Unlike many other "goodly states and kingdoms" (Keats), the United States have not as yet produced an epic poem widely known and recognizable as such in the context of the voluminous epic poetry of the past. In that light, I have been... more
Unlike many other "goodly states and kingdoms" (Keats), the United States have not as yet produced an epic poem widely known and recognizable as such in the context of the voluminous epic poetry of the past. In that light, I have been working on an American epic poem about the Battle of Gettysburg ("The Pennsylvaniad") in the hope of reaching what Stephen Vincent Benét called "their golden prey" in his "John Brown's Body." Benét tried to cover the entire Civil War in his poem; following Homer, I have restricted my focus, here to a single week, beginning with June 28, 1863.
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See "Books" section for an excerpt.
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Paper given at the Society for Classical Studies; Panel on Platonism and Natural Philosophy; Chicago, IL; January 7, 2024.
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Paper presented to the International Society for Socratic Studies.
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Paper has been uploaded.
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Presented on October 27, 2023 at the International Society for Socratic Studies conference in Rio de Janeiro on "Women in the Socratic Tradition."
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Damos a continuación el texto, en inglés y su traducción al español, de la conferencia que William H. F. Altman impartió el pasado 14 de septiembre de 2023 en el seminario permanente Los diálogos de la torre del Virrey, que forma parte de... more
Damos a continuación el texto, en inglés y su traducción al español, de la conferencia que William H. F. Altman impartió el pasado 14 de septiembre de 2023 en el seminario permanente Los diálogos de la torre del Virrey, que forma parte de los cursos que ofrece cada año La torre del Virrey. Instituto de Estudios Culturales Avanzados.
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Scott R. Hemmenway's review of Ascent to the Beautiful, including discussion of Plato's art of deception.
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Section §10 of Ascent to the Beautiful, including the sentence on p. 281 cited in Scott R. Hemmenway's Ancient Philosophy review on p. 545.
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Entry in Gerald Press and Mateo Duque (eds.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Plato (2022).
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A discount flyer from Rowman & Littlefield for "Plato and Demosthenes: Recovering the Old Academy." The "Academy" of the title is confined to Plato's school during his lifetime as revealed by his dialogues, not by Aristotle. It shows that... more
A discount flyer from Rowman & Littlefield for "Plato and Demosthenes: Recovering the Old Academy." The "Academy" of the title is confined to Plato's school during his lifetime as revealed by his dialogues, not by Aristotle. It shows that Speusippus, his successor, was the first to embrace Philip of Macedon, and thus to take the first step, expedient after Athens' defeat at the Battle of Chaeronea, in disjoining Plato from Demosthenes and other anti-Macedonian statesmen, a disjunction that continues to color our reception of the Platonic dialogues until today.
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Invited lecture given at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, October 21, 2022.
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Invited lecture given at Colby College; Waterville, Maine; September 30, 2022.
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The passage about the flaws of Cyrus the Great in Laws 3 has led scholars both ancient and modern to conclude, accurately, that Plato was responding to Xenophon’s Cyropaedia but they have erred in assuming that this response was critical.
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In suggesting that its last chapter’s purpose is to provoke the reader to begin reconsidering and thus rereading the book they have just read, this article attempts to negotiate the interpretive quarrel as to whether Xenophon’s Cyropaedia... more
In suggesting that its last chapter’s purpose is to provoke the reader to begin reconsidering and thus rereading the book they have just read, this article attempts to negotiate the interpretive quarrel as to whether Xenophon’s Cyropaedia deserves a “sunny” reading—in which Cyrus straightforwardly embodies Xenophon’s own political ideals—or a more critical “dark” one, that separates the author from his protagonist. To help us get the most advantage from the paideia his book was intended to provide, Xenophon made a “sunny” first reading plausible, but he also sowed in his text the kind of clues—especially with respect to pleonexia—that would reveal his full intentions only to those who reread his book.
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A paper offered to the New England Symposium for Ancient Philosophy; it introduces my forthcoming book: "The Relay Race of Virtue: Plato's Debts to Xenophon." See https://sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-Relay-Race-of-Virtue
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Paper delivered on July 22, 2022 at the International Plato Society's Symposium XIII on Plato's Sophist, hosted by Edward Halper of the University of Georgia.
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Essay in honor of Ed Halper, author of One and Many in Aristotle's Metaphysics. Published in Daniel Bloom, Laurence Bloom, and Miriam Byrd (eds.), Knowing and Being in Ancient Philosophy, 19-41 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).
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An argument for the authenticity of Xenophon's Constitution of the Athenians based on the distinction between the author and the speech's speaker, in this case, Alcibiades.
