The Princeton-Bucharest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy was established almost two decades ago by Dana Jalobeanu, Vlad Alexandrescu and Daniel Garber. Since then, every summer until the summer of 2019, we have met in the mountains of Transylvania. Over the years, these seminars have gained a reputation both for academic rigor and cordiality. The seminar has gradually evolved into an institution. In recent years it was co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy at Princeton University and the Humanities Division of the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (ICUB).
Because of the COVID pandemic, we had to cancel our plans for summer of 2020, and we started to meet online. Our programs have continued through the academic year and have attracted an interesting international audience interested in early modern philosophy and science.
Programme
Every Tuesday from 8 PM Bucharest time (UTC+2) / 1 PM Princeton time (ET)
Feb 22nd: Panel “Thomas Hobbes on Demonic Possession and Passions of War” with Ismael del Olmo (Universidad de Buenos Aires) and Jerónimo Rilla (Universidad de Buenos Aires/CONICET).
March 1st: Panel “Geometry in the 18th Century: Philosophical Arguments and Epistemological Assumptions” with Jens Lemanski, Andrea Reichenberger, and Theodor Berwe (FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany)
March 8th – (starting at 12 PM ET): Panel on John Donne with Stephen Clucas (Birkbeck College), Nigel Smith (Princeton University) and Richard Strier (University of Chicago)
March 15th (Daylight Saving Time starts in the US) – Panel on Leibniz and Newton on Space: Andrew Janiak (Duke University) and Vincenzo De Risi (CNRS & Max-Planck-Gesellschaft)
March 22nd – Panel “Leibniz on Quantity, Measure and Force” with Filippo Costantini (University Ca’ Foscari of Venice/McMaster University) and Jeffrey Elawani (McMaster University/Université de Paris)
SPECIAL SESSION March 26th 11 AM – 2 PM ET – Panel “Philosophy as Descartes Found It” with Brian Copenhaver (UCLA), Calvin Normore (UCLA), and Dan Garber (Princeton)
March 29th (Daylight Saving Time starts in Europe) – Panel “Hume’s Theory of the Self as it relates to the Passions” with Lorraine Besser (Middlebury College) and Avital Hazony (University of Arizona)
April 5th – Panel on The Cambridge History of Philosophy of the Scientific Revolution (CUP, 2022) with editors David Marshall Miller (Iowa State University) and Dana Jalobeanu (University of Bucharest)
April 12th – Panel “English, French, and German Origins in Aesthetics” with Alexandra Bacalu (University of Bucharest), Michael Deckard (Lenoir-Rhyne University), and Alessandro Nannini (University of Bucharest)
April 19th – Panel “Pre-Established Harmonies in Leibniz” with Ohad Nachtomy (Technion, Israel Institute of Technology), Reed Winegar (Fordham University), Noam Hoffer (Bar-Ilan University), and Uri Eran (Technion, Israel Institute of Technology)
April 26th – Panel on Spinoza’s condemnation with Jonathan Israel (Princeton Institute for Advanced Study), Yitzhak Melamed (Johns Hopkins University), Steve Nadler (University of Wisconsin–Madison), Ronit Palache (University of Amsterdam), Piet Steenbakkers (Utrecht University)
May 3rd – Panel “Pierre-Sylvain Régis: At the Edge of Cartesianism” with Antonella Del Prete (Università della Tuscia), Tad Schmaltz (University of Michigan), Aaron Spink (Dartmouth College)
May 10th – Panel “On Trading Zones between Scholars and Craftsmen: Artisanal Practices and Mathematics in the Early Modern Period” with Angela Axworthy (Gerda Henkel Stiftung & MPIWG), Michael Friedman (Tel Aviv University), and Thomas Morel (MPIWG)
May 17th – Panel on Spinoza’s Compendium of Hebrew Grammar with Ioana Bujor (University of Bucharest), Massimo Gargiulo (Pontifical Gregorian University), Zeev Harvey (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Pina Totaro (ILIESI)
May 24th – Panel “Some Relations of the Mind in Malebranche” with Julie Walsh (Wellesley College), Eli Benjamin Israel (Temple University) and Hans Shenk (Temple University)
May 31st – Panel on Amo with Bill Eaton (Georgia Southern University), Dwight Lewis (University of Central Florida) and Justin Williams (Georgia Southern University)