On October 16th 2025, SCAPh will organize an international workshop on “PLATO & LAWS”. The event is organized to explore Plato’s conceptualization of law, both as the chosen title of his last work, the Laws, in all of its complexity and richness, and as a distinct concept, developed throughout the dialogues. The event will be framed around the presentation of papers by three international guests, Nicholas D. Smith, Ikko Tanaka and Irina Deretić, and by two Swedish researchers, Hans Ruin and Charlotta Weigelt. For a detailed program, see below. The event is free and open to all.
Program (16th of October 2025) [Preliminary]
1000-1100 Nicholas D. Smith & Irina Deretić: “How to Reason with a Distraught Friend: Socrates, Crito, and the Personified Laws”.
1100-1200 Hans Ruin: “Sacrifice and the Constitution of Community in the Laws”
1200-1300 Lunch
1300-1400 Ikko Tanaka: “Laws as Soul’s Activity in Plato’s Laws”
1400-1500 Charlotta Weigelt: “The Rule of law as a Democratic Predicament”
Venue: [TBA], Södertörns University
Nicholas D. Smith is James F. Miller Professor of Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Lewis & Clark College. He has written and edited many books on ancient Greek philosophy and contemporary epistemology, including Plato’s Socrates (with T.C. Brickhouse, OUP 1994), Socratic Moral Psychology (with T. C. Brickhouse, CUP 2010) and Socrates on Self-Improvement (CUP 2023).
Ikko Tanaka is an associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at J. F. Oberlin University in Machida, Japan. He earned his Ph.D. from Kyoto University in March 2014. His academic publications encompass ancient philosophy, digital humanities, and higher education studies.
Irina Deretić is professor of philosophy at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, where she also serves as head of the project “The History of Serbian Philosophy”. Deretić’s research focuses on ancient Greek philosophy, particularly Plato’s metaphysics, philosophy of language, and ethics.
Hans Ruin is Professor of Philosophy at Södertörn University. He is the translator of the fragments of Heraclitus to Swedish and his most recent book, Being with the Dead: Burial, Ancestral Politics, and the Roots of Historical Consciousness (Stanford UP, 2018), won the ICHTH & INTH Bookprize in 2022.
Charlotta Weigelt is Professor of Philosophy at Södertörn University. She is the translator of Aristotle’s Physics and the Nicomachean Ethics into Swedish, with an ongoing translation of the Metaphysics. She is the author of numerous articles and books on Plato and ancient Greek philosophy, including Socrates: The Philosopher’s Many Faces (Faethon 2023).
For more information or if you have any questions, please send an email to olof.pettersson@filosofi.uu.se