Fondazione Ca’ Foscari and Edizioni Ca’ Foscari present Open Knowledge Dialogues, a new space for exchange and discussion dedicated to the presentation and debate of the publishing house’s scholarly publications. The initiative aims to enhance the University’s editorial production and to promote opportunities for qualified dialogue around research outcomes, bringing together authors with series editors, scholars in the field and, more broadly, members of the academic community interested in the topics addressed in these volumes.
The initiative also seeks to strengthen the visibility of the research published by Edizioni Ca’ Foscari by highlighting the scholarly network that develops around its editorial series and their authors. Through these meetings, publications become an opportunity to foster direct exchange among scholars, encouraging dialogue between different research perspectives and contributing to the dissemination and discussion of recent research results.
The Open Knowledge Dialogues events are organized in connection with significant publications or editorial projects, offering dedicated moments of discussion on topics of interest to the academic community. Each meeting is structured as a conversation among authors, series editors and scholars in the field, with the aim of critically addressing the themes discussed and situating them within the broader landscape of contemporary research.
The first meeting of Open Knowledge Dialogues will take place on 17 March 2026 at 3:00 PM, both in person at the Sala Alumni of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and online.
The event will be dedicated to the volume Verifying the Truth on Their Own Terms, published by Edizioni Ca’ Foscari and freely available in open access.
Based on a recently rediscovered text, the book reconstructs a philosophical-theological debate that took place in 1466 at the Ottoman court of Sultan Mehmed II. At the center of the discussion is the controversial interpretation of divine unity (tawḥīd) within the Avicennian philosophical tradition. The study offers a new perspective on fifteenth-century Ottoman philosophical culture, highlighting its intellectual vitality and its capacity to critically reinterpret philosophical models inherited from the Islamic tradition.
The author of the volume, Efe Murat Balıkçıoğlu, is a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University and a researcher at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. During the event, he will present the results of his research, offering an innovative reading of the philosophical-theological debate that developed at Mehmed II’s court and of the broader Ottoman intellectual context of the second half of the fifteenth century.
The conversation will be moderated by Professor Pietro Daniel Omodeo, Professor of History of Philosophy at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and an internationally recognized scholar in the history and philosophy of early modern science. As the scientific director of the editorial series Knowledge Hegemonies in the Early Modern World, Professor Omodeo will also introduce the series he directs.
An Imperial Debate in Constantinople, 1466 – Lost for Centuries
Synthesizing Greco-Arabic Philosophy and Islamic Theology in the Ottoman Empire
In 1466, at Sultan Mehmed II’s court, a high-stakes debate took place on one of the most controversial issues in Islamic thought: how to understand divine unity (tawḥīd) in light of Avicenna’s famous claim that in God necessity, existence, and quiddity coincide. For some theologians, this formulation – polemically described as ‘Avicenna’s Trinity’ – seemed to threaten the simplicity of divine unity in Islam.
This lecture presents a recently recovered text of this famous debate, long thought lost and never studied before. Far from recording a marginal scholastic dispute, the exchange reveals a key feature of post-classical learned Islamic culture: the ability to engage critically with authoritative traditions and to forge new syntheses through taḥqīq, an intellectual verification practice of the early modern period.
Knowledge Hegemonies in the Early Modern World is dedicated to the socio-cultural study of knowledge cultures in the early modern period (c. 1450-1750). The series explores science as a collective and often contested practice, shaped by political, philosophical, and religious tensions and embedded in broader dynamics of cultural hegemony and socio-economic interests.
Combining critical monographs and the presentation of historical sources, the series investigates how identities, ideologies, and power structures influenced the development of knowledge and its epistemic values.
Presentation followed by discussion and Q&A session.
The event will be held in hybrid format (in person and online).
Registration is required: GOOGLE FORM LINK
Registered participants will receive the access link for the video session.
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