Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Faculty of Language, Literature and Humanities - Alexander von Humboldt Professorship

CV and publications

Roberto Lo Presti (* 1978) was born in Palermo, Italy, and received his secondary education at the Liceo Garibaldi, Palermo.

He graduated in Classics from the University of Palermo in 2004, where he received his doctorate in Classical Philology in 2008. During his doctoral studies, he was visiting student at the Universities of Newcastle and Paris IV-Sorbonne, and at the Fondation Hardt, Geneva.

He subsequently held a Post-doc Research Fellowship at the University of Palermo (2008–10) and various visiting scholarships from the Scaliger Institute of Leiden University Library (2008), the Universities of Paris IV-Sorbonne and Lausanne (2009), the department of Classics of Leiden University and the Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences of Utrecht University (2010).

As of 2009 he is Foreign Member of the ‘Unité de recherche Médecine grecque’ du CNRS, Paris.

He was member of the international research project ANR “Philomed: La refonte de l’homme. Découvertes médicales et philosophies de la nature humaine coordinated by S. Buchenau, C. Crignon, A.-L. Rey (2009-2013).

As of September 2010 he is Lecturer (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at the Institut für Klassische Philologie of the Humboldt University, in Berlin, and research associate within Prof. Philip van der Eijk’s research programme “Medicine of the Mind, Philosophy of the Body”.

From March 2012 to March 2016 he was Coordinator of the PhD Programme „History of Ancient Science“ (HistAS) of the „Berlin Graduate School of Ancient Studies“ (BerGSAS).

In February 2018 he got the Habilitation (venia legendi in Klassische Philologie und Antike Philosophie). Title of the Habilitationsschrift: „Wo der Philosoph aufhört, fängt der Arzt an“: Aufsätze über die Medizin und Philosophie und über ihr Verhältnis in der Antike und der Frühneuzeit“. Title of the Habilitationsvortrag: „Wahrheitsdarstellung, Wahrheitssuche und die Aufspaltung des Subjektes im nachklassischen (inneren) Dialog: Boethius, Augustinus, Petrarca“

 

Research Interests

  • Greek medical and biological thought, esp. the Hippocratic writings, Pre-Socratic physiologiai, Aristotle and Galen; the communication and dissemination of medical ideas in antiquity; the reception of the Hippocratic writings and the representations of Hippocrates in Modern and Contemporary Age
  • Ancient Philosophy, especially Pre-Socratic thinkers, Aristotelian biological and psychological works; Plato and Neoplatonism; Augustine; Medieval and Renaissance Aristotelianism; philosophy of mind; theories of cognition and sense perception
  • Renaissance Anatomy
  • History of Modern Philosophy and of medical and biological ideas, especially Cartesianism, Bacon, Iatromechanism, Vitalism and the Paris Medical School in the 18th century, Cabanis and the Idéologues, Bichat, Laënnec and the birth of anatomo-pathology, Bernard and the birth of the médecine éxpérimentale. – Contemporary Philosophy and Biology, especially philosophy of mind, philosophy of medicine and bioethics, philosophy of biology, history of modern and contemporary biology, neurophysiology and biological theories of cognition and sense perception

 

Grants and Awards

  • Walter De Gruyter-Award of the Berlin-Brandenburgische-Akademie der Wissenschaften (November 2019)
  • Visitorship at the Institut of Advanced Study Princeton (January–April 2011; declined)
  • Descartes Visiting Fellowhip (Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences, Utrecht University, April–June 2010)
  • Postdoc Fellowship (University of Palermo, July 2008–August 2010)
  • Scaliger Visiting Fellowship (Scaliger Institute, Leiden University, April–June 2008)
  • Fondation Hardt Visiting Fellowship ((Fondation Hardt pour l’étude de l’Antiquité classique, Vandoeuvres, September–October 2007; February–March 2008)
  • PhD Fellowship (University of Palermo, 2005–2007)
  • Giusto Monaco Award (University of Palermo, 2004)

 

Organization of Conferences

 

