Publications
Books
2023. The Virtue of Agency: Sôphrosunê and Self-Constitution in Classical Greece (Oxford) [link]
2023. Cambridge Companion to the Sophists, with J. Billings, edd. (Cambridge) [link]
2023. Sears Jayne, Plato in Medieval England, ed. (Brepols) [link]
2020. Calling Philosophers Names: On the Origin of a Discipline (Princeton) [link]
2019. Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Socrates, ed. (Brill) [link]
2019. Plato: Charmides. Translation, notes, introduction, and analysis, with C.C. Raymond, trr./edd. (Hackett) [link]
2018. Socrates and the Socratic dialogue, with A. Stavru, edd. (Brill) [link]
2015. Socrates and Self-Knowledge (Cambridge) [link]
Books in progress
- An Anthology of Ancient Wisdom, a collaborative translation of Stobaeus’ Florilegium (the first in English) (Oxford)
- Critias of Athens: Texts, Translations, Commentary, Essays, with C.C. Raymond (Oxford)
- Public Philosophy of Classical Greece, 470–370: A Sourcebook, with Mirjam Kotwick (Cambridge)
- Plato on the Virtues: introduction and new translations of Charmides, Laches, Protagoras, and Republic I, with C.C. Raymond (Hackett)
- The Socratics: Texts, Translations, and Notes on the First Generation, with Alex Lee and Alessandro Stavru
- Hippias of Elis: Texts, Translations, Commentaries, Essays, with several collaborators
Forthcoming articles
- “Sôphrosunê and self-knowledge in Xenophon and the fourth century,” in Xenophon’s Virtues, Gabriel Danzig, ed.
Plato’s dialogues argue for proximity between the virtue and the epistemic practice/condition; Xenophon shares the sensibility without the explicit equations.
- “Socrates between city and state: the Apologies of Xenophon and Plato,” in Oxford Handbook on Ancient Greek Political Thought, Carol Atack, ed. (Oxford)
Analysis of the philosophical goals of Plato’s Apology and Crito in light of Xenophon’s Apology and Memorabilia I.
- “Plato’s philosophical inquiry into rhetoric,” in The Cambridge History of Rhetoric, vol. 1, Henriette van der Blom and Harvey Yunis, edd. (Cambridge)
A 10k word overview of the value of Plato’s dialogues for studying rhetoric and several ways Plato investigates the practice.
Articles in print
2023. “The fourth-century creative reception of the Sophists,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Sophists, Joshua Billings and Christopher Moore, edd. (Cambridge), 337–69.
Comparison of the way Xenophon, Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle treat the fifth-century canonical sophists, figures they in fact called sophists, and the vague tendency called sophistry.
2023. “Self-Knowledge,” in Bloomsbury Handbook of Plato, 2nd ed., Mateo Duque and Gerald Press, edd. (Bloomsbury), 342–44.
Overview of reflections on self-knowledge in the dialogues of Plato, emphasizing the methodological challenges to investigating the concept.
2023. “Philosophia in the Gorgias,” in Politeia: Studies in Ancient Philosophy in Honor of Professor Anthony Preus, David Spitzer, ed. (Routledge), 96–109.
Socrates’ distinctive practice, lambasted by Callicles though partially shared by him, is defined by unending clarification of “small” points; the dialogue itself reveals it.
2023. “Xenophon and the Spartan education in sôphrosunê (Lac. Pol. 3),” in Xenophon, the Philosopher: Argumentation and Ethics, Claudia Mársico and Daniel Rossi Nunes Lopes, edd. (Peter Lang), 129–48.
The unexpectedly infrequent use of the term sôphrosunê in Xenophon’s treatment of Lycurgan pedagogy underscores its meaning not as principally “modesty” but as “practical agency.”
2021. “Promêtheia as rational agency in Plato,” Apeiron 54:1, 89–107.
This little-appreciated virtue term refers not primarily to forethought or hesitation but to the capacity to determine the relevant governing norms of action.
2020. “Critias in Plato’s Protagoras: an opponent of agôn?,” in Athletics, Gymnastics, and Agôn in Plato (Parnassos), 67–80.
Critias represents not a proto-tyrannical sensibility, as generally assumed, but a too-passive appreciation of intellectual conversation, lacking Socratic critical engagement.
2020. “Questioning Aristotle’s radical analysis of sôphrosunê,” in Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 35, 73–97.
The history of classical discussion of sôphrosunê – the canonical Greek virtue of discipline – shows Aristotle’s account of it in EN 3.10–12 a theoretically-motivated misrepresentation.
