AGATE

The main focus of the research project SAPERE is to preserve Greek and Latin texts of particular importance for the history of religion, philosophy, and culture of the late antiquity (1st–4th cent. CE). These texts were part of the educational canon until the 19th century but then fell prey to a classicistic perspective on literature. Since then, they have almost been forgotten except those which appeared already in one of the SAPERE volumes. This includes the treatise “Über den Tod” about the art of leaving life calmly associated with Plato and Plutarch's dialog “Über die Liebe”. The title of the project refers to every meaning of the Latin word “sapere”, not just to the intellectual one which worked for Kant's “sapere aude” (“Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen”) as the motto of the enlightenment but also to the sensual one, in terms of motivation to discover these reanimated texts (German: “auf den Geschmack bringen”). But the actual innovation of the project is the interdisciplinary work: Besides the original text and its translation, each volume offers a range of essays from specialists of various disciplines (theology, philosophy, history, archaeology, old and modern philology) and they explain the text from different perspectives and its impact on current research and society.