Cosmology and Argument in Ancient Philosophy 

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The conference will take place at K. Donelaitis Room, Faculty of Philology, Universiteto st. 5. The map of the Faculty >

The aim of this conference is to gather a select group of scholars working on ancient cosmology, logic, epistemology, and metaphysics to explore the interaction between ancient cosmologies and arguments from the Presocratics to Late Antiquity, how different modes of argumentation interact in a single author or a group of authors, and whether there was, if any, an evolution of these themes in the history of ancient Greek philosophy. 

The questions we are particularly interested in exploring include (but are not limited to):  

  • The (dis)continuity between poetic and philosophic cosmologies in argumentative strategies;  
  • The importance of cosmological discourse for developing argumentative patterns and logic;  
  • The role of argumentation for identifying the principles of cosmology;  
  • The relation between dialectic, demonstration, and cosmology; 
  • Unconventional ways of arguing (e.g. metaphor, analogy) in cosmology;  
  • The truth status of cosmological account;  
  • The distinctiveness of cosmological argument.

This conference is part of Dr. Luca Gili's project "Redefining our understanding of being and language. Resetting our understanding of being and language. Dialectical games and the meanings of being in Antiquity." (NR. 10-036-T-0011). The aim of the project is to fill a gap in the scholarly literature by broadly exploring dialectical practices in the context of metaphysical debates from Parmenides to Aristotle. Objectives:

  1. to investigate the linguistic use of the verb "to be" in the 5th century BC, using modern technology to determine whether there is evidence of existential use of the verb;
  2. to explore the possibility of a new reading of Parmenides 8, where the qualification of "to be" is not related to an implicit subject or predicate, but rather to the connection between subject and predicate, thus developing a new interpretation of Parmenides' ontology;
  3. to analyse Plato's dialogues on "being" in the light of contemporary debates on language and the errors in the use of the verb "to be";
  4. to explore Aristotle's discovery of the "categories" in the context of dialectical debates on "being";
  5. to organise a seminar on the medieval understanding of "being" in the context of the analysis of dialectical copula.

The project is funded by the Economic Recovery and Resilience Plan "New Generation Lithuania".