2020. “Ancient Greek philosophia in India as a way of life,” Metaphilosophy 51, 169–86.
Late fourth century Greek uses of the term philosophia to describe Indian intellectual and ascetic practices inform us about the practical connotation of the term.
2020. “Aristotle’s philosophêmata,” in Revisiting Aristotle’s Fragments (De Gruyter), 49–65.
Aristotle’s (three) uses of the term philosophêma does not refer – as usually thought – to his exoteric publications but, as “result of philosophizing,” to a new conception of concerted investigation.
2019. “Socrates in Aristotle’s history of philosophy,” in Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Socrates (Brill), 173–210.
Paradoxically, Socrates plays a fundamental role in Aristotle’s history of ethics and of metaphysics, but is not for him particularly a philosopher.
2019. With Christopher C. Raymond. “Critias of Athens.” Oxford Bibliographies.
An exhaustive account of the last two centuries of scholarship on this genre-inventing litterateur, associate of Socrates, and (eventually) political devil. 43pp, 193 entries.
2019. “Aristotle and philosophia,” Metaphilosophy 50, 339–60.
Reconstruction of ten distinct ways Aristotle thinks of philosophia, with consequences to understanding his Protrepticus and the putative relationships between philosophia and episteme.
2018. “Heraclitus and ‘Knowing Yourself,’” Ancient Philosophy 38:1, 1–22.
I argue for the authenticity and deep importance of fr. 116 DK, ἀνθρώποισι πᾶσι μέτεστι γινώσκειν ἑωυτοὺς καὶ σωφρονεῖν, ‘all people have a share in knowing themselves and being disciplined.’
2018. “Xenophon, ‘philosophy,’ and Socrates,” in Xenophon and Plato, Gabriel Danzig David Johnson, and Don Morrison, edd., Leiden: Brill, 128–64.
Xenophon never refers to Socrates as a philosopher, nor has Socrates do so; I explain this oddity by appeal to Xenophon’s apologetic goals and disinterestedness concerning the ‘history of philosophy.’
2018. “Xenophon’s Socratic Education in Memorabilia 4,” in Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue, Alessandro Stavru and Christopher Moore, edd. Leiden: Brill, 500–20.
Xenophon distinguishes between sôphrosunê and enkrateia in a way unfamiliar to scholarship, doing so in his complex treatment of Socrates’ sequential education in self-development.
2017. “Images of Knowing Oneself,” in Plato and Images, Pierre Destrée and Radcliffe Edmonds, edd., Leiden: Brill, 88–106. [Draft]
Plato’s images of the sort of self to know, and the procedure by which one knows it, are both necessary for self-knowledge and liable to block its effective completion.
2017. “Heracles the Philosopher (Herodorus fr. 14),” Classical Quarterly 67:1, 27–48
One of the earliest uses of philosophein, focused on desire-management, is found in a naturalizing historian probably influenced, I argue, by Antisthenes and his ‘inner citadel’ view of virtue.
2017. With Sam Frederick. “Narrative Constitution of Friendship.” Dialogue: Canadian Journal of Philosophy. 56:1, 111–130.
Thomas Bernhard’s Wittgenstein’s Nephew: A Friendship implies a view of friendship dependent on telling the story of the friends’ “living together” (suzên) against doubts that it’s a relationship of manipulation.
2016. “‘Philosophy’ in Plato’s Phaedrus,” Plato Journal 15, 59–80.
Plato does not here distinguish between Isocratean-commonplace and Platonic-erudite conceptions of philosophy; instead, some references focus on the practical form, others on epistemic justification.
2016. “Spartan philosophy and Sage wisdom in Plato’s Protagoras,” Epochê 20:2, 281–305. [Draft]
Socrates’ reading of Simonides’ ode to Scopas, and his faux-historical account of Spartan philosophy, point to the contrast between Protagoras’ and Socrates’ pedagogical methods: only one uses self-critique.
2015. “Socrates and self-knowledge in Aristophanes’ Clouds,” Classical Quarterly 65:2, 534–51. [Draft]
Usually considered a representative of diverse pre-Socratics, Aristophanes in fact unifies a quasi-realistic Socrates through a notion of self-criticism through acknowledgement of one’s principal desires.
2015. “Promêtheia (‘Forethought’) before Plato,” American Journal of Philology 136, 381–420 [Draft]
This early and unstudied epistemic term, absent in Aristotle, becomes Plato’s key word for rational reflection.
