Max Bergamo

Max Bergamo is Marie-Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Padua and at Yale University. He received his PhD in Philosophy and in Greek Philology both from the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich (Munich School of Ancient Philosophy) and from Sorbonne University (Centre Léon Robin), with a thesis on the Stoic reception of Heraclitus. He held research fellowships in Naples, Munich, and Paris. His main research interests concern Presocratic thought and its afterlife, Hellenistic philosophy (Stoicism in particular), Graeco-Syro-Arabic studies, Coptic Gnostic Studies, doxography, and the history of the classical tradition (e.g. Nietzsche).

Abstract: The name of Heraclitus was still resonating in third century Rome, fifth century Alexandria, and ninth century Baghdad, but no one has put together the existing evidence to tell that story yet. The chief objective of my project is thus to produce the first complete collection of the Late Antique testimonies concerning the Early Greek philosopher Heraclitus. This source collection will include an English translation of the texts in the various relevant languages (mainly Greek and Arabic, but also Latin, Syriac, and Coptic) and a running commentary on the testimonies, highlighting both the philological and the philosophical importance of the Late Antique afterlife of Heraclitus. The project will consequently provide the very first in-depth study of the reception of the thought and the tenets of Heraclitus in this fundamental period in the history of philosophy.