Papers delivered at conferences and visiting lectures

Conferences

  • International Conference “Contre Galien: Critiques d’une autorité médicale de l’Antiquité au premier âge moderne” (Université de Reims, 29 September – 1 October 2016). Title of the paper: „Jérome Fabrice, Cremonini et Harvey contre Galien: mécanismes de la critique, du rejet et de la construction d’une autorité médicale dans l’Aristotélisme de Padoue”
  • International Conference “De homine. Anthropologien in der Frühneuzeit” (Gotha, 16-18 March 2016). Title of the paper: “(Dis)embodied thinking and the scale of beings: Pietro Pomponazzi and Agostino Nifo on the ‘psychic’ processes in men and animals”
  • International Workshop “Soul and Living Beings. Readings and Reception of Aristotle’s Parva Naturalia” (Paris, 18 February 2016). Title of the paper: “Localizing memory and recollection: Italian Commentaries on De memoria of the sixteenth century”
  • International Conference “Médicine et Philosophie. Méthodes, pratiques, interactions” (Clermont-Ferrand, 19–20 November 2015). Title of the paper: “Early modern commentators of Aristotle´s Parva naturalia on the interaction/intertwinement between medicine and natural philosophy”
  • International Conference “Aristotle. Parva Naturalia” (Mainz, 30 September – 2 October 2015). Title of the paper: “Der Seele und dem Körper gemeinsam: Das Forschungsprogramm der Parva Naturalia und die Begründung der Physiologie in den Praefationes zu den Kommentaren der 16. und 17. Jahrhunderte (Italien und protestantische Länder)”
  • Annual Conference of the Renaissance Society of America (Berlin, 26–28 March 2015). Title of the paper: “Explaining divination in dreams within sixteenth-century Italian Aristotelianism: Aristotle's anti-Democriteanism reconsidered”
  • Workshop “Influence of Classical Tradition on Science and Medicine” (London, Warburg Institute, 11 December 2014). Title of the paper: “Early modern commentators of Aristotle´s Parva naturalia on the interaction/intertwinement between medicine and natural philosophy”
  • International Conference “Towards the authority of Vesalius” (Leuven, 3–5 December 2014). Title oft the paper: “Towards Vesalius’ Fabrica corporis: Galen’s notion of kataskeue tou somatos and its reception and transformation in Renaissance Galenism”
  • International workshop “Vesalius at 500: Text, Image, Practice and Reception in Renaissance Anatomy” (Montreal, McGill University, 16–17 October 2014). Title of the paper: “Fabrica corporis : remarques sur l’histoire et la préhistoire d’une forme de représentation du corps humain de Vésale à Spinoza”
  • International conference on the reception of the Parva Naturalia (Goteborg, 6–8 June 2014). Title of the paper: “Localizing memory and recollection: Italian Commentaries on De memoria of the sixteenth century”
  • Médecine et révolution scientifique (Journées d’étude organisées dans le cadre du projet ANR Philomed “La refonte de l’homme : découvertes médicales et anthropologie philosophique, XVI–XVIII siècles”, Villa Vigoni, Como, 16–19 September 2013). Title of the paper: “Wissenschaftliche Revolution und Medizin: Ablehnung oder Transformation der Antike? Ein Vergleich zwischen den Zeugungslehren Cesare Cremoninis, William Harveys und René Descartes’ ”
  • Seminario di studi sulla scienza antica e la sua tradizione (Gargnano, 6–8 June 2013). Title of the paper: “La ricezione di Ippocrate nelle querelles mediche del XVII secolo: il caso del dibattito sulla circolazione sanguigna”
  • XIVth Colloque Hippocratique, Paris (8–10 November 2012). Title of the paper: “La place d'Hippocrate dans les grands débats médicaux du XVIe et XVIIe siècle (Aristotelisme vs. Galenisme, Anciens vs. Modernes)”
  • International Conference „Causing Health and Disease:  Medical Powers in Classical and Late Antiquity” (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, 21–22 September 2012): Title of the paper: “Informing matters and enmattered forms: The notion of “power” (dynamis/potentia) in ancient and early modern theories on the nature and action of the semen”.
  • 32. Treffen des Arbeitskreises „Alte Medizin“ (Mainz, 7–8 July 2012). Title of the paper: „Die Blutkreislauftheorie und die unterschiedlichen Wege des Aristotelismus: Girolamo Franzosis Schrift „De motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus pro Aristotele et Galeno adversus anatomicos neotericos“ in ihrem intellektuellen Kontext“
  • Approaches to Ancient Medicine Conference (Exeter, 21–22 August 2011). Title of the paper: “For sleep is a kind of epilepsy” (Somn.Vig. 3, 457a1–14): Aristotle, the Aristotelians, and the medical background of a controversial definition”.
  • Médecine et empirisme philosophique (Journées d’étude organisées dans le cadre du projet ANR Philomed “La refonte de l’homme : découvertes médicales et anthropologie philosophique, XVI–XVIII siècles”, Villa Vigoni, Como, 11–14 Mai 2011). Title of the paper: Formes de l’observation empirique et structures de l’argumentation dans les traités médicaux de Julien Offray de la Mettrie, médecin et philosophe (Traité du vertige, Traité de la petite vérole, Observations de médecine pratique).
  • Pacific Northwest Pacific Renaissance Conference (Victoria, 21–23 October 2010). Title of the paper: Embodying the Authority: Antagonism and Emulation in Vesalius’ Anatomical Discourse.
  • Mental Disorders in Classical Antiquity, Part II (New York, Columbia University, 15–16 October 2010). Title of the paper: The problem of defining mental disease: epilepsy between the ancients and the moderns”.
  • Mainz Conference on Ancient Medical Texts (Mainz, 3–4 July 2010). Title of the paper: Between spontaneity, chance and mechanism: The notion of ‘automaton’ in the Hippocratics and Galen.
  • Canadian Society of Renaissance Studies Conference (Concordia University, Montreal; session of History of Medicine, May 28th–30th, 2010). Title of the paper: Fabrica corporis : remarques sur l’histoire et la préhistoire d’une forme de représentation du corps humain de Vésale à Spinoza.
  • Approaches to Ancient Medicine Conference 2009, held in Newcastle upon Tyne (24–25 August 2009). Title of the paper: Origins of knowledge: ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ as categories of thought in the Hippocratic treatise ‘On Ancient Medicine’.
  • Canadian Society of Renaissance Studies Conference (Carleton University, Ottawa; session of History of Medicine, May 23rd–25th, 2009). Title of the paper: Anatomy as Epistemology. Building up the body of man and the ‘body’ of medicine at the Renaissance (Massa, Vesalius, and Galen’s shadow).
  • ‘Blood sweat and tears’: The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early Modern Europe (The Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study, Wassenaar, 14–18 April 2009). Title of the paper: “As if bodies were machines. Remarks on the birth of ‘Modern’ Physiology and the (re)invention of the Greek notion of ‘automaton’”.
  • Littérature et médecine à l’Âge classique: deux journées d’étude (McGill University, Montreal, 29–30 January 2009). Title of the paper: “La machine plus que machine, ou l’automate transfiguré. L’anthropologie de Julien Offray de La Mettrie, ses enjeux philosophiques et littéraires et la réinvention du mécanisme médical”.
  • L’inganno dei sensi. Giornate internazionali di studio dedicate ai limiti naturali della percezione (Siena, 2–3 December 2008). Title of the paper: “Perdere i sensi nei testi medici ippocratici: una via ‘negativa’ verso la costituzione del sé cognitivo”.
  • Approaches to Ancient Medicine Conference 2008 (Reading, 20–21 August 2008). Title of the paper: “Between distinction and separation. Rethinking the centrality of the brain in Alcmaeon’s theory of sense-perception and cognition”.
  • XIIIth Colloque international hippocratique (Austin, Texas, 11–13 August 2008). Title of the paper: “Perceiving the coherence of the perceiving body. Is there such a thing as a Hippocratic approach to perception?”
  • Mainz Conference on Ancient Medical Texts (Mainz, 12 June 2008). Title of the paper: “Encephalocentrism and the “specificity” of cognition in Alcmaeon’s doctrine”
  • The Anglo-Dutch Wellcome Symposium, held in Nijmegen (29–30 November 2007). Title of the paper: “Making the difference. The medical inquiry into the nature of places and the early birth of Anthropology in the Hippocratic treatise On Airs Waters Places”.
  • European Association for the History of Medicine and Health Conference, held in London, Brunei Gallery (12–15 September 2007). Title of the paper: “Making the difference. Environmental determinism and the early birth of Anthropology in the Hippocratic treatise On Airs Waters Places”.
  • Approaches to Ancient Medicine Conference 2007, held in Newcastle upon Tyne (3–4 September 2007). Title of the paper: “The physiological roots of sense. What does the brain-hermeneus perform in On The Sacred Disease’s encephalocentric theory?”.
  • XXVIth Classical Association of South Africa Conference, held in CapeTown (2–5 July 2007). Title of the paper: “The ambiguous role of perception. Traditional views on sense perception as a cognitive tool within the Hippocratics and new biological perspectives”.
  • XLth International Society of History of Medicine Conference, held in Budapest, Academy of Sciences (25–30 August 2006). Title of the paper: “Le savoir du malade dans le traité hippocratique Perì technes”.
  • XIIth Colloque international hippocratique, held in Leiden (23–26 August 2005). Title of the paper: “Il medico come maestro. Funzione epistemica, funzione cognitiva e incommensurabilità degli errori”.
  • Convegno internazionale ‘Processo alla prova’, held in Palermo in June 2004. Title of the paper: “La medicina alla prova: verso una pragmatica della ricerca biomedica”.