2015. “Socratic self-knowledge in Xenophon Mem. IV.2,” Classical Journal 110:4. [Draft] [a blogger’s useful summary]
Socrates argues that knowing oneself is not “knowing your powers” (as is usually thought) but both committing yourself to beliefs you can accept, and becoming just and therefore master of yourself.
2014. “Pindar’s Charioteer in Plato’s Phaedrus,” Classical Quarterly 64.2, 525-532. [Article]
The victory-ode Socrates cites shows the thematic importance of forethought and self-control as against the overtly lauded “philosophical mania.
2014. “Chaerephon the Socratic,” Phoenix 67:3/4, 284-300. [Article]
The presence of this oldest friend throughout the Socratic literature reveals an Athenian philosophical culture independent from if inspired by Socrates.
2014. “How to ‘Know Thyself’ in Plato’s Phaedrus,” Apeiron 47:3, 390-418. [Uncorrected proof]
Historical myth-rationalization models private self-examination as a minimalist, transformative conception of self-knowledge as knowledge of the good.
2014. “Arguing about the Immortality of the Soul in the Palinode of the Phaedrus,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 47:2, 179-208. [Uncorrected proofs]
The argument at 245c5-246a2 is intended to be invalid, equivocating on the nature of soul, immortality, and beginnings; this a lesson about critical attention to sequential inferences for speech-loving Phaedrus.
2013. “Socrates Psychagôgos (Birds 1555, Phaedrus 261a7),” Socratica III: Studies on Socrates, the Socratics, and the Ancient Socratic Literature, Livio Rossetti, Alessandro Stavru, Fulvia de Luise, edd., Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 41-55. [Article]
Aristophanes’ derision of Socrates as “soul-conjurer” is twisted by Plato in the Phaedrus into a cautionary note about the argumentative force of rhetoric.
2013. “Socrates Among the Mythographers,” Polis 30:1, 106-117. [Article]
Any analysis of Plato’s use of myth in the Phaedrus requires an appreciation both of his contemporary use of myth and a careful distinction between the use of myth and the use of any other form of language.
2013. “Deception and Knowledge in the Phaedrus,” Ancient Philosophy 33:1, 97-110. [Uncorrected proof]
Socrates’ argument that successful persuasion requires knowledge of everything is intentionally invalid; I also show why it is persuasive.
2012. “Socrates and Clitophon in the Platonic Clitophon,” Ancient Philosophy 32:2, 257-278. [Uncorrected proof]
The desire for and manifestation of justice coincide, contrary to the charge of the critic bemoaning Socrates’ incomplete practice.
2012. “Chaerephon, Telephus, and Diagnosis in Plato’s Gorgias,” Arethusa 45:2, 195-210. [Uncorrected proof]
That Socrates’ friend cites the Telephus myth about curing the wounds one has caused implies that philosophy differs from rhetoric in assessing the problems it intends to repair.
2012. “The Myth of Theuth in the Phaedrus,” in Plato and Myths, Catherine Collobert, Pierre Destrée, Francisco Gonzalez, edd., Leiden: Brill, 279-304. [Uncorrected proof]
The famed charge against “writing” is an argument against memorized composition and in favor of the practical wisdom in conversation Socrates demonstrates throughout the dialogue.
2012. “Appearance and Reality,” in The Continuum Companion to Plato, Gerald Press et al, edd., New York: Continuum, 135-137.
A metaphysical distinction provides a conceptual distinction in every department of the reflective life: ethics, epistemology, and physics.
2011. “Socratic Persuasion in the Crito,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19:6, 1021-1046. [Article]
Socrates’ device of the “Laws’ Speech” diagnoses Crito’s conflicting commitments to friendship’s dependence on and superiority to considerations of justice.
2008. “Socratic Persuasion,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota.
I explain Socrates’ paradoxical desire, as he puts it, to “persuade” his interlocutors (e.g., Apology 30a, Gorgias 493c, Phaedrus 260c, Republic Bk II 357b). This desire seems paradoxical because persuasion has heretofore been understood derisively, as an appeal to unreasoning emotion or as the production of epistemically-defective beliefs. I resolve this dilemma at the core of Socratic methodology and Platonic epistemology by construing persuasion not as a rhetorical trick but as a way to cause good decision under conditions of ignorance. Persuasion is therefore related to knowledge, which is the ground for reliably good decisions. Socrates persuades his interlocutors to decide to adopt certain procedures of investigation. These procedures are themselves partially constitutive of knowledge. By reworking a psychological problem as one of practical rationality and conversational technique, this dissertation reframes the contrast between Plato and the sophists, and retraces the connection between philosophy and pedagogy.
