One of the most eminent and influential historians of political thought of our time, Professor Quentin Skinner will deliver three lectures on May 13, 15 and 16 at Academia Sinica and National Taiwan University. The lectures are entitled “Truth and the Historian”, “Genealogy of Liberty”, and “A Genealogy of the State.” Members of the media and the public are welcome to attend the lectures.
In the first lecture entitled “Truth and the Historian”, Prof. Skinner will argue that the texts studied by historians are best approached not as expressions of belief but as interventions in the intellectual debates of their time. He purports that “we ought not to raise questions about the truth or falsity of the beliefs that we study as historians, but only about the rationality of the time”. In the second lecture entitled “Genealogy of Liberty”, Prof. Skinner will present a deep debate on the concepts of freedom in traditional political thought. He will point out that besides “positive freedom” and “negative freedom”, there is a “third concept of liberty”. The lecture concludes by noting some of the implications of this view of freedom for the proper conduct of democratic government. In the third lecture “Genealogy of the State”, Prof. Skinner will discuss the shaping of the modern idea of the state by political thoughts of popular sovereignty, royal absolutism, and the “fictional theory” of Thomas Hobbes via masterful historiography. Based on the genealogical examinations of vital political ideas like “liberty” and “state”, Prof. Skinner will present the political institutions and civic liberties in modern democratic society from a new perspective. The content of these three lectures will later be translated and published by Academia Sinica.
Prof. Skinner is currently Barber Beaumont Professor of the Humanities at Queen Mary, University of London. Between 1996 and 2008, he was elected as Regius Professor of Modern History, a professorship founded in 1724 by George I. His research interests include the intellectual history of early-modern Europe and the political thought in the seventeenth-century, with a particular focus on the work of Thomas Hobbes. Prof. Skinner is the author or co-author of over 20 books. His works have been very widely translated and his “Foundations of Modern Political Thought” was named by Times Literary Supplement in 1996 as one of the 100 most influential books published since the Second World War.
Prof. Skinner’s scholarship has won him many awards, including the Wolfson History Prize (1979), the Balzan Prize (2006) and the Bielefelder Wissenschaftspreis (2008). He has been the recipient of honorary degrees from 12 leading Universities, including, Chicago, Harvard and Oxford. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Historical Society and the Academia Europea, and is a foreign member of the national academies of Austria, Ireland, Italy and the United States.
For more information please visit:
http://iao.sinica.edu.tw/ASL/download/Skinner%20c.%20v.-1.pdf
Online Registration: https://db1x.sinica.edu.tw/ASL/register.php?no=45
(Leaflets will be distributed only to participants who register.)
Lecture A
Topic: Truth and the Historian
Time: 15:00-16:30, May 13, 2013 (Monday)
Venue: Conference Room 2, 3F, Humanities and Social Sciences Building, Academia Sinica, No.128, Sec.2, Academia Road, Nangang District, Taipei City
Lecture B
Topic: A Genealogy of Liberty
Time: 15:00-16:30, May 15, 2013 (Wednesday)
Venue: Conference Room 2, 3F, Humanities and Social Sciences Building, Academia Sinica, No.128, Sec.2, Academia Road, Nangang District, Taipei City
Lecture C
Topic: A Genealogy of the State
Time: May 16, 2013 (Thursday) 15:00-16:30
Venue: International Conference Hall, College of Social Science, National Taiwan
University
Media Contacts:
Mr. Huan-tang Chang, International Affairs Office, Central Office of Administration, Academia Sinicachanght@gate.sinica.edu.tw (Tel) +886-2-2789-9895 (Fax) +886-2-2783-4496
Ms. Pearl Huang, Office of Public Affairs, Central Office of Administration,
Academia Sinica pearlhuang@gate.sinica.edu.tw
(Tel) +886-2-2789-8820 (M) 0912-831-188
Ms. Mei-Hui Lin, Office of Public Affairs, Central Office of Administration,
Academia Sinica mhlin313@gate.sinica.edu.tw
(Tel) +886-2-2789-8821 (M) 0921-845-234
Release Unit : Office of the Director General
最後更新：中華民國102年05月13日
Links: http://www.sinica.edu.tw/manage/gatenews/showsingle.php?_op=?rid:5844%26isEnglish:1