 

Visiting Lectures and Seminars

  • Vortrag zur Semestereröffnung (HU-Institut für Klassische Philologie, 20.4.2016). Title of the paper: Das Verhältnis der Naturphilosophie zur Medizin in der frühneuzeitlichen Kommentartradition zu Aristoteles' Parva naturalia
  • Visiting Lecture at the University of Bochum, Institut für Philosophie, Forschungskolloquium „Antike Philosophie“ (27 Januar 2015). Title of the paper: „Early modern commentators of Aristotle’s Parva naturalia on the interaction/intertwinement between medicine and natural philosophy“
  • Enzyklopädie der Philologie – Ringvorlesung des Instituts für Klassische Philologie, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (February 1st, 2012): Title of the paper: Werner Jaegers Paideia und die Stellung der antiken Medizin in seiner Auffassung der Geisteswissenschaften
  • Seminar at the Ecole normale supérieure of Paris (chair of Paleography, 21 May 2010). Title of the paper: La notion d’automaton entre spontanéité de la nature et téléologie hypothétique dans les textes médicaux (Hippocrate et Galien) et la Physique d’Aristote.
  • Seminar at the University of Naples (Federico II) (Department of Philosophy, April 2010). Title of the paper: Dialeghesthai, homologhein e synghenesthai nei testi del Corpus Hippocraticum e nel Protagora di Platone: esempi di interazione fra lessico medico e lessico filosofico nella Grecia di V e IV secolo.
  • Lecture at Leiden University (Department of Classics, 4 March 2010). Title of the paper: The matter of sense, the sense of matter: The encephalocentric theory of the Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease.
  • Research Seminar at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (Institut für Klassische Philologie, 2 March 2010). Title of the paper: The matter of sense, the sense of matter: The encephalocentric theory of the Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease.
  • Seminar at the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne (March 4th, 2009). Title of the paper: Le sens de la matière, la matière du sens. L’air, le cerveau et la physiologie de la pensée dans le traité hippocratique ‘La maladie sacrée’.
  • Lecture at the University of Lausanne (Institute Universitaire d’Histoire de la Médecine, November 12th. 2008). Title of the paper: Tradizione come genealogia della verità. Ippocrate e Boerhaave tra assimilazione, variazione e deviazione.
  • Scaliger Lecture (Leiden University Library, May, 23th, 2008). Title of the paper: Tradition as genealogy of truth. Hippocrates and the Ducth Hippocrates between assimilation, variation and deviation.
  • Seminar at the University of Palermo (Dipartimento di Studi Greci Latini Musicali, Dottorato di Ricerca in Filologia e Cultura Greco-Latina, April 6th, 2006). Title of the paper: “Educazione medica e funzione cognitiva degli errori nei testi della Collezione ippocratica”.

