Presocratics & Plato

Charles Kahn taught Classics and Philosophy at Columbia University from 1957 to 1965, and has since been teaching in the Philosophy Department of the University of Pennsylvania. He spent a year as Visiting Professor at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, and had additional Visiting Fellowships at Balliol College, Oxford and Clare Hall, Cambridge, and a term as Visiting Professor at Harvard. He is the recipient of several prestigious research grants, from the American Council of Learned Societies (1963/64 and 1984/85), the National Endowment for the Humanities (1974/75 and 1990/91), and the Guggenheim Foundation (1979/80). In 2000 he was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology, The Verb “Be” in Ancient Greek, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, and Essays on Being. His latest book, Plato and the Post-Socratic Dialogue, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

Charles Kahn has been a major presence in the world of ancient Greek philosophy since his first publications at the end of the 1950s. The present volume, a Festschrift, contains an 11-page list of his publications, and anyone working in the field will instantly recognize many of the titles and know their importance. Post-Aristotelian philosophy features rarely, Aristotle somewhat less rarely, Plato (especially ‘early’ Plato) and the Presocratics heavily. Hence the title and focus of this book, though in fact of the three essays in the fourth and final section of the book, ‘Plato and Beyond’, two are on Neoplatonism (the other on Aristotle). The other sections are: ‘The Presocratics’ (six essays); ‘Plato: Studies in Individual Dialogues’ (nine essays); and ‘Themes in Plato’ (five essays). Given Kahn's longevity and importance, it is no surprise to see that the list of contributors, friends and students, is star-studded.—Robin WaterfieldThe Heythrop Journal