University of Minnesota
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2008
APA Eastern Division
Areas of Specialization
Aristotle
Plato
Socrates
Socratics
Areas of Interest
Aristotle
Plato
Socrates
Socratics
  •  1
    The Fourth-Century Creative Reception of the Sophists
    In Joshua Billings & Christopher Moore (eds.), The Cambridge companion to the Sophists, Cambridge University Press. 2023.
  •  30
    The Cambridge companion to the Sophists (edited book)
    with Joshua Billings
    Cambridge University Press. 2023.
    A comprehensive introduction to the Classical Greek sophists, placing them afresh in their cultural context. These public figures, such as Protagoras and Gorgias, were wide-ranging experts before discipline-specialization, and represent the flourishing of linguistic, historical, and philosophical reflection in the time of Socrates.
  •  7
    Sôphrosunê ("self-discipline") is the often-forgotten sibling of justice, wisdom, courage, and piety in discussions of canonical Greek virtues. Christopher Moore shows that during the classical period it was the object of significant debate--about its scope, its feel, its practical manifestations, and its value. By interpreting sôphrosunê as a commitment to norm-following, we see that these pointed discussions of the virtue, previously ignored as parodic moralizing or expressions of political pr…Read more
  •  20
    Promêtheia as Rational Agency in Plato
    Apeiron 54 (1): 89-107. 2020.
    The Greeks knew a virtue term that represented the ability to determine which norms deserved commitment, a virtue term usually misunderstood as “prediction of likely outcomes” or “being hesitant”:promêtheia. Plato’s uses of this term, almost completely ignored by scholarship, show a sensitivity to the prerequisites for the capacity for rational agency. We must add this virtue term to the usual suspects related to acting as a rational agent:sôphrosunê, dikaiosunê, phrônesis, andsophia.Promêtheias…Read more
  •  25
    Heracles the philosopher
    Classical Quarterly 67 (1): 27-48. 2017.
    Among our earliest extant references to the word ‘philosophize’ is an unfamiliar one, from the mythographer Herodorus of Pontic Heraclea, whose son Bryson associated with Plato and Aristotle. A Byzantine compiler quotes Herodorus, probably from his book on Heracles, as saying that his hero ‘philosophized until death’. This is a surprising claim in light of the fifth/fourth-centuryb.c.view of Heracles as long-toiling but not intellectual. Euripides'Licymniuscharacterizes him as ‘unimpressive and …Read more
  •  1
  •  11
    The Pythagorean Precepts (How to Live a Pythagorean Life) by Aristoxenus of Tarentum
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 59 (1): 145-146. 2021.
    Like his fellow first-generation Peripatetic Theophrastus, Aristoxenus wrote an extraordinary number of works. Many concerned music; one on Socrates contained evidence independent of Plato and Xenophon. At least five concerned Pythagoreanism: The Life of Pythagoras, On Pythagoras and His Associates, On the Pythagorean Way of Life, Life of Archytas, and the Pythagorean Precepts. This last one, as Carl Huffman...
  •  8
    'Philosophy' in Plato's Phaedrus
    Plato Journal 15 59-79. 2015.
  •  13
    An original and provocative book that illuminates the origins of philosophy in ancient Greece by revealing the surprising early meanings of the word "philosopher" Calling Philosophers Names provides a groundbreaking account of the origins of the term philosophos or "philosopher" in ancient Greece. Tracing the evolution of the word's meaning over its first two centuries, Christopher Moore shows how it first referred to aspiring political sages and advice-givers, then to avid conversationalists ab…Read more
  •  43
    Brill's Companion to the Reception of Socrates, edited by Christopher Moore, provides three-dozen studies of nearly 2500 continuous years of philosophical and literary engagement with Socrates as innovative intellectual, moral exemplar, and singular Athenian.
  •  56
    Narrative Constitution of Friendship
    with Samuel Frederick
    Dialogue 56 (1): 111-130. 2017.
    We argue that friendship is constituted in the practice of narration, not merely identifi ed through psychological or sociological criteria. We show that whether two people have, as Aristotle argues, ‘lived together’ in ‘mutually acknowledged goodwill’ can be determined only through a narrative reconstruction of a shared past. We demonstrate this with a close reading of Thomas Bernhard’s Wittgenstein’s Nephew: A Friendship (1982). We argue that this book provides not only an illustration b…Read more
  •  8
    Review Article: Socrates Among the Mythographers
    Polis: The Journal for Ancient Greek Political Thought 30 (1): 106-118. 2013.
  •  22
  •  24
    Aristotle on Philosophia
    Metaphilosophy 50 (3): 339-360. 2019.
    Aristotle uses philosophia (and philosophos, philosophein, philosophôs, sumphilosophein, philosophêteon) in at least ten senses across his oeuvre, as this first study of every instance in his writings reveals. Irrespective of the specific approaches of its practitioners, philosophia may be, for example, an exercise of cleverness; or leisurely study; or the desire to know; or the pursuit of fundamental explanation; or a historically extended discipline. This variety allows us to go some way in re…Read more
  •  12
    'Philosophy' in Plato's Phaedrus
    Plato Journal 15 59-79. 2015.
    The Phaedrus depicts the Platonic Socrates’ most explicit exhortation to ‘philosophy’. The dialogue thereby reveals something of his idea of its nature. Unfortunately, what it reveals has been obscured by two habits in the scholarship: to ignore the remarks Socrates makes about ‘philosophy’ that do not arise in the ‘Palinode’; and to treat many of those remarks as parodies of Isocrates’ competing definition of the term. I remove these obscurities by addressing all fourteen remarks about ‘philoso…Read more
  •  48
    Heraclitus and ‘Knowing Yourself’
    Ancient Philosophy 38 (1): 1-21. 2018.
  •  10
    Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue (edited book)
    with Alessandro Stavru
    Brill. 2017.
    _Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue_ provides the most complete study of the immediate literary reaction to Socrates, by his contemporaries and the first-generation Socratics, and of the writings from Aristotle to Proclus addressing Socrates and the literary work he inspired.
  •  71
    Socratic Persuasion in the Crito
    British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19 (6): 1021-1046. 2011.
    Socrates does not use the Laws' Speech in the Crito principally to persuade Crito to accept his coming execution. It is used instead to persuade Crito to examine and work on his inadequate view of justice. Crito's view of justice fails to coordinate one's duties to friends and those to the law. The Laws' Speech accomplishes this persuasive goal by accompanying Crito’s earlier speech. Both start from the same view of justice, one that Crito accepts, but reach opposing conclusions. Crito cannot ju…Read more
  •  71
    Clitophon and Socrates in the Platonic Clitophon
    Ancient Philosophy 32 (2): 257-278. 2012.
  • The myth of Theuth in the Phaedrus
    In Catherine Collobert, Pierre Destrée & Francisco J. Gonzalez (eds.), Plato and Myth: Studies on the Use and Status of Platonic Myths, Brill. 2012.