This workshop arises from the intersection of two University of Edinburgh research projects, Honour in Classical Greece (2018–23, ERC) and Class Struggle in Ancient Greek Democracy (2024–9, ERC/UKRI) and will be centred on two recent outputs of the former project, Kleanthis Mantzouranis’ Honour in Aristotle’s Ethics (Edinburgh University Press 2026) and Mirko Canevaro’s L’Atene dei diritti (Laterza 2026).
Together with the many other publications of the Honour project, these books establish one of the overarching theses of the Class project: that the notion of honour, both in Classics and in other disciplines, has been narrowly and reductively mischaracterized as one value among many, rooted in particular in self-assertive forms of competition for prestige and esteem, chiefly among men and largely among the upper classes.
The Edinburgh projects argue instead that ancient Greek timê (‘honour’, but fundamentally ‘value’) has rather to be seen in the context of the fundamentally social and intersubjective character of selfhood and identity, as emphasized in developmental psychology, the sociology of Bourdieu and Goffman, and a range of contemporary philosophical approaches to rights, respect, and interpersonal recognition.
The workshop will feature presentations by Mirko Canevaro and Kleanthis Mantzouranis, responses by Pia Campeggiani, Marta Jiménez, Werner Rieß, and Nadia Urbinati, and an overview of the Honour project and its premisses by Douglas Cairns.
Participants
- Douglas Cairns, Classics, University of Edinburgh and University of Hamburg Fellow 2026-27
- Pia Campeggiani, Philosophy, University of Bologna
- Mirko Canevaro, Classics, University of Edinburgh
- Marta Jiménez, Philosophy, Complutense University Madrid
- Kleanthis Mantzouranis, Classics, University of Edinburgh
- Werner Rieß, Ancient History, University of Hamburg
- Nadia Urbinati, Political Science, Columbia University
This workshop is intended only for invited experts.