19 th Mai Savle Tsereteli Institute of Philosophy organized a public lecture of Prof. Dr. Johan Tralau (University of Upsala) on the topic: “The Beginnings of Political and Moral Philosophy I: A point of departure in Plato, and then backward, to Homer and the Hittite Gilgamesh”
In this lecture, Presentatior looked for the beginnings of political and moral philosophy. Professor Tralau argued that it could be found in the advent of ‘internal critique’, a set of techniques of rational argumentation akin to, yet not the same as, those employed by Plato. Internal critique implied, an attempt to refute a standpoint ‘from within’, most often based on the premises of the interlocutor’s own argument. But was this form of thinking there from the very beginning? Probing Homer’s Iliad and the Hittite Gilgamesh fragments, Professor Tralau made the case that such argumentation could not be found in those very early Greek and Anatolian sources. This implied that internal critique should be understood as an intellectual and historical innovation. As Professor Tralau mentioned it is needed to look for its origin in other places and later times.
