Liberty: An Ancient Idea for the Contemporary World, University College London, June 5–6, 2015
The event aims to investigate the ancient understandings of liberty in the interconnected societies of the Near East (including ancient Israel), Greece, and Rome as well as to establish the potential impact of the ancient intellectual world on contemporary political debates. It shall focus on the idea of liberty articulated in its constitutional, individual, and religious dimensions and aims to unearth rival understandings of this concept and to explore key episodes in the history of liberty in these ancient societies. Our objective is to bring together scholars of the ancient world, anthropologists, political theorists, philosophers, and legal scholars to formulate the first synchronic account of the ancient notions of liberty, from the Ancient Near East (including ancient Israel) to Greece, Rome, and Byzantium in order to identify rival intellectual understandings of this value and bring intellectual clarity to the conceptualisations of liberty in contemporary political discourse.