Rachel Barney
Associate
Professor and Canada Research
Chair
in Classical Philosophy
University of Toronto
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Department
of Classics Lillian
Massey Building 125
Queen's Park Crescent Toronto
ON CANADA
M5S 2C7 phone:
416-978-5513 fax:
416-978-7307 or: Department
of Philosophy Jackman
Humanities Building 170
St. George St. Toronto
ON CANADA
M5R 2M8 phone:
416-946-8359 fax:
416-978-8703 |
I teach in the Departments of Classics and Philosophy at the University of Toronto, and participate in
our Collaborative Programme in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (CPAMP). My research is on ancient philosophy, for the
most part on issues of ethics and moral psychology, epistemology, and
philosophical method. IÕm particularly interested in the questions that arise
where several of these topics intersect – and, above all, their
interplay in Plato. Thus IÕve written several articles related in various
ways to PlatoÕs conception of the Good: one (forthcoming) on its status as
the object of our desire,
one (likewise) on the closely related concept of the kalon, one on AristotleÕs attacks on the Form of the Good, and one on how PlatoÕs
theory of the good seems to be intertwined with his critique of rhetoric.
IÕm also fascinated by the concept of techn,
craft, in ancient ethics (another point at which questions of normativity
intersect with ideas about knowledge and rationality): a big-picture take is here, and I also have a paper working out the relation of
craft to function, ergon, in Aristotle. (If you are interested in techn
in ancient philosophy, you might also look at the work of Tom Angier, on techn in AristotleÕs ethics; and Daniel Bader, whose Toronto
Ph.D. thesis explores PlatoÕs conception of the medical techn and its
ethical implications.) Another recurrent
interest is in ancient philosophy as a family of (very diverse) literary
genres. I have an ongoing concern with the ancient sophists, including Protagoras (an early draft) and Gorgias:
they have been unfairly marginalized in accounts of ancient philosophy, I
think, not least because their philosophical and literary practices were so
different from what later became standard. I also think itÕs important to
discuss Plato with due attention to his very complicated strategies as a
writer: this was a focus of my thesis and my resultant papers
and book
on the Cratylus. More recently IÕve
written on ring-composition in the Republic
(forthcoming) and ambiguity in the allegory of the Cave. Moving from the
sublime to the scholastic, IÕm intrigued by commentary and other interpretive
forms as (under-appreciated) ways of doing philosophy: hence a somewhat
boosterish paper on the Neoplatonist commentator Simplicius. A translation of Simplicius in
Phys. I.1-2 is also in the works, with co-translator Stephen Menn. Current projects include
the aforementioned papers on techn
and on Protagoras; also work on Aristotle Metaphysics
A.3 (and the genre Ôhistory of philosophyÕ), the Presocratic Hippo, Eudemian Ethics VIII.3 (reason and
normativity in Aristotle again), and the relevance of Platonic dialogue to
ÔdialogueÕ as a political, ethical and religious practice. (There are also a
couple of book projects which are pretty inchoate and which I feel it might
be bad luck to specify.) Only the first couple of these are really ready for
posting – comments welcome! – but feel free to email me if you
are curious about the others and/or would like to alert me to other relevant
work on these topics. |
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