 

Teaching activities

Summer Term 2024
  • VL Philosophie: Dante Alighieri, Der Dichter als Philosoph
  • Philosophisches Kolloquium
  • HS Aristoteles, Nikomachische Ethik, Buch 10
  • SE Dante Alighieri, Monarchia
  • UE Seneca, Phaedra
  • SE Euripides, Hippolytos
Winter Term 2023/24
  • GK Einführung in die griechische Philosophie: Platons Kriton
  • UE Augustinus, Confessiones XII und XIII
  • HS Augustinus, De trinitate (Bücher VIII, IX, X und XIV)
  • Se Tertullian, De anima
  • Philosophisches Kolloquium
Summer Term 2023
  • SE Sophokles, Antigone
  • UE Xenophon, Memorabilien
  • SE Lorenzo Valla, De vero falsoque bono
  • UE Boethius, Consolatio philosophiae
  • HS Aristoteles, Metaphysik A
  • Philosophisches Kolloquium
Winter Term 2022/23
  • GK Einführung in die griechische Philosophie: Platons Apologie des Sokrates
  • VL Gräzistik: Die Wege des Logos: Sophistik, Dialektik und die neue Rhetorik
  • UE Erasmus von Rotterdam, Querela pacis
  • SE Marsilius von Padua, Defensor pacis
  • HS Platon, Phaidon
Summer Term 2022
  • UE Lothar de Segni, De miseria humanae conditionis
  • UE Parmenides, Fragmente und Testimonien
  • SE Philon von Alexandrien, De opificio mundi
  • SE Pico della Mirandola, Oratio de hominis dignitate
  • HS Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele in Plotin und Augustinus
Winter Term 2021/22
  • GK Einführung in die griechische Philosophie: Platons Charmides
  • UE Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes
  • SE Francesco Petrarca, De vita solitaria
  • UE Isokrates, Antidosis
  • HS Platon, Timaios
Summer Term 2021
  • UE Aristoteles, Rhetorik
  • HS Freundschaft in der Nikomachischen Ethik des Aristoteles
  • SE Marc Aurel, Selbstbetrachtungen
  • SE Meister Eckhart, Die Auslegung des Evangeliums nach Johannes
  • UE Nikolaus von Kues, De venatione sapientiae
Winter Term 2020/21
  • GK Einführung in die griechische Philosophie: Platons Lysis
  • VL Gräzistik: Philosophie und Medizin
  • HS Platon, Symposion
  • SE Apuleius, De deo Socratis
  • SE Dante Alighieri, Schreiben an Cangrande de la Scala
Summer Term 2020
  • SE Galen, Quod animi mores
  • HS Platon, Erster Alkibiades
  • SE Plutarch, Das Leben des Alkibiades
  • SE Gotteserkenntnis und Ästhetik: Bernhard von Clairvaux, De consideratione
  • UE Thomas Morus, Utopia
Winter Term 2019/20
  • Stoizismus (Seminar Philosophie)
  • Augustinus, De musica (Seminar Klassische Philologie)
  • Seneca, De providentia (Seminar Klassische Philologie)
  • Aristoteles, Poetik (Seminar Klassische Philologie)
  • Platon, Ion (Grundkurs Klassische Philologie)
Summer Term 2019
  • Alkaios und Sappho (Übung)
  • Dichtungslehre der Antike (MA-Europäische Literaturen)
  • Marsilio Ficino, De amore (Seminar)
  • Erasmus von Rotterdam, Lob der Torheit (Übung)
  • Aristoteles, Physik I und II (Seminar)
Winter Term 2018/19
  • Die Philosophie der klassischen Zeit: Platon und Aristoteles (Vorlesung Gräzistik, Klassische Philologie)
  • Platon, Phaidros (Hauptseminar Philosophie)
  • Platon, Gorgias (Grundkurs Klassische Philologie)
  • Lukrez, De rerum natura (Übung Klassische Philologie)
  • Petrus Abaelardus, Scito teipsum (Seminar Klassische Philologie)
Summer Term 2018
  • Albertus Magnus, De homine (Seminar Klassische Philologie)
  • Dante Alighieri, De vulgari eloquentia (Übung Klassische Philologie)
  • Strabon, Geographika (Übung Klassische Philologie)
  • Die griechische Debatte über die beste Staatsverfassung (Seminar Klassische Philologie)
  • Plotinus und Augustinus über Zeit und Ewigkeit (Hauptseminar Philosophie)
Winter Term 2017/18
  • Aristoteles, De anima (Hauptseminar Philosophie)
  • Platon, Protagoras (Grundkurs Klassische Philologie)
  • Thukydides (Seminar Klassische Philologie)
  • Tacitus, Annales (Seminar Klassische Philologie)
  • Seneca, De clementia (Übung Klassische Philologie)
Summer Term 2017
  • Plato, Philebus (Hauptseminar Philosophie)
  • Lukian, Wie man Geschichte schreiben soll (Seminar, Klassische Philologie)
  • Petrarca, Secretum (Seminar, Klassische Philologie)
  • Augustinus, Soliloquia (Übung, Klassische Philologie)
Winter Term 2016/17
  • UE Cicero, De natura deorum (Klassische Philologie)
