Summer Session 2008: Key Note speaker Quentin Skinner

The Nordic Summer University has just received a positive reply from the distinguished professor in modern history, Quentin Skinner, University of Cambridge. Skinner has been very influential in various studies such as history of Philsophy, rhetorics, textual studies, hermeneutics, political philosophy and the history of ideas.

I had the pleasure of hearing professor Skinner at the University of Oslo recently, where he gave two talks on political concepts of of freedom. His favoured political theory is (a neo-Roman) republicanism, and a republican notion of freedom, which to him is characterized by the abscence of arbitrary power as a social precence. His thought goes quite well together with Castoriadis's thought, and the two thinkers may open up for some new insights.

The Castoriadis network group would do well to arrange their summer session of 2008 with talks and papers that could interest professor Skinner.

Ingerid S.