan gods were worshipped, the analysis of the manuscript evidence shows that the school of Mystra can be seen as a place where (often difficult) texts of classical literature were read, copied, and interpreted in the light of the philosophical ideas of Gemistos Pletho. In particular, the lecture will focus on the twofold evidence that can be drawn from Gemistos' book. On the one hand, they contain smart conjectures to ancient texts in Gemistos' hand, therefore providing substantial evidence that he was a gifted philologist, able to emend classical texts in ways that have been affecting both the manuscript transmission and modern critical editions. On the other hand, these books contain also arbitrary erasures of the text, intended to make it consistent with some of the ideas contained in the Nomoi, Gemistos' most controversial treatise. Puzzling though it may seem to modern scholars, the lecture will argue that in Gemistos' mind both corrections intended to restore in the text a form of philosophical truth that represented the essence of his own distinctive form of Platonism.

Bio

Dr. Fabio Pagani's research interests focus upon the reception of Greek philosophy (mainly Plato and Aristotle) during the Byzantine and Latin Middle Ages through the Italian Renaissance, with particular attention to the role played by Byzantine intellectuals. His doctoral dissertation, completed at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa in 2011, was dedicated to the intellectual quarrel about Platonism that took place in Rome between George of Trebizond and Cardinal Bessarion in the mid-fifteenth century. Appointed at the Catholic University of America (Washington, D.C.) as Visiting Assistant Professor in 2016, and as Assistant Professor in 2017, Dr. Pagani teaches courses in both classical and medieval Greek and Latin language and literature. He has been the recipient of research fellowships from the Onassis Foundation (2009-2010), the Warburg Institute, London (fall 2010), Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C. (2015-2016), the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton (summer 2016), and Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence (2019-2020). Currently, he is an A. W. Mellon Fellow in Byzantine Studies at the Boğaziçi University Byzantine Studies Research Center, where he is working on a book-project on Gemistos Pletho's distinctive form of Platonism.