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In opposition to a eudaemonist reading of Plato’s Euthydemus that accepts uncritically Socrates’ claim that wisdom is the only good, this article points to the central role of philosophy in Lysis—where it is defined as in between wisdom... more
In opposition to a eudaemonist reading of Plato’s Euthydemus that accepts uncritically Socrates’ claim that wisdom is the only good, this article points to the central role of philosophy in Lysis—where it is defined as in between wisdom and ignorance—in reaching the true summit of Plato’s thought: the Idea of the Good.
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A compelling rejection of "the insufficiency of reason" interpretation of Plato's Gorgias.
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Not only was it a reference to Ismenias the Theban (Men. 90a4-5) that allowed nineteenth-century scholars to establish a date of composition for Plato’s Meno on the basis of Xenophon’s Hellenica but beginning with “Meno the Thessalian”... more
Not only was it a reference to Ismenias the Theban (Men. 90a4-5) that allowed nineteenth-century scholars to establish a date of composition for Plato’s Meno on the basis of Xenophon’s Hellenica but beginning with “Meno the Thessalian” himself, immortalized as a scoundrel in Xenophon’s Anabasis, all four of the characters in Plato’s dialogue are shown to have a Xenophontic resonances, thus revealing Meno to be Plato’s tombeau de Xénophon.
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Published version of a paper presented to the IPS in 2016.
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Published in Claudia Marsico (ed.), Socrates and the Socratic Philosophies: Selected Papers from SOCRATICA IV, 143-151 (Sankt Augustin: Academia, 2021).
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Paper to be presented for discussion at the New England Symposium for Ancient Philosophy, January 27, 2022.
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Some remarks on Straussians, Richard Ruderman's revealing essay on "the tyrannical temptation," and the advantages of in-person conferences.
Research Interests: Plato and Leo Strauss
In On Tyranny, Leo Strauss wrote about Xenophon’s Cyropaedia: “This work has never been studied by modern historians with even a small fraction of the care and concentration it merits and which is needed if it is to disclose its meaning.”... more
In On Tyranny, Leo Strauss wrote about Xenophon’s Cyropaedia: “This work has never been studied by modern historians with even a small fraction of the care and concentration it merits and which is needed if it is to disclose its meaning.” Thanks in part to his students, this is no longer true, and this article reviews the Straussian reception of the Cyropaedia between 1969 and 2015. But it begins with Strauss, who could scarcely have recognized the difficulties involved in disclosing “its meaning” unless that meaning had disclosed itself to him, and it is the elusive nature of that disclosure that has given his students the interpretive freedom to reach conclusions that are sometimes diametrically if not explicitly opposed to Strauss’s own. An investigation of those differences sheds light on both Strauss and his followers, and also on the distinction between Strauss’s interpretive methods and his political philosophy.
Research Interests: Xenophon and Leo Strauss
Paper delivered at the NPSA on November 12, 2021.Upholds Cicero’s repeated claim that Demosthenes was Plato's student and Quintilian’s proof, based on "the Marathon Oath," that he was.
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Paper presented to the Notre Dame Workshop on Ancient Philosophy on October 7, 2021. Vittorio Hösle responded, a signal honor.
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Paper given at the Literature and Philosophy Workshop at the University of Chicago; October 5, 2021.
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Clement of Alexandria preserved four important fragments of Xenophanes, three of them in a section of the Stromata devoted to Greek borrowing of Jewish ideas that also included a passage from Parmenides. Against the backdrop of... more
Clement of Alexandria preserved four important fragments of Xenophanes, three of them in a section of the Stromata devoted to Greek borrowing of Jewish ideas that also included a passage from Parmenides. Against the backdrop of intellectual structures that tend to make this pedigree unthinkable—one that configures Xenophanes as a pantheist, the other that separates him from Parmenides—this paper reconsiders the merits of Clement’s position.
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Paper delivered on July 21, 2021 in Lima, Peru at the International Plato Society Mid-Term Meeting on "Koinononia in Plato's Philosophy."
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Paper delivered at the International Xenophon Society; July 20, 2021.
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Paper delivered at the 5th Platonic Summer Seminar (Phaedrus / Φαῖδρος);
5-11 July, 2021; Lanckorona, Poland
5-11 July, 2021; Lanckorona, Poland
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Published in Avi I. Mintz (ed.), A History of Western Philosophy of Education (volume 1); In Antiquity, 75-95 (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).
