Spring Quarter Life Science Symposium:
Bodies Changed to Light
Join three of Stanford's most imaginative and articulate humanists for a poetic, philosophical, and historic reflection on this universal experience: the end of life. The conversation will range widely from Homer to Jonah and the whale, Moby Dick, and the desaparecidos of Argentina. We will examine the two most consequential deaths in the ancient world, those of Socrates and Yeshua (also known as Jesus). We will ask: when does life "end," with the cessation of bodily functions or with the ritual disposal of the
body? And what happens when there is no body?
We will explore the various ways that bodies are resurrected imaginatively and idealized after death through photographs and memories. And we will discuss various beliefs about immortality such as Lucretius's assurance that we persist in the molecules of our body dispersed into nature, or the medieval Christian doctrine of the "glorified body" in which we all get our bodies back after death, but improved: no wrinkles, no gray hair, no fat, and deteriorated or missing parts restored — the body we all wanted in life.
Robert Pogue Harrison
Rosina Pierotti Professor in Italian Literature
Author of The Body of Beatrice, Forests, and The Dominion of the Dead
Andrea Nightingale
Professor of Classics and Comparative Literature
Author of Genres in Dialogue: Plato and the Construct of Philosophy and Spectacles of Truth in Classical Greek Philosophy
Thomas Sheehan
Professor of Religious Studies
Author of Becoming Heidegger and The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God Became Christianity
Saturday, April 15
1:00 - 4:00 PM (with a break for coffee and cookies)
Geology Corner, Building 320, Room 105
Free