Christopher Moore | early greek philosophy

★Stobaeus

Under contract to Oxford UP is the first English translation of Stobaeus’ Anthology (Books 3–4) – I am the general editor, and have commissioned a number of scholarly experts to translate the various authors represented therein. The grandest “guide to life” ever produced Fifteen centuries ago, a Macedonian named John had two related problems:…

★The Virtue of Agency

Coming in 2023 from Oxford UP, The Virtue of Agency: Sôphrosunê and Self-Constitution in Classical Greece. Among the cardinal virtues of classical Greece – wisdom, courage, justice, piety, and sôphrosunê – sôphrosunê is the least understood or valued. But, as this book shows – studying the vigorous and wide-ranging debates about the virtue, across fifth-…

★Socrates and Self-Knowledge

Published by Cambridge U.P. in 2015, Socrates and Self-Knowledge, now available in inexpensive paperback, and previewable on Google, has now been reviewed in the following journals: Classical Philology (A. Callard) Philosophical Quarterly (B. Hennig) Phronesis (D. Scott) Revue de Philologie (P. Pontier) Polis (T. Brickhouse) Ancient Philosophy (W. Prior) Classical Journal (B. Norton) Plato Journal…

★Calling Philosophers Names

Available since the end of 2019, my new book with Princeton University Press, Calling Philosophers Names: On the Origins of a Discipline (amazon.com). For an interview about the book with the Irish Times, see here: “What’s so funny about philosophers.” Here’s the official marketing copy: An original and provocative book that illuminates the origins of…

★Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue

In 2018, my co-editor Alessandro Stavru and I published Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue, in forty chapters plus introduction. (I contributed the chapter on Xenophon’s Memorabilia Book 4, where Socrates’ “curriculum” is set out.) It serves as a companion to my Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Socrates. This volume focuses on the vast range…

★Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Socrates

Available since mid-2019, Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Socrates, comprising 1030 pages, contains 36 articles providing a nearly unbroken 2350 years of philosophical / para-philosophical reception of Socrates, a paradigm of moral discipline and cognitive perspicacity, revealing a figure of practically unparalleled influence — of an amazing varied sort — on the history of…

Creolizing the Greeks

Over the first Friday and Saturday in November 2022, my colleague Eduardo Mendieta and I will host at Penn State–University Park a conference on “Creolizing the Greeks.” Our participants are following the hypothesis that the framework of creolizing – best known in contexts of recent Caribbean philosophy – illuminates much that is worth studying about…

The _[Rival] Lovers_

The Platonic dialogue Anterastai or Erastai (Rival Lovers or Lovers) is the only extant Socratic dialogue explicitly concerned about the nature of philosophia. (Aristotle’s fragmentary Protrepticus, perhaps also a dialogue, but not Socratic, is about the same topic.) Understanding of the dialogue has been slowed by several considerations. (i) Many scholars suspect that it is…

Critias Conference: 10–11 May 2019

With the collaborationist Chris Raymond (Vassar), I am organizing a Penn State conference on the life, fragmentary works, and reception of Critias of Athens, for 10-11 May 2019. (This is only the second such conference known to us, and the only to aim at exhaustiveness.) Through eight seminars over two days, led and joined by…