Seminar

DE PROFUNDIS – On the Transmutations of the Underworld

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“De profundis” is the Latin name for Psalm 130, ‘out of the depths’. It captures both the focus and the intent of this seminar – to rethink the fascinating history of the world beneath our feet. There is a vast chasm between the world above ground and the mysterious depths below, and this seminar presented some of the ways the underworld has been conceived in intellectual history.

In the ancient world, the inner spaces of Earth were where one encountered the gods, sought healing and foresight into future events. In alchemical thought, the underground and its elements were the matrix by which the divine worked its will in creation, and with the proper wisdom, later adepts might be able to harness and rework these fundamental processes in their own laboratories. In the twentieth century, with the work of Freud and Jung, people would once again be encouraged to go into the depths to encounter the gods, though the cave would be exchanged for the analyst’s office. Few intellectual realms, what German scholars refer to as Geistesräumen, have been so totally transformed as the world below. The seminar will examine the cultural and religious significance of the underworld beginning with Plato’s myth of the cave and continuing through the medieval and early modern period. Though the seminar had a wide vision on what constitutes the underworld, we payed special attention to the history of geology as a ‘spiritual discipline’.

Introduction

Jessica Frazier

University Research Lecturer in Theories of Religion, Hinduism and Indian Philosophy, University of Oxford

ANTIQUITY AND LATE ANTIQUITY IDEAS

Daniel Ogden

Professor of Ancient History, University of Exeter

Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui

Professor of Ancient Greek, Complutense University of Madrid

Jan Bremmer

Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies, University of Groningen

MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE IDEAS

Eileen Gardiner

Research Fellow, University of Bristol

Naman P. Ahuja

Curator and Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Stephen Clucas

Emeritus Professor of Early Modern Intellectual History, Birkbeck, University of London

ROMANTICISM AND MODERNITY

Gabriel Trop

Associate Professor of German and Adjunct, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Helena Attlee

Author, Consultant Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund

Paul Bishop

Honorary Professorial Research Fellow, University of Glasgow

Liora Sarfati

Associate Professor and Head of the Department of East Asian Studies, Tel Aviv University