Bleistein, Marco
Congratulations on passing the colloquium on 13 March 2020
Dissertation topic:
"'Alia ex alia nexa. Structuralist investigations into Cicero's philosophising."
Doctoral scholarships
- of the Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, 01/01/2015 - 30/06/2015.
- of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, 01/07/2015 - 30/06/2017
Contact address at the University of Würzburg:
Institute of Classical Philology at the University of Würzburg
Residenzplatz 2, Südflügel
97070 Würzburg
First supervisor: Prof. Dr Christian Tornau
Second supervisors:
Prof. Dr Dr h.c. Michael Erler
Class in the Graduate School: "Philosophy, Languages, Arts"
Doctorate in the Graduate School from WS 2014/2015.
Abstract:
The aim of the dissertation is to identify a pattern of thought constitutive for Cicero in his philosophical writings and to utilise the findings for an interpretation of Cicero's understanding of philosophy and the world. This is done using an innovative methodology that can be categorised as literary-theoretical structuralism.
Structuralist theory serves as a starting point, and its specialised terms are used to shed new light on a well-known classic. While the intention of Cicero's writings has often been the starting point for further analyses, this work is based on the structure of the texts in which Cicero's antithetical thinking manifests itself. Conceptual pairs of opposites, so-called dichotomies or binary oppositions, can be identified and classified in the text. Interestingly, however, the semantic-structural juxtaposition in the philosophical writings is always only the starting point of a pattern of thought that progresses from analysis, separation, to synthesis, unification (of what is separate but actually belongs together) - analogous to the progression in the text. According to the thesis, this can be demonstrated in all areas of Ciceronian philosophising, in cultural philosophy as well as in epistemology, in the rhetorical treatise De oratore as well as in the philosophical late work Tusculanae Disputationes.
The dissertation to be written will not only work on textual motifs on a small scale, but also claim to describe and apply the abstract pattern of thought 'analysis-synthesis' as a global 'interpretative foil' for Cicero's philosophising.
