In 2017 the NIA expanded it’s activities in the field of Philosophy. The Netherlands Institute hopes to contribute to the development of a Dutch-Greek academic network and to integrate the views from various perspectives through interdisciplinary approach.
Concepts of Crisis was the first lecture series, organized in cooperation with the Research Centre for Greek Philosophy of the Academy of Athens. The aim of the series was to contribute to the understanding of the way crisis situations influence the way we perceive the world and the way our societies transform.
In 2018 the Symposium on Eric Schliesser’s “Adam Smith. Systematic Philosopher and Public Thinker” was organized at the NIA on the 17th of April. The symposium was an initiative of Spyridon Tegos, Assistant Professor at the University of Crete on the occasion of publishing of Eric Schlisser’s book: “Adam Smith. Systematic Philosopher and Public thinker”. The Symposium aimed to highlight the pluralism and the interdisciplinary approach despite the conventional character of a hagiographic laudatory bibliography. Consequently, emphasis was placed on different aspects of the book, epistemology, history of science, economics, law, political theory, methodological issues in the human sciences and social sciences, always with reference to the work of Adam Smith. In this way, the iconoclastic dimensions of an original work were developed in a critical way through equally original rhetorical and conceptual attempts to evaluate it.
In 2019 the lecture series Ethics across borders, co-organised with Spyridon Tegos, Assistant Professor at the University of Crete, led to a discourse on bioethics and examined the interpretation of moral values beyond geographic, political or scientific boundaries and to foster contact and discussion between Greek and Dutch academics.
In 2021 a conference and two lectures under the general title Aspects of the Intellectual and Social History of the Greek Revolution were organized on the occasion of the bicentenary of the Greek War of Independence in cooperation with the Research Centre for Greek Philosophy of the Academy of Athens and Dr Nicholas Vrousalis from Erasmus University Rotterdam. During two online (Due to covid 19) lecture series we tried to highlight both external and internal aspects of the Greek Revolution and shed light on topics related to the way in which the Greek Revolution was imagined in Europe, the ways revolutions in America and France affected the movement for Greek independence, or of how the Greek Revolution should be reconsidered in relation to contemporary political theories of revolution and in the context of 21st century. During the hybrid conference that concluded the series and took place in the hall of the Academy of Athens we examined the importance of ancient Greek philosophy in the 18th century and more specifically on the prerevolutionary period. As we always try to maintain an interdisciplinary approach, Greek and Dutch scholars from different disciplines were invited for each session.
On October 3rd, 2023 the NIA hosted the International Symposium Nature and Human Nature in Ancient Greek Philosophy and its Reception. The Symposium was organized by the NIA (Emmy Makri) and Dr. Melina G. Mouzala, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy of the University of Patras. It focused on two key-themes, Nature and Human Nature, as well as their interrelation in Ancient Philosophy and its reception in Late Antiquity. It embraced issues of ancient philosophy and its reception that deal either with different conceptions and aspects of nature or the various approaches to human nature as well as the relationships that link/bridge the two realms and the differences that draw the limits between them. Cosmos and human being, nature and soul, nature and intellect, philosophy of nature and metaphysics, body and soul, body and intellect, manifestations of nature within the human nature, theories of ancient medicine which shed light on these relations, were inter alia some of the topics that stimulated the participants in the context of the general subject of this Symposium.