  • UE Aristoteles, Protreptikos (Klassische Philologie)
  • GK Einführung in die griechische Philosophie (Klassische Philologie)
  • HS Die Gedächtnis- und Erinnerungslehre in der Antike: Platon, Aristoteles, Plotinus and Augustinus
Summer Term 2016
  • Epikureismus in der Antike und der Frühneuzeit (Hauptseminar Philosophie)
  • Empedokles (BA-Übung Klassische Philologie)
  • Boethius, Consolatio Philosophiae (MA-Seminar Klassische Philologie)
  • Ovid, Epistulae ex Ponto (BA-Seminar Klassische Philologie)
Winter Term 2015/16
  • Aristoteles, Parva Naturalia (Hauptseminar, Philosophie)
  • Apuleius, De magia (Seminar, Klassische Philologie)
  • Plato, Symposium (Seminar, Klassische Philologie)
  • Winter Term: Der Mythos in der Philosophie (Grundkurs Einführung in die Philosophie, Klassische Philologie)
Summer Term 2015
  • Solon (Seminar, Klassische Philologie)
  • Cicero, De fato (Seminar, Klassische
    Philologie)
  • The Presocratics (Seminar, Philosophie)
  • Alexander of Aphrodisia, De fato (Seminar, Philosophie)
Winter Term 2014/15
  • Schüler-Winterakademie 2015 zum Thema
    „Hippokrates, Galen und Co. – Antike Medizin zwischen Theorie und Praxis“,
    Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 5.–7. Februar 2015
  • Seneca, Naturales Quaestiones (Übung, BA/Latein)
  • Plato, Phaedo (Übung, BA/Griechisch)
  • Plato, Phaedo (Hauptseminar, MA/Philosophie und Klassische Philologie)
Summer Term 2014
  • Academic Year 2013/14, Summer Term: Augustinus, Confessiones, Buch 10 (Seminar, BA Institut für Klassische Philologie / Graduate School of Ancient Philosophy)
  • Academic Year 2013/14, Summer Term: Ancient and Early Modern Theories of Generation (Hauptseminar, BA/MA Institut für Philosophie, Graduate School of Ancient Philosophy, PhD Programme “History of Ancient Science”)
Winter Term 2013/14
  • Academic Year 2013/14, Winter Term: Seneca, Epistulae morales ad Lucilium (Hauptseminar, BA/MA Institut für Klassische Philologie / Graduate School of Ancient Philosophy)
  • Academic Year 2013/14, Winter Term: Ancient Cosmologies (Hauptseminar, BA/MA Institut für Philosophie/Institut für Klassische Philologie, Graduate School of Ancient Philosophy, PhD Programme “History of Ancient Science”), co-taught with Stavros Kouloumentas
Summer Term 2013
  • Plato, Timaeus (Hauptseminar, BA/MA Institut für Philosophie, Graduate School of Ancient Philosophy, PhD Programme “History of Ancient Science”)
  • Lucretius, De rerum natura (Seminar, BA Institut für Klassische Philologie)
  • Aristoteles-Lesegruppe, De partibus animalium, Book 1 (Coordinators: Roberto Lo Presti and Stavros Kouloumentas)
Winter Term 2012/13
  • Cicero, De divinatione (Hauptseminar, BA/MA, Inst. für Klassische Philologie)
  • Philosophical and medical theories of sense perception and cognition in Classical Greece (Hauptseminar, BA/MA, Inst. für Klassische Philologie / Inst. für Philosophie / Graduate School of Ancient Philosophy / PhD Programme „History of Ancient Science“)
  • Aristoteles-Lesegruppe, De partibus animalium, Book 1 (Coordinators: Roberto Lo Presti and Stavros Kouloumentas)
Summer Term 2012
  • Marcus Aurelius, Ad se ipsum (Hauptseminar, BA/MA, Institut für Philosophie / Graduate School of Ancient Philosophy)
  • Leib und Seele in der Medizingeschichte von der griechisch-römischen Antike bis zur frühen Neuzeit (GTE Modul, co-taught with Philip van der Eijk and Chiara Thumiger)
  • Der Körper in der Spätantike: Verständnis, Erleben und Darstellung des menschlichen Körpers in der römischen Kaiserzeit (Hauptseminar, BA/MA, Institut für Geschichte, co-taught with Claudia Tiersch, Philip van der Eijk, Georgia Petridou, Chiara Thumiger and Wolfgang Häfele
Winter Term 2011/12
  • Aristoteles über Seele, Körper, Gedächtnis, Schlaf und Traum / Aristotle on Soul, Body, Memory, Sleep and Dreams (Hauptseminar, co-taught with Prof. Ph. J. van der Eijk
  • Hesiod (BA/MA Übung, co-taught with Prof. M. Asper)
Summer Term 2011
  • Shrewd Greeks and stupid barbarians? The environment-linked science of man in the 5th and 4th century B.C (Hippocrates’ On Airs Waters Places, Herodotus, Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle) (Seminar)

