VISITING SCHOLARS AT THE KEELING CENTRE
The Keeling Centre hosts visiting scholars who work in ancient philosophy.
PROF. SEAN KELSEY (Notre Dame, IN)
Visiting Researcher, Keeling Centre for Ancient Philosophy, Jan–June 2024
Sean Kelsey is Rev. John A. O'Brien College Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. His publications include ‘Truth and value in Plato’s Republic’ (Philosophy 88 (2013): 197-218), ‘Empty words’ (in D. Ebrey (ed.), Theory and Practice in Aristotle’s Natural Science (Cambridge, 2015)), ‘Limited Government in Plato’s Republic’ (Philosophia [Athens] 47 (2017), 50-70.), and Mind and World in Aristotle's De Anima (Cambridge, 2022). He also co-edited Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption Book II. Introduction, Translation, and Interpretative Essays (Cambridge, 2022).
DR. BEATRICE LIENEMANN
Visiting Researcher, Keeling Centre for Ancient Philosophy,
Nov–Dec 2023
Béatrice Lienemann is a visitor to the Keeling Centre in the Autumn Term of 2022. She is a Professor of Philosophy at the Institut für Philosophie,
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU) Erlangen-Nürnberg. She earned her PhD in Philosophy at Universität Hamburg. Béatrice has published on a wide range of issues in Plato and Aristotle, including the rationality of women in Aristotle and pros heauto predication in Plato's Parmenides. She also has a research interest in contemporary metaphysics.
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DR. ANGELO GIAVATTO
Visiting Researcher, Keeling Centre for Ancient Philosophy,
Jan–June 2023
Angelo Giavatto is a visitor to the Keeling Centre from January to June 2023. After studying in Italy, Germany, UK and France, he is currently University Lecturer (maître de conférences) at the University of Nantes and Junior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. His research activity concerns Plato and the Platonic tradition, Stoicism (in particular Roman Stoicism), Ancient Grammar and Philosophy of Language as well as Greek Philology. He published a monograph on Marcus Aurelius (Interlocutore di se stesso. La dialettica di Marco Aurelio, Olms, 2008), two commented translations, three edited collections and about thirty articles, chapters in edited collections and reviews. At present, he is interested in the question of mortality within the broader framework of Ancient Philosophical Anthropology. He is also planning collaborative research in the field of comparative ancient philosophy (Ancient Greek philosophy and Buddhism). He is currently completing a book on Plato’s notion of μηχανή and a commented translation of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations.
DR. ALLISON MURPHY
Visiting Researcher, Keeling Centre for Ancient Philosophy, Sept 2022–July 2023
Dr. Allison Murphy's research is primarily concerned with Plato and Aristotle’s ethical and political thought. At present she is working on a three-part project that takes Nicomachean Ethics IX.9’s final account of why the good person needs friends as key to Aristotle’s view of the role of friendship in the flourishing life. The first piece examines the account’s use of the term sunaisthēsis, arguing that it refers to a synoptic form of perception that simultaneously grasps something as both good and one’s own. The good person has such a perception of his friend’s life when they live together (suzen), sharing in collaborative activities of virtue. The second piece examines the significance of Aristotle’s designation of IX.9’s final account as “more natural” (physikoteron) than the directly preceding, utility-based considerations. It argues that the final account appeals to a natural principle of self-preservation that belongs to non-defective life activities as such, and it further explores the relationship between this principle and the later Stoic doctrine of oikeiōsis. The final piece argues that active friendship is not the realization of a particular “friend-directed” virtue but rather a communal form of the eudaimonia under discussion in the rest of the Ethics.
She also has an interest in Plato’s Gorgias, with a forthcoming piece on the dialogue’s exploration of the limitations of argument shorn of commitment to guiding normative principles. In future she hopes to turn to an independent project on two competing visions of the divine in the Republic.
PROF. RACHEL BARNEY (Toronto)
Honorary Professor, Department of Philosophy, 2020-2021
Visitor, Keeling Centre for Ancient Philosophy, 2020-2021
Rachel Barney was a visitor to the Keeling Centre in 2020-2021. She is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Classical Philosophy, affiliated with both the Classics Department and the Philosophy Department, at the University of Toronto. She was an undergraduate at University of Toronto, and returned in 2003 after earning a PhD at Princeton and teaching at the University of Ottawa, Harvard, and the University of Chicago. Her research has ranged from the early sophists to the late Neoplatonic commentator Simplicius, but has always focussed on Plato. Her particular interest is in areas where questions of ethics, psychology, epistemology, and philosophical method meet, as in Plato’s theory of the good.
Prof. Barney’s current research involves three projects: a book on the sophist Protagoras, a monograph on the politics of Plato’s Republic (based on her Nellie Wallace Lectures at Oxford in 2022), and Tanner Lectures to be delivered at UC Berkeley in spring 2024. As Keeling Scholar, she will give a seminar on the theme of the Tanner Lectures: the idea of craft [techne]. The seminar will attempt to explicate and assess Plato’s idea of a craft as a skilled practice oriented to a good and governed by internal norms, with complex relations to virtue, happiness, and politics. In addition to Plato, Protagoras, and Aristotle, reference will be made to relevant modern philosophers such as MacIntyre, Korsgaard, and Murdoch, and to ideas of craft and virtue in Chinese philosophy.
DR. TIMOTHY CLARKE (Berkeley)
Honorary Senior Lecturer, Department of Philosophy, 2020-2021
Visitor, Keeling Centre for Ancient Philosophy, 2020-2021
Dr. Timothy Clarke did his PhD at Yale University and is Associate Professor of Philosophy at UC Berkeley. His research interests are in ancient Greek philosophy, particularly metaphysics, epistemology, and natural philosophy. HIs articles include 'The Argument from Relatives (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2012) and 'Aristotle and the Ancient Puzzle about Coming to Be' (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 2015). His book, Aristotle and the Eleatic One, was recently published by Oxford University Press.