Platon, Mendelssohn: „Phädon. Über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele“

In the organizer's words:

Is the human consciousness just a sophisticated machine? What is the soul? Is it mortal?

Today's and millennia-old questions are addressed in a new format of theater and science when Plato's dialogue "Phaidon" is premiered in Moses Mendelssohn's translation.

Death row. It is the day of the execution. But Socrates (470?-399) is doing well. He receives his friends for a final conversation. They cannot understand: where does this confidence come from? How could he be so sure of the immortality of his soul? Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), Jewish scholar and philosopher of the Enlightenment, translated the material of the end of Socrates in a unique way. In his interpretation, the text is transformed into a struggle for the meaning and purpose of our lives. For hardly any other of the dialogues written by Plato (427?-347?) has received as much attention over the centuries as this one. And none is so touching, so close to the theater. Now "Phaedon. Or on the Immortality of the Soul" is being transferred to the stage as a real encounter between art and thought.

With

the actors Georg Stephan and Rasmus Max Wirth,

Prof. Barbara Zehnpfennig, Plato translator, philosopher and political scientist

advising Prof. Daniel Krochmalnik, Mendelssohn editor and expert on Jewish intellectual history

on the occasion of the premiere Prof. Christoph Markschies, expert on Jewish-Christian relations and the religions of ancient Greece

and other contributors

A cooperation between the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin - Centrum Judaicum and the Jewish Community of Berlin.

Premiere on December 11, 2024
7:00 pm
Leibniz Hall of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities
Markgrafenstraße 38, 10117 Berlin
Tickets: 20,-/ reduced 10-
(discounted tickets in the JVHS program: email with code to info@theaterundwissenschaft.org)