 

Roles and responsabilities

  • Editorial Board of „Nuncius. Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science“ (2017- today)
  • Member of Faculty of the DFG-funded Research Training Group „Philosophy, Science and the Sciences“
  • Coordinator of the PhD Programme „History of Ancient Science“ (HistAS) of the „Berlin Graduate School of Ancient Studies“ (BerGSAS) http://berliner-antike-kolleg.org/bergsas/studienprogramme/history-of-ancient-science/
  • Member of the Scientific Committee of the international conference „Towards the Authority of Vesalius. Representations of the Human Body in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance?“, to be hosted at Leuven University (Leuven Centre for the Study of the Transmission of Texts and Ideas in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance), on 3–4–5 December 2014
    http://ghum.kuleuven.be/lectio/vesalius-call-for-papers

Completed PhD-Dissertations

Emiliano Paparazzo (History of Ancient Philosophy; Cotutelle HU-Pisa)
Title of the dissertation: Aristotle’s Conceptions of Fire
Defended in March 2024

PhD Supervision

Elena Bellini (History of Ancient Philosophy)
Title of the PhD Project: Herophilus and Erasistratus between tradition and innovation: The case of respiration

Elisa Citano (Philosophy)
Title of the PhD Project: Void in Aristotle’s Physics

Valeria Beggiato (Philosophy)
Title of the PhD Project: The Role of Intentio in Augustine’s Account of Time

Moritz Basilico (Philosophy)
Title of the PhD Project: Die Unsichtbare Maschine. Eine stilische Analyse der griechischen Wissenschaftsliteratur

Bernd Hahn (Philosophy)
Title of the PhD Project: Mystik der ‘inneren Führung’. Ein Beitrag zum Gottesbegriff im Anschluss an Hans Jonas

Publications

Monographs

  • In forma di senso. La dottrina encefalocentrica del trattato ippocratico Sulla malattia sacra nel suo contesto epistemologico, Roma, 2008.

 

Volumes edited

  • Giouli Korobili, Roberto Lo Presti (eds), Nutrition and Nutritive Soul in Aristotle and Aristotelianism, Berlin: De Gruyter (submitted, under peer-review process)
  • Colin G. King, Roberto Lo Presti (eds.), Werner Jaeger: Bildung Wissenschaft Politik, Supplement-Reihe Philologus, Berlin: De Gruyter 2017, 273 S.
  • S. Buchenau – R. Lo Presti (eds.), Human and Animal Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy and Medicine (16th to 18th century), Pittsburgh University Press 2017, 408 S.
  • R. Lo Presti (ed.), Teleology and Mechanism in Early Modern Medicine, special issue of  ‘Gesnerus – Revue Suisse d’Histoire de la Médecine et des Sciences’, 71.2 (2014)
  • F. Bourbon – R. Lo Presti (eds), De Fabrica Artis Medicinae : Les redéfinitions de la médecine à la Renaissance, special issue of ‘Renaissance and Reformation / Réforme et Renaissance’, vol. 33, no. 3 (2010).

 

