Error, Falsehood and Forgery in Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences
This anniversary edition of our summer seminar will be dedicated to a search for the category of error in the early modern period. In a time of “searches for truth,” how did early modern philosophers conceptualize falsehood? Did they find a positive heuristic role for error? How about deliberate falsehood and forgery? Humanists loved crafty forgeries: a long tradition of “forging” metals, colors, stories, works of art, personae, quotations, and references equated skill—and sometimes education—with the capacity to execute skillful forgeries. At first sight, early modern philosophy seems to promote a fundamentally different attitude. And yet some early modern thinkers also loved fictional scenarios and personae; ingenious hypotheses and fabricated texts and citations; alternative narratives and fictionalized histories. Our purpose is to address, in talks and reading groups, some of the most important questions one can use to map this vast field of early modern error, falsehood, and forgery.
Date: July 5 – 10, 2026
Location: Kloster Speinshart (near Nuremberg)
Organizers: Dana Jalobeanu (UTN / University of Bucharest), Daniel Garber (Princeton University), Rodolfo Garau (UTN).
The 25th Princeton–Nuremberg—Bucharest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy
The Princeton–Bucharest Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy was established in 2001 by Dana Jalobeanu (University of Bucharest), Vlad Alexandrescu (University of Bucharest), and Daniel Garber (Princeton University). Over the past two decades, the seminar has grown into a well-established institution, known for its combination of academic rigor and cordial, collegial atmosphere. Traditionally held in the mountains of Transylvania, the seminar has been co-sponsored in recent years by the Department of Philosophy at Princeton University, the Institute for Research in the Humanities (ICUB) at the University of Bucharest, the Hamburg Institute of Advanced Studies, and the University of Technology Nuremberg (UTN). Beginning in 2025, the seminar entered a new chapter, with the University of Technology Nuremberg (UTN) joining at a permanent institutional partner. In 2026, the seminar will be organized by Dana Jalobeanu, Daniel Garber and Rodolfo Garau.
The 2026 meeting—our 25th anniversary edition—will be held at Kloster Speinshart, a beautifully restored monastic complex near Nuremberg, from July 5 to July 10, 2026. Confirmed invited speakers:
- Gyburg Uhlmann (UTN)
- Roger Ariew (South Florida)
- Vlad Alexandrescu (Bucharest)
- Rob Iliffe (Oxford)
- Raphaële Garrod (Oxford)
- Scott Mandelbrote (Cambridge)
- Zvi Biener (Cincinnati)
- Claudia Dimitru (Yale)
- Laura Georgescu (Groningen)
- Tinca Prunea-Bretonnet (Romanian Academy)
- Oana Matei (Western University Vasile Goldis, Arad)
- Mihnea Dobre (Bucharest).
- Doina Cristina Rusu (Amsterdam)
- Gideon Manning (School of Arts and Humanities)
For any inquiries, please contact the organizers at rodolfo.garau@utn.de.