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Celebrated by Quintilian as "Plato"s rival," the often-neglected Cicero not only illuminates the Roman reception of Plato but an important practical aspect of Platonic political thought. Using Pericles" Funeral Oration and the Gettysburg... more
Celebrated by Quintilian as "Plato"s rival," the often-neglected Cicero not only illuminates the Roman reception of Plato but an important practical aspect of Platonic political thought. Using Pericles" Funeral Oration and the Gettysburg Address as paradigms, "Cicero"s Practical Platonism: Brutus as Funeral Oration" argues for the Platonic origin of Cicero"s attempt to persuade philosophers like Brutus to master the art of rhetoric for a practical purpose. By means of a eulogy on the death of oratory and the Republic that engendered it, Cicero exhorts a contemporary audience to resist tyranny just as Plato"s Republic had persuaded its most insightful Roman reader to do.
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Crucial for separating Cicero from "Cicero" is the the latter's self-contradictory endorsement of the allegedly Socratic "I know that I know nothing." The results of this paper were recycled in "The Revival of Platonism in Cicero's Late... more
Crucial for separating Cicero from "Cicero" is the the latter's self-contradictory endorsement of the allegedly Socratic "I know that I know nothing." The results of this paper were recycled in "The Revival of Platonism in Cicero's Late Philosophy," especially in chapter 3 on Academica. Unfortunately, neither this article nor its results are cited in Tobias Reinhardt's recent commentary on the Academica despite the fact that he emphasizes my core claim regarding "Cicero the character." See especially Reinhardt 2023, cxlii-iii.
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A revised version later appeared as chapter 4 in "The Revival of Platonism in Cicero's Late Philosophy."
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Slipped one into the Straussian fold back in 2008; a revised version later appeared as chapter 7 in "The Revival of Platonism is Cicero's Late Philosophy."
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Paper delivered at the APA-Central Division, February 24, 2021. Basically an introduction to "the relay race model" of cooperation between Plato and Xenophon with specific attention to Hippias Major and Memorabilia 3.8.
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Building on Syme’s insights about Tacitus’ sympathy for Marcellus Eprius, and on Dylan Sailor’s work revealing the historian’s critical stance toward Helvidius Priscus, this article shows why the depiction of Mucianus is important for... more
Building on Syme’s insights about Tacitus’ sympathy for Marcellus
Eprius, and on Dylan Sailor’s work revealing the historian’s critical
stance toward Helvidius Priscus, this article shows why the
depiction of Mucianus is important for combining and confirming
these two important interpretive strands. Presented as
“kingmaker” to Vespasian, Mucianus —or rather Tacitus’ portrayal
of him — proves to be a crucial but neglected guide to the
methods and sympathies of the historian whose career depended
on the Flavian Dynasty and who chose to tell its story in his
Histories.
Eprius, and on Dylan Sailor’s work revealing the historian’s critical
stance toward Helvidius Priscus, this article shows why the
depiction of Mucianus is important for combining and confirming
these two important interpretive strands. Presented as
“kingmaker” to Vespasian, Mucianus —or rather Tacitus’ portrayal
of him — proves to be a crucial but neglected guide to the
methods and sympathies of the historian whose career depended
on the Flavian Dynasty and who chose to tell its story in his
Histories.
Research Interests: Roman History and Tacitus
An account of the first twenty days of January 2021 inspired by the ideal of Isocrates: “to go through ancient things in a novel way, and also to speak in a classic style concerning things that have only recently occurred.”
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Paper delivered November 28, 2020 at the 3rd Asia Regional Meeting of the International Plato Society,
"Image and Imagination in Plato."
"Image and Imagination in Plato."
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The close connection between the Straussian reception of Plato’s Hipparchus as described in this section from The Guardians on Trial (Lexington, 2016) and the views of the more radical followers of Vlastos like Terry Penner about the... more
The close connection between the Straussian reception of Plato’s Hipparchus as described in this section from The Guardians on Trial (Lexington, 2016) and the views of the more radical followers of Vlastos like Terry Penner about the self-interested character of “the philosophy of Socrates” may be of some interest to scholars in both camps, who have heretofore acknowledged little or no common ground not least of all because the latter do not regard Hipparchus as authentic. For the meaning of “basanistic pedagogy,” see “The Reading Order of Plato’s Dialogues” (article at this site), 22-28.
Research Interests: Plato and Leo Strauss
Once we realize that the indivisible and infinitely repeatable One of the arithmetic lesson in Republic7 is generated by διάνοια at Parmenides 143a6-9, it becomes possible to revisit the Divided Line’s Second Part and see that Aristotle’s... more
Once we realize that the indivisible and infinitely repeatable One of the arithmetic lesson in Republic7 is generated by διάνοια at Parmenides 143a6-9, it becomes possible to revisit the Divided Line’s Second Part and see that Aristotle’s error was not to claim that Plato placed Intermediates between the Ideas and sensible things but to restrict that
class to the mathematical objects Socrates merely used to explain it. All of the One-Over-Many Forms of Republic10 that Aristotle, following
Plato, attacked with the Third Man, are equally dependent on Images and above all on the Hypothesis of the One (Republic 510b4-8).
class to the mathematical objects Socrates merely used to explain it. All of the One-Over-Many Forms of Republic10 that Aristotle, following
Plato, attacked with the Third Man, are equally dependent on Images and above all on the Hypothesis of the One (Republic 510b4-8).