2007. “Between Persuasion and Coercion in Plato’s Republic,” Newsletter of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy.
The alternate pairing and contrasting of these two action-motivating forces undermines non-moral distinctions between them.
Reviews
review of C. Vassallo, The Presocratics and Herculaneum (De Gruyter), for Classical Review (2023)
review of D. Markovich, Promoting a New Kind of Education: Greek and Roman Philosophical Protreptic (Brill), for BMCR (2023)
review of M. Sharpe and F. Testa, The Selected Writings of Pierre Hadot: Philosophy as Practice (Bloomsbury), for BMCR (2022)
review of S. White, Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers: An Edited Translation (Cambridge), for BMCR (2022)
review of J. Mansfeld and D. Runia, Aëtiana: Volume 4 (Brill), for Classical Review (2021)
review of A. Gregory, Ionian Philosophies of Nature (Springer), for Classical Review (2021)
review of R. Seaford, The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and Ancient India (Cambridge), for BMCR (2021)
review of C. Huffman, Aristoxenus of Tarentum: The Pythagorean Precepts (Cambridge), for Journal of the History of Philosophy 59:1, 125–26 (2021)
review of P. Thibodeau, The Chronology of the Ancient Greek Natural Philosophers (Cosmographia), for BMCR (2020)
review of W. Prior, Socrates (Polity), for Teaching Philosophy 43:2, 211–14 (2020)
review of P. Mensch, Diogenes Laertius: Lives of the Eminent Philosophers (Oxford), for Classical Journal (2020)
review of T. Irani, Plato on the Value of Philosophy (Cambridge) (Ancient Philosophy 39:1, 238–43)
review of R. Reames, Logos before Rhetoric (South Carolina) (Rhetorica)
review of D. Silvermintz, Protagoras (Bloomsbury) (Polis)
review of R. Wallace, Reconstructing Damon: Music, Wisdom Teaching, and Politics in Perikles’ Athens (Polis)
review of U. Renz, Self-Knowledge: A History (Oxford) (BMCR)
review of A. Laks and G. Most, Early Greek Philosophy. 9 vol. Loeb Classical Library (Classical Journal)
review of G. Sermamoglou-Soulmaidi, Playful Philosophy and Serious Sophistry: A Reading of Plato’s Euthydemus (De Gruyter) (Classical Journal)
review of J. Collins, Exhortations to Philosophy: the Protreptics of Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle (Oxford) (Classical Journal)
review of E. Schiappa and D. Timmerman, Jebb’s Isocrates (Sophron Editor) (BMCR)
review of V. Suvák, ed., Antisthenica Cynica Socratica (BMCR)
review of D. Schur, Plato’s Wayward Path: Literary Form and the Republic (Center for Hellenic Studies) (Classical Journal)
review of R. Balot, Courage in the Democratic Polis: Ideology and Critique in Classical Athens (BMCR)
review of J.M. Van Ophuijsen, M. van Raalte, and P. Stork, edd., Protagoras of Abdera: The Man, His Measure (Polis)
review of P. Ryan, Plato: Phaedrus: A Commentary for Greek Readers (Classical Journal)
review of D. Werner, Myth and Philosophy in Plato’s Phaedrus (Polis)
review of C. Tarnopolsky, Prudes, Perverts, and Tyrants: Plato’s Gorgias and the Politics of Shame (Ancient Philosophy 33:1)
review of P. Destrée, F.-G. Hermann, edd., Plato and the Poets (Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 07.09)
review of C. Reeve, Blindness and Reorientation: Problems in Plato’s Republic
review of E. Jeremiah, The Emergence of Reflexivity in Greek Language and Thought
review of J. Bryan, Likeness and Likelihood in the Presocratics and Plato
review of L. Apfel, The Advent of Pluralism: diversity and conflict in the age of Sophocles
review of T. Blackson, Ancient Greek Philosophy
review of L. Castagnoli, Ancient Self-Refutation: the logic and history of the self-refutation argument from Democritus to Augustine
review of V. Bychkov and A. Sheppard, edd. Greek and Roman Aesthetics: Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy
review of M. Puchner, The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy
review of M. Schofield, ed., and T. Griffith, tr., Plato: Gorgias, Menexenus, Protagoras
review of W. Wians, ed. Logos and Muthos: Philosophical Essays in Greek Literature
review of S. Goldhill, ed. The End of Dialogue in Antiquity
review of A. Tschemplik, Knowledge and Self-Knowledge in Plato’s Theaetetus
review of J. Ober, Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens