Northwestern University
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 2008
APA Eastern Division
Middletown, Connecticut, United States
  •  532
    Reason and Value in Plato
    Philosophy and Literature 36 (2): 378-390. 2012.
    I begin with a puzzle. According to some scholars, Plato’s view that the forms possess value as objects of desire gives rise to a problem in his metaphysics: how can forms of injustice and ugliness be considered desirable? To resolve this puzzle, I focus on Plato’s views on eros and argue that the philosopher’s love of forms is best understood as a kind of rational compulsion. Approaching the puzzle from this direction gives us an idea of how Plato’s forms might be viewed as value laden. It also…Read more
  •  353
    Perfect Change in Plato's Sophist
    Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 60 45-93. 2022.
    This paper examines how Plato’s rejection of the friends of the forms at 248a–249b in the Sophist is continuous with the arguments that he develops shortly after this part of the dialogue for the interrelatedness of the forms. I claim that the interrelatedness of the forms implies that they are changed, and that this explains Plato’s rejection of the friends of the forms. Much here turns on the kind of change that Plato wants to attribute to the forms. I distinguish my view of the sort of change…Read more
  •  136
    Plato was the first philosopher in the Western tradition to reflect systematically on rhetoric. In this book, Tushar Irani presents a comprehensive and innovative reading of the Gorgias and the Phaedrus, the only two Platonic dialogues to focus on what an art of argument should look like, treating each of the texts individually, yet ultimately demonstrating how each can best be understood in light of the other. For Plato, the way in which we approach argument typically reveals something about ou…Read more
  •  136
    This paper reevaluates the role of Adeimantus in Book 2 of Plato's Republic, arguing that his challenge to Socrates' view of justice—specifically, his interest in the influence of the outer world on our inner lives—serves a crucial yet underappreciated purpose in initiating the political project of the work. I suggest that it's due to Adeimantus' contribution in the Republic that Plato's wide-ranging inquiry into issues in ethics, politics, psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics hangs togethe…Read more
  •  98
    The Purpose of Rhetorical Form in Plato
    In Proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium Platonicum Pragense on Plato’s Gorgias, . forthcoming.
    This paper explores Plato’s views on the purpose of rhetorical form by surveying the way in which Socrates engages in speechmaking at several points in the Gorgias. I argue that Socrates has nothing in principle against the use of a long speech as part of the practice of philosophical inquiry and argument, provided that the speech is geared toward understanding. This reflects a key and relatively unremarked distinction that Socrates makes in the Gorgias between persuasion that comes from being c…Read more
  •  47
    Socrates's Great Speech: The Defense of Philosophy in Plato's Gorgias
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 59 (3): 349-369. 2021.
    This paper focuses on a neglected portion of Plato’s Gorgias from 506c to 513d during Socrates’s discussion with Callicles. I claim that Callicles adopts the view that virtue lies in self-preservation in this part of the dialogue. Such a position allows him to assert the value of rhetoric in civic life by appealing not to the goodness of acting unjustly with impunity, but to the badness of suffering unjustly without remedy. On this view, the benefits of the life of rhetoric depend on the idea th…Read more
  •  16
    In the ancient world, philosophy was understood to be a practical guide for living, or even itself a way of life. For philosophers today to ignore this dimension of philosophy is not to ignore an accidental subset of the subject that can be divorced from its essential nature - it is to ignore philosophy itself. The articulation of philosophy as a way of life and its pedagogical implementation advances the love of wisdom; it is not merely an addendum to it. But how might we convey the love of wis…Read more
  •  14
    Introduction
    Metaphilosophy 51 (2-3): 161-165. 2020.
    This is an Introduction to the special issue of Metaphilosophy entitled Philosophy as a Way of Life, giving a brief account of the genesis of the project, an overview of the topic, and a summary of the topics covered in the issue.
  •  1
    Introduction
    with James M. Ambury and Andkathleen Wallace
    In James M. Ambury, Tushar Irani & Kathleen Wallace (eds.), Philosophy as a way of life: historical, contemporary, and pedagogical perspectives, Wiley. pp. 1-4. 2020.
    This is an Introduction to the special issue of Metaphilosophy entitled Philosophy as a Way of Life, giving a brief account of the genesis of the project, an overview of the topic, and a summary of the topics covered in the issue.
  • Introduction
    In James M. Ambury, Tushar Irani & Kathleen Wallace (eds.), Philosophy as a way of life: historical, contemporary, and pedagogical perspectives, Wiley. 2020.