I teach and research ancient Greek philosophy, and occasionally other things, in the Departments of Philosophy and Classics at the University of Toronto. My research is for the most part on issues of ethics and moral psychology, epistemology, and philosophical method. I’m particularly interested in Plato and in the 5th-century thinkers whose philosophical project is the crucial background to his: the sophists. Above all, I’m somewhat obsessed with the concept of craft [technê], both in Plato’s work and as we (might) use it today. This is the topic of my 2024 Tanner Lectures on Human Values at UC Berkeley, entitled The Authority of Craft, which I’m currently working on turning into a book. My other major projects are a book on the political ideas of Plato’s Republic, drawing on my Nellie Wallace Lectures at Oxford (2022); and a comprehensive study of the thought of the first and greatest of the ancient sophists, Protagoras.
If you are interested in studying ancient philosophy at the University of Toronto — and you should be! — check out the websites of the Classics Department, Philosophy Department, and Collaborative Specialization in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. Graduate students in other countries should look into our International Visiting Graduate Student programme.
If you’re interested in reading some of my work, a large selection of it is posted on, unsurprisingly, the ‘Publications’ page. Many of these papers fall into clusters on the interests listed above: eg, my paper on Socratic intellectualism and the method of hypothesis is about a tangle of problems where method and moral psychology meet in Plato’s early dialogues. I’ve written several articles on Plato’s conception of the Good: one on the good as the object of our desire, one on the closely related concept of the fine, kalon, one on Aristotle’s attacks on the Form of the Good, one on the ranking of goods in the Philebus, and yet another on how Plato’s thinking about the good is intertwined with an debate about the status of rhetoric, which stretches from Aristophanes to Aristotle and beyond. On technê, there’s a paper on Plato’s uses of craft as a model for virtue, a discussion of measurement (central to craft on Plato’s view) in the Statesman, another on Aristotle’s function argument which focusses on the neglected role of technê there, and another on the arguments between Socrates and Thrasymachus in Republic I (ditto).
I think it’s crucial to discuss Plato with due attention to his complicated strategies as a writer, including his use of genre, the formal properties of his works, and his distinctive use of language. This was a focus of my thesis and my resultant two papers and book on the Cratylus. There’s also a paper on ring-composition in the Republic, and one on Plato’s central uses of ‘qua’ terminology. Other papers on the Republic include one on the ‘City of Pigs’, one on tripartition in the soul, a study of ambiguity in the allegory of the Cave, and an argument that the Republic is not a Utopia. On the sophists, there’s a survey article on the sophistic movement, a paper on the argumentation of Gorgias’ Helen, and, as promissory notes for my book, two published papers and an old unpublished one on Protagoras.
Miscellaneous topics which have caught my eye over the years (mostly again with a view to philosophical methodology) include Aristotle’s Metaphysics A, Simplicius’ ‘harmonization’ of Plato and Aristotle, Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, tensions and problems in Stoic ethical theory, Kant’s theory of the the highest good (that again), and Aristotle’s (or somebody’s) long-lost opusculum On Trolling.
Unpublished papers which I might some day go back to are also uploaded to the relevant page: topics include Sextus Empiricus, the Presocratic Hippo, and the question, ‘Why Study the History of Philosophy?’. Feel free to send comments and suggestions on these.
I’ve also uploaded, to the ‘Teaching‘ page, some old syllabi and the like for courses which I enjoyed; feel free to make whatever use of them you like, and to get in touch about common teaching interests.
Eventually there will be an ‘Other’ page promoting my favourite Toronto bookstores and other important things, and maybe even a blog.
The thing behind me is the Neolithic wedge tomb of Labbacallee; the brown shape is a friendly Irish horse.