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Ancient Philosophy

Northwestern has a large and lively community of scholars working on ancient philosophy in philosophy and classics.

 

Core Faculty

David Ebrey

(Philosophy): ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle

Sara Monoson

(Political Science and Classics): Plato’s political philosophy, ancient political theory, and their reception.

Richard Kraut

(Philosophy and Classics): moral and political philosophy in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle

John Wynne

(Classics): Hellenistic and Roman philosophy, especially Stoicism and skepticism

 

Additional Faculty

Faculty with a very strong secondary interest in ancient:

Baron Reed

(Philosophy): Ancient epistemology

John Schafer

(begins Fall 2010) (Classics): Stoicism and Roman philosophy

Ken Seeskin

(Philosophy): Socrates and Plato

 

Graduate Program

Typically, the department admits at least one graduate student a year interested in ancient philosophy and, with some frequency, other graduate students switch to this as their primary focus. Moreover, a number of other graduate students have a strong secondary interest in ancient philosophy and know ancient Greek or Latin.

Graduate students can have a formal link to the classics department through the Classical Traditions Initiative.

Graduate students can take courses from University of Chicago and University of Illinois at Chicago through the Chicago Area Consortium in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy. They can also have faculty from these institutions on their dissertation committee.

For more information about the philosophy department’s graduate program, click here.

 

Activities

In addition to graduate seminars, there are a number of other regular activities.

There are Greek reading group meets weekly to read a work chosen by the graduate students. There is also a regular Latin reading group. Current participants in the Greek Reading group:

Christina Carrillo Cañas, David Ebrey, Lee Goldsmith, Haewon Jeon, Richard Kraut, Amy Lather, Oksana Maksymchuk, Hung Nguyen, Adam Ring, Luke Rouser, Hank Southgate, Daniel Tovar, and John Wynne.

There is an ancient philosophy workshop where graduate students, faculty, and visiting faculty can present their work.

The Chicago Area Consortium in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy puts on a major conference every two years. Our next conference will be on October 1-2, 2010. The consortium also meets monthly to discuss one of the faculty’s work in progress.

Northwestern holds a conference on the years when the Consortium does not. The next conference (May 14, 2010) is called “Ordinary Virtue” and will focus on the ethics of non-ideal agents.

 

If you have any questions about the program, do not hesitate to contact one of the faculty members listed above.