The Making and Unmaking of Selfhood (online seminar)

The Making and Unmaking of Selfhood.

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Self-Cultivation, Between Philosophy and Religion, 4^th edition - Spring 2025.

Organized by Andrea Sangiacomo, Kimberley A. Fowler, Federico Minzoni (Faculty of Philosophy and Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society – University of Groningen).

This interfaculty seminar addresses the themes of selfhood, subject-formation, and subject-overcoming, considering the doctrinal embedding of self-cultivation practices as well as their performative unfolding. Which strategies do human beings develop to relate to themselves and to others? How do discourses and practices affect the way in which selfhood is conceptualized or transformed?

In this year’s series, we shall look at techniques of the self in different religious and philosophical contexts of Antiquity, with a particular focus on the Graeco-Roman world. The starting point of our conversation is the assumption that selfhood is not a given, but the contingent and open-ended expression of specific social, cultural and political conditions. Building on the refusal of any essentialist account of subjectivity, we aim to analyze the subject as a process, inquiring the crucial role played by practices and discourses in construing and deconstruing the self, both at the social and at the individual level.

Each meeting features two speakers who will present different perspectives on a common theme, laying the basis for an interdisciplinary exchange in the discussion that will follow.

Full program and registration: https://forms.gle/PZtzb7gEBhKvMBue6