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[PDRHP] Daniel Kapust & Tae-Yeoun Keum

December 5, 2023 @ 16:00 - 18:00

POPULISM, DEMAGOGUERY AND RHETORIC IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
(PDRHP)
SEMINAR SERIES

PDRHP is a research project dedicated to the study of populism, demagoguery, and rhetoric in historical perspective. The project is funded by the Foundation of Science and Technology (Portugal) and based at the Centre for Ethics, Politics and Society of UMinho under the coordination of Giuseppe Ballacci.
PDRHP hosts a regular seminar series, in an online or hybrid format. The first session of the seminar will be held on:

December 5th, Tuesday, 4 PM (Lisbon time)
(11 AM New York, 1 PM Brasilia,  4 PM London, 5 PM Paris. For other locations click here)

The session will feature two speakers:

Daniel Kapust (UW-Madison)

“Demagoguery, Populism, and Political Culture in Cooper’s The American Democrat”

This paper explores James Fennimore Cooper’s account of demagoguery and its relationship to flattery in The American Democrat. Putting Cooper into conversation with earlier works on the relationship between democracy and flattery, including Edward Wortley Montagu’s Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republicks and Plutarch’s How to Tell A Flatterer from a Friend, it argues that Cooper’s account of the demagogue both draws from a long tradition of linking demagoguery to democracy, and deploys the trope of the flatterer to develop an account of the true friend of democracy—and thus the opponent of the dangerous demagogue.

 

Tae-Yeoun Keum (UC Santa Barbara)

“Between Epistemology and Politics: Voltaire’s Democratic Socrates”

The paper offers a novel reading of Voltaire’s Socrate (1759) that situates it in the context of the philosophical movements that contributed to the construction of “the Enlightenment Plato.” It sees Voltaire’s play as an act of canon formation in the modern reception of Plato and Socrates. On this account, the play can be understood as the extension of a broader effort to navigate an interpretive crossroads that emerged in the Enlightenment, as eighteenth-century readers of Plato sought to negotiate between two dominant traditions in Platonic reception: Neoplatonism and Academic Skepticism. What was essentially an epistemological compromise between these two ancient traditions, however, gains a political aspect in Voltaire’s play. The resulting portrait is one that aligns Socrates with a recognisably modern vision of democracy, conceived in contradistinction to the pathologies that were a commonplace in traditional critiques of democracy.


HOW TO PARTICIPATE?

Those interested in attending the seminar are invited to follow the event on this Zoom link.

The seminars are open to everyone.

For inquiries, contact gballacci@elach.uminho.pt or thomas.zicmandebarros@sciencespo.fr

Details

Date:
December 5, 2023
Time:
16:00 - 18:00
Event Categories:
,
Website:
https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/95076861294?pwd=L0lSU1VMZk5rcmM2dmdRNUtKYVllQT09

Venue

Online

Organizer

CEPS
Email
ceps@elach.uminho.pt