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16Plato's Philebus: A Philosophical Discussion (edited book)Oxford University Press. 2019.This is the inaugural volume of the Plato Dialogue Project: it offers the first collective study of the Philebus - a high point of philosophical ethics, containing some of Plato's most sophisticated discussions of human happiness. The contributors work through the text, discussing pleasure, knowledge, philosophical method, and the human good.
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10A.W. Price, Virtue and Reason in Plato and Aristotle , xii + 356 pp., $85.00. ISBN 9780199609611 (review)Polis 30 (1): 122-126. 2013.
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35Virtue and Self-Interest in Xenophon’s Memorabilia 3.9.4–5Classical Quarterly 68 (1): 79-90. 2018.Are people at bottom motivated entirely by self-interest? Or do they act only sometimes out of self-interest, and sometimes for other reasons—say, to help out a friend for her own sake, with no expectation of being benefitted in return? Scholars have often thought they could discern in the works of classical Greek thinkers a commitment to psychological egoism, the thesis that one is motivated to act only by considerations of the expected benefits and harms that will accrue to oneself. For instan…Read more
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4Plato's Guide to Living with Your BodyIn John E. Sisko (ed.), Philosophy of Mind in Antiquity: The History of the Philosophy of Mind, Volume 1, Routledge. pp. 84-100. 2017.In the Phaedo, Socrates offers recommendations for living a philosophical life. We argue that those recommendations can be properly understood only in light of Socrates’ account of the soul’s true nature, considered separately from the body. Embodiment causes the soul to diverge from its proper end, the pursuit of knowledge. Bodily pleasures, pains, and desires divert the soul to other ends, distract its attention away from knowledge, and deceive it about what is true. Socrates’ recommended sol…Read more
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156Escapism and luckReligious Studies 43 (2): 205-216. 2007.I argue that the problem of religious luck posed by Zagzebski poses a problem for the theory of hell proposed by Buckareff and Plug, according to which God adopts an open-door policy toward those in hell. Though escapism is not open to many of the criticisms Zagzebski raises against potential solutions to the problem of luck, escapism fails to solve the problem: it merely pushes luck forward into the afterlife. I suggest a hybrid solution to the problem which combines escapism and the claim that…Read more
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160Truth and Contradiction in Aristotle’s De Interpretatione 6-9Phronesis 55 (1): 26-67. 2010.In De Interpretatione 6-9, Aristotle considers three logical principles: the principle of bivalence, the law of excluded middle, and the rule of contradictory pairs (according to which of any contradictory pair of statements, exactly one is true and the other false). Surprisingly, Aristotle accepts none of these without qualification. I offer a coherent interpretation of these chapters as a whole, while focusing special attention on two sorts of statements that are of particular interest to Aris…Read more
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146Wisdom and Happiness in Euthydemus 278–282Philosophers' Imprint 13. 2013.Plato’s Socrates is often thought to hold that wisdom or virtue is sufficient for happiness, and Euthydemus 278-282 is often taken to be the locus classicus for this sufficiency thesis in Plato’s dialogues. But this view is misguided: Not only does Socrates here fail to argue for, assert, or even implicitly assume the sufficiency thesis, but the thesis turns out to be hard to square with the argument he does give. I argue for an interpretation of the passage that explains the central importance …Read more
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172Rational and nonrational desires in meno and protagorasAnalytic Philosophy 53 (2): 224-233. 2012.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |