Violence, Power, and the Word. International Hermeneutics Symposium 2026
Violence, Power, and the Word
International Hermeneutics Symposium 2026
Date: 24 – 26 June 2026
Venue: Senaatszaal (Comeniuslaan 2, Nijmegen), Radboud University
Wednesday, 24 June
14:00 – 14:15 Opening and Welcome by Bert van den Brink, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies
14:15 – 15:15 Dennis J. Schmidt (Western Sydney University), The Polemarchus Problem
15:30 – 16:30 Antonio Cimino (Radboud University), Violence, Power, and the Word in Homer
16:45 – 17:45 Anna Novokhatko (University of Trento), The Rhetoric of Blood and Laughter: Conflict, Control, and Ancient Greek Stage
Thursday, 25 June
10:00 – 11:00 Gaetano Chiurazzi (University of Turin), Just Violence, or the Symbolic Refraction of Power
11:15 – 12:15 Jennifer Mensch (Western Sydney University), The People Shall Judge: Publicity and Censorship in the Prussian Enlightenment.
12:15 – 13:30 Lunch Break
13:30 – 14:30 Carolyn Culbertson (Florida Gulf Coast University), The Datafication of Language as Alienated Speech: Hermeneutics in the Age of Large Language Models
14:45 – 15:45 Hans Lindahl (University of Tilburg & Queen Mary University of London), Dialectic and Revolution: Confronting Kelsen and Gadamer on Legal Interpretation
16:00 – 17:00 Sanem Yazıcıoğlu (Istanbul University), Violence or the End of all Possibilities
17:15 – 18:15 Theodore George (Texas A&M University), Conversation in Dark Times: From Gadamer to Arendt and Brecht on the Politics of the Guileless Word
Friday, 26 June
10:00 – 11:00 Elena Romagnoli (University of Pisa), Circumcision, Schibboleth, and Breathturn: Gadamer and Derrida on the Poetic Word
11:15 – 12:15 Hans Ruin (Södertörn University, Stockholm), On the Hermeneutics of Sacred Texts: Scholem, Rosenzweig and the Problem of Tradition
12:15 – 13:30 Lunch Break
13:30 – 14:30 Jessica Frazier (Oxford University), Dialogue, Political Principles, and the Difficulty of Democracy
14:45 – 15:45 Gert-Jan van der Heiden (Radboud University), The Language of Metaphysics Revisited
16:00 – 17:00 James Risser (Seattle University), Overcoming the Naturalness of Violence in the Task of Understanding
This symposium is financially supported by Radboud University and its Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies and is organized in cooperation with the Center for Contemporary European Philosophy.
Attendance is free, but if you would like to participate, please send an email to gert-jan.vanderheiden@ru.nl (so enough coffee will be available).