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Delivered in Portuguese, July 27, 2020; Plato's intention to create "a possession for eternity" required the survival not only of his own dialogues but of many other authors' works as well; this talk emphasizes Xenophon and, of course,... more
Delivered in Portuguese, July 27, 2020;
Plato's intention to create "a possession for eternity" required the survival not only of his own dialogues but of many other authors' works as well; this talk emphasizes Xenophon and, of course, Thucydides.
Plato's intention to create "a possession for eternity" required the survival not only of his own dialogues but of many other authors' works as well; this talk emphasizes Xenophon and, of course, Thucydides.
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Plato's intention to create "a possession for eternity" required the survival not only of his own dialogues but of many other authors' works as well; this talk emphasizes Xenophon and, of course, Thucydides.
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"Reflecting on the Heidegger Case" appears in Gregory Fried (ed.), Confronting Heidegger: A Critical Dialogue on Politics and Philosophy, 111-120 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2019).
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The four Bogotá lectures in Spanish, as delivered at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, October 21-25, 2019.
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An excerpt from Chapter 3 including the TOC
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Available at: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781666920062/Plato-and-Demosthenes-Recovering-the-Old-Academy
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Although written last, this is the first of five volumes devoted to Plato the Teacher and the Reading Order of his dialogues. Because it covers the elementary dialogues with which Plato introduced first-year students in the Academy to... more
Although written last, this is the first of five volumes devoted to Plato the Teacher and the Reading Order of his dialogues. Because it covers the elementary dialogues with which Plato introduced first-year students in the Academy to philosophy beginning with Alcibiades Major, this book must confront Schleiermacher’s influence, and the Introduction (“Schleiermacher and Plato”) is uploaded here. For the book itself, see https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781793615954/Ascent-to-the-Beautiful-Plato-the-Teacher-and-the-Pre-Republic-Dialogues-from-Protagoras-to-Symposium
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The second volume--fourth in Order of Composition--of Plato the Teacher, a reconstruction of the Reading Order of Plato's dialogues. This volume covers Lysis, Euthydemus, Laches, Charmides, Gorgias (subject of the excerpt uploaded here),... more
The second volume--fourth in Order of Composition--of Plato the Teacher, a reconstruction of the Reading Order of Plato's dialogues. This volume covers Lysis, Euthydemus, Laches, Charmides, Gorgias (subject of the excerpt uploaded here), Theages, Meno, and Cleitophon.
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Introduction
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Book IV; emphasis on Zarathustra and the First World War
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Introduction
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The central chapter; emphasis on Strauss's 1934 claim that National Socialism was "the Last Word in Secularization."
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Paper delivered at a Zoom session of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy on June 22, 2020. Thanks to Tony Preuss.
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Paper delivered at the Socratica IV conference in Buenos Aires. Now published (see above) as “Socrates in Plato’s Philebus” in Claudia Marsico (ed.), Socrates and the Socratic Philosophies: Selected Papers from SOCRATICA IV, 143-151... more
Paper delivered at the Socratica IV conference in Buenos Aires. Now published (see above) as “Socrates in Plato’s Philebus” in Claudia Marsico (ed.), Socrates and the Socratic Philosophies: Selected Papers from SOCRATICA IV, 143-151 (Sankt Augustin: Academia, 2021).
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Published version now appears above.
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Surprised by interest in "The Egyptian Question," I am uploading my first article, also on Rome; although out of date (written in 2000; see author's note on 3n2) it offers some insights into the relationship between Aeneas and Pallas in... more
Surprised by interest in "The Egyptian Question," I am uploading my first article, also on Rome; although out of date (written in 2000; see author's note on 3n2) it offers some insights into the relationship between Aeneas and Pallas in Virgil's Aeneid not found elsewhere.
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Rejected by two prestigious journals (CQ and AP) in 2014, and with most of it recycled into the first two sections of The Guardians in Action (2016), this unpublished draft may yet be of some value to someone who is interested in reading... more
Rejected by two prestigious journals (CQ and AP) in 2014, and with most of it recycled into the first two sections of The Guardians in Action (2016), this unpublished draft may yet be of some value to someone who is interested in reading Plato’s Timaeus without the assumption that Timaeus speaks for Plato.
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Now superseded by a revised version: "Parmenides B3 Revisited."
A visual aid described in the Introduction of "Ascent to the Good," xliv-xlvi.