Articles and chapters in refereed journals or books of international standing

  • ‘„Der Seele und dem Körper gemeinsam“: Das Forschungsprogramm der Parva naturalia und die Begründung der scientia de animalibus in den praefationes zu den italienischen Kommentaren des 16. Jahrhunderts’, in J. Althoff, Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption. Sonderausgabe über die Parva Naturalia (in press)
  • „Entre aristotélisme médical et médecine aristotélisante : le rapport entre médecine et philosophie dans les commentaires italiens du XVIe siècle au De sensu d’Aristote”, in C. Crignon & D. Lefebvre (eds.), Médecins et philosophes. Une histoire, Paris, CNRS Editions, 2019, 195-222
  • “Localizing memory and recollection: The sixteenth-century Italian commentaries on Aristotle’s De memoria et reminiscentia and the question concerning the degrees of (dis)embodiment of the “psychic” processes”, in Börje Bydén, Filip Radovic (Eds.), The Parva Naturalia in Greek, Arabic and Latin Aristotelianism, Springer, 2018, 325-341.
  • “Forms of the empirical observation and argumentative structures in Julien Offray de la Mettrie’s Observations de médecine pratique (1743)”, Gesnerus. Revue Suisse d’Histoire de la Médecine et des Sciences (in press)
  • “The Reception of Greco-Roman Science in the Renaissance: Assimilation(s), Transformation(s), Rejection, Hybridization”, in Companion to Science, Technology and Medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome, ed. Georgia L. Irby, Wiley-Blackwell (in press)
  • « Représenter et conceptualiser le corps entre médecine et anthropologie philosophique : racines, genèse et transformations de la Fabrica corporis vésalienne », in Erika Gielen, Michèle Goyens (eds.), Towards the Authority of Vesalius. Studies on Medicine and the Human Body from Antiquity to the Renaissance and beyond, Turnhout: Brepols, 2018, 157-194.
  • ‘(Dis)embodied thinking and the scale of beings: Pietro Pomponazzi and Agostino Nifo on the ‘psychic’ processes in men and animals’, in: Human and Animal Cognition in Early Modern Philosophy and Medicine (16th to 18th century), ed. Roberto Lo Presti and Stephanie Buchenau, Pittsburgh University Press 2017, 37-54.
  • Roberto Lo Presti, Philip van der Eijk, ‘Werner Jaeger und die antike Medizin’, in: R. Lo Presti, C.G. King (eds.), Werner Jaeger: Wissenschaft, Bildung, Politik, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017, 209-244.
  • Perceiving the coherence of the perceiving body. Is there such a thing as a ‘Hippocratic’ view on sense perception and cognition?, in L. Dean-Jones, R. Rosen (eds.), Ancient Concepts of the Hippocratic, Leiden-Boston 2016, 163–194
  • Le sommeil dans les Epidémies hippocratiques, in Le sommeil. Approaches philosophiques et médicales de l´Antiquité à la Renaissance, sous la direction de V. Leroux, N. Palmieri, Ch. Pigné, Paris 2015, 209–233
  • ‘Mapping memory. Theories in ancient, medieval and early modern philosophy and medicine’ (co-authored with R. Juliao, Ph. van der Eijk and D. Perler), in: Excellence Cluster Topoi: The Formation and Transformation of Space and Knowledge in Ancient Civilizations, Research Groups, Articles, Vol. 2, Berlin: Excellence Cluster Topoi, 757–787
  • “‘For Sleep, In Some Way, Is An Epileptic Seizure’ (Somn.Vig. 3, 457 a9–10): Empirical Background, Theoretical Function, and Transformations of the Sleep-Epilepsy Analogy in Aristotle and in Medieval Aristotelianism”, in B. Holmes, K.-D. Fischer (eds.), The Frontiers of Ancient Science: Essays in Honor of Heinrich von Staden, Berlin 2015, 339–396.
  • “La place d’Hippocrate dans les grandes querelles médicales du XVIIe siècle: le cas du débat sur la circulation sanguine”, in J. Jouanna, M. Zink (eds.), Hippocrate et les hippocratismes: médecine, religion, société, Paris 2014, 461–482
  • “Informing matters and enmattered forms: Aristotle, Galen and Cesare Cremonini on the notion of ‘power of the seed’ ”, in the special issue on “Medical Powers” (ed. by A. Marmodoro) of The British Journal for the History of Philosophy 2014, DOI: 10.1080/09608788.2014.944481 cv.text.image0
  • “Introduction: Within or Beyond the Paradigm Shift? Teleology and Mechanism in the Early Modern Medical Discourse on the Functions of the Living Body”, in R. Lo Presti (ed.), Teleology and Mechanism in Early Modern Medicine, special issue of  ‘Gesnerus – Revue Suisse d’Histoire de la Médecine et des Sciences’, 71.2 (2014), 177–186.
  • „The theory of the Circulation of Blood and Different Paths of Aristotelianism. Girolamo Franzosi’s ‘De motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus pro Aristotele et Galeno adversus anatomicos neotericos libri duo’: Teleology versus Mechanism?”, in R. Lo Presti (ed.), Teleology and Mechanism in Early Modern Medicine, special issue of  ‘Gesnerus – Revue Suisse d’Histoire de la Médecine et des Sciences’, 71.2 (2014), 271–289.
  • Wissenschaftliche Revolution und Medizin: Ablehnung oder Transformation der Antike? Ein Vergleich zwischen den Zeugungslehren Cesare Cremoninis, William Harveys und René Descartes’, in Sudhoffs Archiv, 98.1 (2014), 1–27
  • Mental disorder and the perils of definition: Characterizing epilepsy in Greek scientific discourse (5th–4th centuries B.C.E.), in W. Harris (ed.), Mental Disorders in the Classical World, Leiden-Boston 2013, 195–222
  • Werner Jaegers Paideia. Die Stellung der antiken Medizin in seiner Auffassung der Geisteswissenschaften, in U. Schmitzer (Hrsg.), Enzyklopädie der Philologie. Themen und Methoden der Klassischen Philologie heute, Göttingen 2013, 209–233
  • La notion d’automaton dans les textes médicaux (Hippocrate et Galien) et la Physique d’Aristote: hasard, spontanéité de la nature, et téléologie du comme si, in K. D. Fischer (ed.), 30 Jahre Arbeitskreis Alte Medizin in Mainz. Beiträge der Tagung 2010, special issue of “Les Etudes Classiques”, 80 (2012), 25–54
  • Shaping the difference. The medical inquiry into the nature of places and the early birth of Anthropology in the Hippocratic treatise On Airs Waters Places, in P.A. Baker, H. Nijdam, K. van´t Land (eds.), Medicine and Space. Body, Surroundings and Borders in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Leiden 2012, 169–195.
  • Roberto Lo Presti & Silvio Marino, Dialegesthai: fisiologia di un atto. Interazioni fra lessico medico e lessico filosofico fra V e IV secolo (Corpus Hippocraticum e Platone), in Journal of Ancient Philosophy V.2 (2011)
  • Origins of knowledge: ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ as categories of thought in the Hippocratics, in ‘Quaderni del Ramo d’Oro online’ 3 (2010), 164–192. http://www.qro.unisi.it/frontend/node/78
  • The matter of sense, the sense of matter: What does the enkephalos-hermeneus perform in On The Sacred Disease’s encephalocentric doctrine?, ‘Rhizai’ VII.1 (2010), pp. 147–180
  • La machine plus que machine, ou l’automate transfiguré. L’anthropologie de Julien Offray de La Mettrie et la réinvention du mécanisme médical, in ‘Gesnerus’ 67/2 (2010), pp. 163–187.
  • F. Bourbon – R. Lo Presti, Introduction à De Fabrica Artis Medicinae : Les redéfinitions de la médecine à la Renaissance, special issue of ‘Renaissance and Reformation / Réforme et Renaissance’, vol. 33, no. 3 (2010), pp. 3–7
  • Anatomy as epistemology: The Body of Man and the Body of Medicine in Vesalius’ Anatomical Renaissance, in F. Bourbon – R. Lo Presti (eds), De Fabrica Artis Medicinae : Les redéfinitions de la médecine à la Renaissance, special issue of ‘Renaissance and Reformation / Réforme et Renaissance’, vol. 33, no. 3 (2010), pp. 27–60.
  • Tradition as genealogy of ‘truth’. Hippocrates and Boerhaave between assimilation, variation and deviation, in The Medical Education. Proceedings of the XIIth Colloquium Hippocraticum, ed. by H.F.J. Horstmanshoff, Leiden 2010, pp. 475–522.
  • The physician as teacher. Epistemic function, cognitive function and the incommensurability of errors, in The Medical Education. Proceedings of the XIIth Colloquium Hippocraticum, ed. by H.F.J. Horstmanshoff, Leiden 2010, pp. 137–167.
  • Le rappresentazioni del corpo "anaisthetos" nel "Corpus Hippocraticum": una 'via negativa' verso la conoscenza, in ‘Quaderni del Ramo d’Oro online’ 2 (2009), pp. 51–91. http://www.qro.unisi.it/frontend/node/45
  • Between distinction and separation. Rethinking the centrality of the brain in Alcmaeon’s theory of sense-perception and cognition, in ‘Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption’ XIX (2009), pp. 9–30.
  • Il sapere del malato nel trattato ippocratico Perì technes, in “Medicina nei Secoli”, 19.3 (2007), pp. 705–720.
  • The ambiguous role of perception. Empiricist views and biological perspectives on sense perception within the Hippocratics, “Acta Classica”, L (2007), pp. 129–146.
  • La medicina alla prova. Verso una pragmatica della ricerca biomedica, in Processo alla prova. Modelli e pratiche di verifica dei saperi, a cura di V. Andò e G. Nicolaci, Roma 2007, pp. 235–263.

