The International Conference, Image and Imagination in Plato, was held online by Zoom on November 27–29, 2020. This conference was the 3rd Asia regional meeting of the IPS. The 1st Asia regional meeting was held in Yokohama with the theme “Plato and Rhetoric” in 2014, and the 2nd meeting was held in Taiwan with the theme “Forming the Soul: Plato and His Opponents” in 2018. The regional IPS meetings in Asia have played the role of providing a platform for international cooperation in Platonic studies, among Asian scholars on the one hand and between Asian scholars and non-Asian scholars on the other. Since we believe that works by Asian scholars are rather underrepresented, we hope that there will be more regional IPS meetings in Asia in the future as well.  

When the pandemic broke out, we were at an early stage of the preparation of the conference. Not being able to predict how the situation would evolve, we had to make a series of difficult decisions. With a lot of discussion, we decided that the conference would go fully online. One advantage of it was that more young scholars could participate in the conference without financial worries about flight and accommodation. We received more submissions of abstracts than we had expected. In addition to the 3 invited speakers, Mary-Louise Gill, Noburu Notomi, and Dominic O’Meara, we selected 30 speakers by blind review out of more than 60 submissions. Overall, we had 135 registered participants from around the globe.

With 3 continents and 8 different time zones from which the participants joined online, we were forced to divide the sessions into two groups. The “Morning Sessions” were roughly for the participants from Asia and Europe, and the “Evening Sessions” for the participants from Asia and America. Considering the fact that it was practically impossible that every participant could attend online sessions simultaneously, we decided to video-record the sessions (with the agreements of the presenters) and make them available immediately to the registered participants during the conference. We also had a discussion board on the conference website, where the participants could leave questions and comments and the presenters could respond to them. 

For many of the participants, an online international conference was a new experience. Although it was certainly regrettable that the participants could not meet each other in person, the new experience had some positive aspects as well. In a way, the theme of the conference “Image and Imagination in Plato” was quite fitting to the present situation. As Dominic O’Meara described nicely in the final session of the conference, we were like high-tech prisoners stuck behind computer screens, watching flickering “shadows” of people and listening to echoes of their voices. But we learned at the same time, both from the discussion of Plato’s views and from our own experience, that images could play positive roles as well. After all, the conference could not be held without the aid of such high-tech images.

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The complete list of the presentations is attached below. The recorded sessions (that we have the agreements from the presenters to make available to non-participants as well) can be watched from the conference YouTube channel, 2020 IPS Asia. 

In addition to the endorsement by the IPS as a regional meeting, the conference was supported by the Institute of Greco-Roman Studies at Seoul National University, the Korean Society of Greco-Roman Studies, and the Korean Society for Western Classical Philosophy. The Organizing Committee, Dae-Ho Cho (Yonsei University, South Korea), Hua-kuei Ho (Chinese Culture University, Taiwan), Sung-Hoon Kang (Seoul National University, South Korea), Satoshi Ogihara (Tohoku University, Japan), and Euree Song (Kyung Hee University, South Korea) appreciate their kind supports.

Plenary Session 1 

  • Mary-Louise Gill: “Image of the Philosopher in the Prologue of Plato’s Sophist”.

Plenary Session 2

  • Noburu Notomi: “Images and Imagination in Plato’s Republic and Sophist”.

Plenary Session 3 

  • Dominic J. O’Meara: “The Architectural Image of the World in Plato’s Timaeus”.

Session 1A

  • Christoph Poetsch: “Body, Soul, Form – and Image: The Relevance of the Image for a Detailed Understanding of Plato’s Ontology”.
  • Soojin Kim: “Image as a Milestone for Truth”.

Session 1B

  • Martina Di Stefano: “A Shellfish on the Path of Truth: Funny Images and Philosophical Imagination in Plato’s Dialogues”.
  • Karine Tordo Rombaut: “The Relevance of Interpreting Plato’s Criticism of Image-Making as Self-Directed”.

Session 2A

  • Zdenek Lenner: “Eros and Anteros in the Phaedrus: Rivalry, Reciprocity, or Reflection?”
  • Yoon Cheol Lee: “Diotima’s Use of Images”.

Session 2B

  • Xanthippe Bourloyanni: “Phantasia and Images in the Sophist”.
  • Hoseup Rhee: “True logos as eikōn of Forms”.

Session 3A

  • Doina Cristina Ionescu: “Likenesses and Appearances in Plato’s Sophist”.
  • William Altman: “To Which Branch of εἰδωλοποιική Do the Eleatic Stranger’s Own εἰκόνες Belong?”

Session 3B

  • Christopher Buckels: “Images in Republic V-VII in Light of the Timaeus”.
  • Xi Ji: “Image and Knowledge in Plato’s Timaeus”.

Session 4A

  • Cynthia Liu: “Re-evaluating Images in Plato’s Philosophy through His Use of Mystery Language”.
  • I-Kai Jeng: “Speeches as Images of Being: Phaedo 99d4-100a8 and Sophist 254d4-256e7”.

Session 4B

  • Carlotta Capuccino: “Speaking through Images: A Platonic Model of Analogical Argumentation”.
  • Serena Gregorio: “Is Plato’s Take on phantasia of Any Interest for Contemporary Accounts of Imagination?”

Session 5A

  • Nickolas Pappas: “Sightings of the Soul”.
  • Ji-Yun Byun: “Two Kinds of Truth and Falsehood in Plato’s Sophist”.
  • Hua-kuei Ho: “Mimetic Images in Plato’s Cratylus”.

Session 5B

  • Jan Szaif: “The Role of Mental Images in Anticipatory Pleasures (Philebus 38a-40e)”.
  • Jong Hwan Lee: “The Role of Imagination in Anticipatory Pleasure”.
  • David Xavier Levystone: “Plato’s Dreams: Oneiric Images, Divination and Knowledge”.

Session 6A

  • Jenny Strandberg: “Faking it Right: The King as an Informed Imitator of the True Statesman”.
  • Yuji Kurihara: “Two Images in Plato’s Statesman 277a-d”.

Session 6B 

  • Irene Han: “La Nouvelle Vague: The Liquid Feminine in Plato’s Republic”.
  • Avshalom M. Schwartz: “Imagination and Falsehoods in Plato’s Political Thought”.

Session 7A

  • Samuel Meister: “The Ontology of Images in Plato’s Timaeus”.
  • Thomas Seissl: “On What Time Is Not: Image and Number in Plato’s Account of Time in the Timaeus”.

Session 7B

  • Yu Jung Sun: “False Pleasure in the Philebus: Can Soul Be Prisoned in a World Purely Made of Images without any Contact with Reality?”
  • Iouseok Kim: “Images as the Means of Governing the Appetite: The Role of the Liver in Plato’s Timaeus (71a-d)”.