Professor and Classics Department Chair, Sara Monoson, delivered a lecture at the The Department of Classical Studies at the Hebrew University.
January 6, 2025
Professor Sara Monoson delivered a lecture at The Department of Classical Studies at the Hebrew University, titled, The Idea of Resilience: A View from some Greek Sources. The abstract for Professor Monoson's lecture can be found below.
There is no easy equivalent for the English word “resilience” in ancient Greek. But the idea is certainly present in our sources, in accounts of laudable responses to adversity by individuals and cities.
My presentation will, first, observe the extensive use of the term in English today to address how people and communities react to hardships brought on by a wide array of stresses (covid, climate change, earthquakes, terrorism, disinformation, war, persistent grief) and, second, try to make some headway clarifying its explanatory power and critical potential when applied in politics. I will propose that some well-known Greek sources in political theory (selections from Thucydides, Plato & Aristotle) convey an idea we would recognize as “resilience” and that examination of these passages can illuminate both the complexity of the texts and the conceptual logic of the contemporary watchword. I will suggest that a particular term, καρτερία, is a useful marker of the idea of resilience in these sources.