General Assembly – University of Brasilia, July 7th, 4:30pm – 6:30pm

Meeting called to order at 4.30 by the President of the IPS, Professor Gabriele Cornelli

  1. In memoriam

Prof. Cornelli mentioned the death, during the last 3 years, of  “three of our best guys” in the Plato community:  S. Scolnicov, G. Reale and A. Havlíček. The Brazilian Organizing Committee decided to dedicate the Ph. D. sessions of the XIth Symposium to S. Scolnicov, a former President of the IPS, who was born in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

  1. Triennial Report

There has been an increase in new memberships of around 27%. We now have 213 full members (a 13% increase) and 57 associate members (a 90% increase); 144 of these are new members, so we are flourishing, and at the same time a little younger in average age than we were. Probably this first meeting in the Southern hemisphere, and the fact that we decided to double the number of PhD sessions, had something to do with this.

A new Website has been put in place. The President wished to thank Oliver Renaut for all the work he had done on the IPS website, and especially for his improvement of the IPS membership online facilities.

During the last three years we decided to make a great effort to ensure that our Plato Journal met the highest available standards for academic journals. We now have our own Publisher, Coimbra University Press, which provides us with a platform for submissions and with editing facilities, and at the same time allows us to index our Journal and to register with D.O.I. and similar impact factor metadata. The President would like to thank all the editors who have been working on the Journal over the last three years: Francisco Gonzales, Irmgard Männlein-Robert, Michael Erler and especially the tireless Angela Ulacco.

We also decided to create the Conrado Eggers Lan Prize, named after one of our founding fathers, who happened also to be a distinguished Latin-American scholar in our field.

We decided as well to create a simple but we hope very helpful mailing list: platosociety@googlegroups.com. The President invites everyone to use the list to share information on meetings, publications, and anything else which could be relevant to our Society.

Finally, the Executive Committee made the decision to use a ‘double blind’ policy for the selection of papers for this XI Symposium Platonicum, and decided to keep the same course of action for the next one.

  1. Financial Report

A full financial Report will be given, as usual, after the closing of the XI Symposium and the triennium.

  1. Editorial Committee Report

The IPS Editorial Committee decided to confirm Franco Ferrari as Head of the EC for the next triennium. The Committee also encourages the submission of doctoral dissertations. However, Beatriz Bossi, from the Editorial Committee, recommended that the doctoral dissertation format should be translated into the format needed for publishable books.

The Editorial Committee is committed to continuing to improve the quality of the Plato Journal.

The President is delighted to announce, on behalf of Professor Franco Ferrari, head of the IPS Editorial Committee, that we have a winner for the Conrado Eggers Lan Prize for outstanding dissertations in the field of Platonic studies. Evaluation of the 15 submissions was carried out by an ad hoc Committee, chosen by the Editorial Committee and coordinated by Franco Ferrari. The members of the Committee are Mario Vegetti, Luc Brisson, Francesco Fronterotta, Lesley Brown, Alonso Tordesillas, Francisco Gonzalez, Francisco Lisi, Marcelo Boeri, Irmgard Männlein-Robert and Mauro Tulli. The winning dissertation is Sergio di Girolamo’s Il tutto, l’intero e l’uno: alcuni temi del confronto platonico con Parmenide nel Parmenide, nel Teeteto e nel Sofista. His tutor was Aldo Brancacci, Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”. The Committee has also decided to recognize the merit of two more candidates: Matthew Duncombe (second) and Tosca Lynch (third). The President would like to express the deep gratitude of the IPS to the evaluators and to all the candidates. The opportunity for publication of the dissertation as a book in one of our series of IPS Publications has been offered to the prize-winner, and our Editorial Committee is already taking care of the matter.

  1. Executive-Committee Decisions
  1. Triennial Fee for 2016-19: The Executive Committee proposes to keep the same fee for the next triennium. The currency used will be the Euro only: 90 Euros for Full Membership and 35 Euros for Associate Membership.
  2. Next Midterm Meeting: The next midterm of the IPS will take place in Saint Petersburg, Russia, possibly in September, 2018, and it will be organized by Professor Roman Svetlov.
  3. Regional Meetings Guidelines: Professor Macé read revised Guidelines for submitting proposals for Regional Meetings, emphasizing scientific aims and respect of equal opportunities, to be published on the IPS website. Professor Hua-kuei Ho and Professor Yuji Kurihara announced that they would organize an international conference in Taiwan in the near future, expressing their fervent hope that it would be endorsed as a regional meeting by the IPS. The next Mediterranean section meeting will be organized in Italy by Professors Ferrari and Fronterotta. Professor Tordesillas mentioned that the topic would be Plato and the Sciences.
  1. Selected Papers from the XI Symposium Platonicum

As usual, a call for final papers will be sent to all participants as soon as possible. The Editorial Committee will be in charge of evaluation and selection.

  1. Election for Presidency 2019-22

Prof. Edward Halper’s candidacy was supported by Prof. Notomi, who emphasized that a Symposium Platonicum held in the USA has been long-awaited. The candidacy was approved. The XIII Symposium Platonicum will be held in Athens, Georgia, USA.

  1. Election of Representatives for Europe and for North America 2019-2022

Both Verity Harte (Yale University, New Haven) and Mary McCabe (King’s College, London) are leaving their positions as Regional Representatives. Prof. Barbara Sattler (University of St. Andrews, Scotland, UK) and Prof. Debra Nails (Michigan State University, USA) presented their candidacies. Both proposals were approved.

  1. Honorary Memberships

The Executive Committee proposed that Honorary Membership of the Society be offered to the four XI Symposium Platonicum keynote speakers. Due to some disagreement on the concept of honorary membership, discussion on the matter was postponed.

  1. Proposal of an amendment to the Statutes

The General Assembly approved an Executive Committee proposal to change item 3e of IPS Statutes from Promotion of publication of books and series on Plato to Promotion of publication of books, the IPS series and the Plato journal.

  1. Themes for the next two Symposia

The theme for the upcoming Paris Symposium was discussed extensively. The officers of the next Presidency proposed that it be the Parmenides instead of the Sophist as approved in Pisa, and the Sophist has been proposed as the theme of the XIII Symposium, to be hosted in Athens, USA. A large majority of the members of the Assembly accepted the next Presidents’ proposal, and the Sophist will be theme of the XIII Symposium Platonicum.

  1. Vice-presidency

The next presidents announce the nomination of Verity Harte (Yale University, New Haven), as vice-president, with a special mission to promote the equal opportunities policy of the society in all events organized and supported by the IPS.