Anacharsis Conference 2021

Posted on: 5 November 2021 by Dr Marco Perale in 2021 posts

The conference centred upon the figure of Anacharsis, a Scythian philosopher travelling around the Greek world during the age of Solon’s reforms, killed for adopting alien (Greek) religious practices upon his return to Scythia and pursuing too strong an interest in alterity. His peripatetic presence combined with his penchant for intellectual exploration and questioning of ‘otherness’ will soon make Anacharsis a paradigm of enlightened independence. His legend was revived in the age of the Enlightenment, when his philosophy returned to intellectual discourse as an agent of dissonance and rupture fostering an emergent cultural relativism and cosmopolitanism. Today, Anacharsis helps us understand how ancient and modern reacted to religious conflicts, cultural diversity and political transformation.

The project as whole addresses issues of great relevance to our contemporary world, such as the perceived threat to cultural and national identities, and the successes and failures of cross-cultural interaction. In a period in which these issues permeate our politics, Anacharsis continues to offer insights into the current modalities of dialogue and mediation between 'us' and 'them', and our own fragile sense of national or post-national belonging. The conference brings together different branches within Classical Studies (Greek literature in particular, with specific focus on Hellenistic and Imperial philosophy and rhetoric), but creates also important synergies between Classics and Modern Philosophy and Political Theory.

You can find the recordings of the conference below;

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Study in the Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool