This year, the 2021 West Coast Plato Workshop will be hosted by Northern Arizona University’s Department of Philosophy. The focus of this year’s Workshop is Plato’s Sophist, with topics on: the greatest Kinds and their interrelations; the definitions of sophistry; and the Stranger’s method of doing philosophy.

For workshop details and registration, head over to: www.nau.edu/cal/plato.

List of speakers and their topics:

  • Keynote: Mary Louise Gill (Brown University): “Images of the Philosopher in the Sophist”
  • Xin Liu (Nanjing University, China): “Koinōnia Megistōn Genōn: From the Exercise of One-Many in the Parmenides to the Exercise of Being-Nonbeing in the Sophist”
    • Comments by Benjamin Keoseyan (University of Arizona)
  • Pauline Sabrier (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany): “Change, Rest and Greatest Kinds in Plato’s Sophist”
    • Comments by Chris Buckels (Junípero Serra High School, San Mateo, California)
  • Colin C. Smith (University of Colorado Boulder): “Being as Communion: Sophist 248b2-8”
    • Comments by Timothy Clarke (University of California Berkeley)
  • Jan Szaif (University of California Davis): “Paideia and Philosophy in Plato’s Sophist”
    • Comments by Fiona Leigh (University College London, Great Britain)
  • Catherine McKeen (Bennington College): “The Private Sophist and the Public Sophist”
    • Comments by Fernando Muniz (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil)
  • Ryan M. Brown (Boston College): “A Proto-Account of the ‘Convertibility of the Transcendentals’ in Plato’s Sophist”
    • Comments by Emily Perry (University of California Berkeley)
  • Peter Moore (Xavier University): “Sophistry as Mimicry of True Arts: Why There is a Sophist but Not a Sophistic Technitēs”
    • Comments by Cristina Ionescu (Catholic University of America)
  • Anna Pavani (University of Cologne and Brown University): “The Value Free Method that Values Names”
    • Comments by Evan Rodriguez (Idaho State University)
  • Christopher Izgin (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany): “Are Aristotle’s Definitions of Truth and Falsity Platonic? Aristotle’s Metaphysics Γ.7, 1011b26–7, and Plato’s Sophist, 240e10–241a1”
    • Comments by Mark Wheeler (University of California San Diego)