Publications

Wisdom for the Living: Sophia in Plato’s Republic, Journal of the History of Philosophy, forthcoming.

In proposing an account of wisdom (sophia) in Republic, Plato is intervening in a longstanding debate about the nature of the highest intellectual virtue for a human being and the authority and prestige that a legitimate claim to wisdom ought to confer to its possessors. Despite its historical and philosophical significance, wisdom has received limited scholarly attention. This paper offers an account of wisdom in Republic. I reject the prima facie attractive interpretation that in Republic, wisdom is identical to knowledge of Forms. Rather, wisdom of the city (or soul) is the ability to make good judgments, by the standard of the Forms, about how the whole city (soul) would best fare. I consider implications of this account for understanding Plato’s disagreement with the conception of wisdom that he attributes to Protagoras, the Two World's dispute about epistēmē, and Plato’s view of the limitations of human wisdom.

The Myth of Cronus in Plato’s Statesman: Cosmic Rotation and Earthly Correspondence (with Corinne Gartner). Apeiron 53.4: 437-462 (2017)​​.  [Link]

The cosmological myth in Plato’s Statesman has generated several longstanding scholarly disputes, among them a controversy concerning the number and nature of the cosmic rotation cycles that it depicts. According to the standard interpretation, there are two cycles of rotation: west-to-east rotation occurs during the age of Cronus, and east-to-west rotation occurs during the age of Zeus, which is also our present era. Recent readings have challenged this two-cycle interpretation, arguing that the period of rotation opposed to our own is governed neither by Cronus nor by Zeus, but is instead a separate rotational cycle during which chaos reigns before a divine ruler reestablishes control. We introduce a new constraint on any plausible interpretation of the myth. According to the Correspondence Principle, changes in fundamental cyclical processes that shape the way of life on earth (mode of generation, growth, aging, and mode of death) occur if and only if there is a change in the direction of cosmic rotation. We use the Correspondence Principle to defend a version of the standard two-cycle interpretation.

In Progress

Monograph: Wisdom in Plato’s Republic

The virtue, wisdom, is central to Plato’s project in Republic, to its unity as a work, to its epistemology, and to its political theory. For example, one of Republic’s chief political claims is that in the ideal political constitution, only those who are wise should assume political power. Plato’s defense of this view centers on his account of wisdom, the virtue of the philosopher-guardians. Despite its importance, wisdom in Republic has not received any sustained attention. The vast literature on Republic’s political theory and epistemology do not offer a careful treatment of the virtue, companions to the dialogue (e.g. The Cambridge Companion, The Blackwell Guide) lack any focused discussion of the topic, and even otherwise highly systematic treatments of wisdom in Ancient Greek philosophical thought, such as Cooper’s Pursuits of Wisdom, skip over wisdom in Plato. My monograph situates Plato’s contribution in a wider and longstanding dispute about wisdom, reconstructs the theory of wisdom in the Republic, locates it within the its broader epistemology and moral psychology of the dialogue, and draws out the implications of this theory for Platonic political philosophy. As I show, wisdom is a key concept for Plato: it is at least as central to his thinking as knowledge (epistēmē) and philosophy (philosophia). Once we read Republic with an eye to this theory of wisdom, key challenges to Plato’s epistemology and political theory are resolved, and the structure of the dialogue comes clearly into view.

A paper on Aristotle’s theory of justice (under review)

A paper on the use of Forms as models in the Republic

A paper on how Aristotle ranks different kinds of knowledge

A paper on the system of modes in Sextus’ Outlines