 

Papers in preparation

  • ‘Localizing memory and recollection: Italian Commentaries on De memoria of the sixteenth century’, to be presented in June at a conference in Goteborg on the reception of the Parva Naturalia
  • ‘(Dis)embodied thinking and the scale of beings: Venetian Aristotelians on human and animal thought’, to be published in From Animal to Man? Human and animal Minds in Early Modern Philosophy and Medicine (16th to 18th century), ed. by S. Buchenau and R. Lo Presti, Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press

 

Shorter pieces

  • “Julien Offray de la Mettrie, L´Homme-Machine, 1748”, in: Médecine et philosophie de la nature humaine de l’âge classique aux Lumières, sous la direction de R. Andrault, S. Buchenau, C. Crignon et A.-L. Rey, Paris 2014, 312–319.
  • Entries in “Geschichte der  Altertumswissenschaften. Biographisches Lexikon (DNP Supplement 6)”, hrsg. von Peter Kuhlmann und Helmuth Schneider, J. B. Metzler Verlag und Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, Weimar 2012:
    • S. Fornaro, transl. R. Lo Presti, “Karl Kerényi”
    • S. Fornaro, transl. R. Lo Presti, “Concetto Marchesi”
    • S. Fornaro, transl. R. Lo Presti, “Karl Otfried Müller”
    • S. Fornaro, transl. R. Lo Presti, “Giorgio Pasquali”
    • S. Fornaro, transl. R. Lo Presti, “Hermann Usener”
    • S. Fornaro, transl. R. Lo Presti, “Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker”
  • Julien Offray de la Mettrie, 1743. Observations de médecine pratique, Paris : Huart (Notice numérisation collection Medic@ Philomed)
  • Julien Offray de la Mettrie, 1738. Traité du vertige, avec la description d'une catalepsie hystérique, Paris : Huart (Notice numérisation collection Medic@ Philomed)
  • Herman Boerhaave, 1713. Institutiones medicae, in usus annuae exercitationis domesticos digestae, ab Hermanno Boerhaave (Notice numérisation collection Medic@ Philomed).
  • Herman Boerhaave, 1761. Praelectiones academicae de morbis nervorum (Notice numérisation collection Medic@ Philomed).
  • Constructing Boerhaave’s iconography: the early Accounts of his life and work, “OMSLAG – Bulletin of the Scaliger Institute, Leiden University Library”, 2008 (2), pp. 5–8.
  • Une connaissance aveugle face au futur. Modèles causaux et pouvoir cognitif du malade dans le traité hippocratique Perì technes, in Proceedings of the XLth International Society of History of Medicine Conference, Budapest (Academy of Sciences) 2006, Vol. II, pp. 825–829.

 

Reviews

  • „The first scientist“, Review of A.M. Leroi, The Lagoon. How Aristotle invented Science, Nature, vol. 512, no. 7514 (August 2014), 250–251
  • Review of Ch. Gill, Naturalistic Psychology in Galen and Stoicism, ‘Les Etudes Classiques’ (in press).
  • Review of B. Holmes, The Symptom and the Subject. The Emergence of the Physical Body in Ancient Greece, ‘Gesnerus’ (in press).
  • Review of D. Frede, B. Reis, Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy, ‘Lettre d’information du centre Jean Palerne’ (in press).
  • Review of S. H. Podolsky, C. S. Bryan, O. Wendell Homes, Physician and Man of Letters, ‘Gesnerus’ 67.2 (2010), 289–291.
  • Review of J. T. Hughes, Thomas Willis 1621–1675: His Life and Work, ‘Gesnerus’ 67.1 (2010), 132–134.
  • Review of G. Barroux, Philosophie, maladie et médecine au XVIIIè siècle, ‘Gesnerus’, 66.1 (2009), pp. 169–170.
  • Review of Maria Michela Sassi (ed. by), Tracce nella mente. Teorie della memoria da Platone ai moderni, “Classical Review”, 59.1 (2009), pp. 295–296.