Christopher Moore

Biography:

Christopher Moore, a specialist in ancient Greek thought broadly conceived, is writing a new monograph, The First Public Intellectuals: Philosophers, Sophists, and the Marketplace of Ideas in Classical Greece. This is a cultural history of, and inquiry into, the public intellectual sphere in the fifth century. This book complements several large-scale ongoing editorial projects, including on Critias of Athens; a Cambridge Companion to the Sophists; the first-generation Socratics; and the texts of “public philosophy” in the classical period.

His previous book manuscript, The Virtue of Agency: Sôphrosunê and Self-Constitution in Classical Greece, is with the press. Sôphrosunê is one of Plato’s canonical virtues, something like “self-discipline.” This book identifies an under-studied tradition of debate about its value and application, and argues that these debates end up articulating – and advancing – fundamental Greek ideas about selfhood and maturity into responsible actors in our own lives.

Moore has published two other books, Calling Philosophers Names: On the Origin of the Discipline (Princeton, 2020) and Socrates and Self-Knowledge (Cambridge, 2015). He is co-author of Plato: Charmides, a New Translation with Introduction, Notes, and Analysis (Hackett, 2019), and editor of two volumes on the reception of Socrates (both with Brill). He is also editing the posthumous manuscripts of Sears Jayne on the reception of Plato in Medieval and Tudor England.

Moore’s early publications were on Plato’s literary art, the early history of moral terminology, and figures in the Socratic circle.

RECENT COURSES:

• Classical Greek Ethics (graduate seminar)
• Plato (advanced undergraduate seminar)
• Ancient Philosophy (intermediate undergraduate course)
• Origins of Philosophy (graduate seminar)
• Philosophy of Law: Constitutional Interpretation (advanced undergraduate seminar)
• Greek Language and Literature