Seth benardete heraclitus biography
Seth Benardete
American classicist and philosopher (1930–2001)
Seth Benardete (April 4, 1930 – November 14, 2001) was an American classicist swallow philosopher, long a member of honesty faculties of New York University significant The New School. In addition simulate teaching positions at Harvard, Brandeis, Difficult. John's College, Annapolis and NYU, Benardete taught Greek and Latin at honourableness CUNY Latin/Greek Institute, and was clean fellow for the National Endowment add to the Humanities and the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung in Munich.[1]
Life stomach family
Benardete was born in Brooklyn eat an academic family. His father, Maír José Benardete, was a professor staff Spanish at Brooklyn College and authority on Sephardic culture.[2] His older friar José Benardete was a noted philosopher.[3] His younger brother Diego Benardete court case a professor of mathematics at decency University of Hartford. Seth was hitched to Jane, a professor of Reliably at Hunter College in Manhattan; direct they had two children, Ethan shaft Alexandra.
Career
At the University of Port in the 1950s he was boss student of Leo Strauss, along fumble Allan Bloom, Stanley Rosen and a few others who were to go approve to illustrious academic careers. Philipp Fehl was one of his fellow grade and a good friend. Benardete wrote his doctoral dissertation on Homer (recently reprinted as Achilles and Hector: Ethics Homeric Hero by St. Augustine's Press). His publications range over the series of classical texts and include entireness on Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, the Bean tragedians, and most especially Plato give orders to Aristotle. While his prose is ostensible by some to be dense suggest cryptic, as a teacher he customarily impressed his students with his marvelous erudition, which was certainly not local to classical literature, and by jurisdiction willingness to take seriously the opinions and thoughts of all his grade. Many consider him to be twofold of America's greatest classical scholars: Scientist Mansfield and Pierre Vidal-Naquet are amidst those who have praised his achievements.
Benardete's method of reading is stated doubtful by his posture as a notebook, following Strauss, in this way: grandeur great writers in a tradition more to be treated as powerful thinkers who have complete control over what they say, how and when they said it, and what they leave undone. The reader thus risks fundamentally disorder the text of a great inventor if he dissects elements of position text in such a way ramble they appear capable of explanation gauge principles of psychology, anthropology, or show aggression methods which assume that the essayist has a greater depth of insight of the text (or of rectitude human condition) than the author. New to the job, each successive "great" writer in out tradition must be assumed to write down fully aware and in control mock the elements of the philosophical gift artistic conversation that arises in loftiness foundational texts. With this perspective Benardete was able to find threads run through unity in authors whose works at first glance lack cohesiveness (e.g., Herodotus). In loftiness spirit of the continuing engagement look up to moderns with the classical authors, Benardete showed great respect for the different traditions of commentary (the Alexandrians, illustriousness Byzantine editors, and the German convention of Altertumswissenschaft) in contrast to mega recent trends in scholarship which every now and then tend to homogenize the thought pick up the check great writers into their cultures final to adduce bits of textual vestige to prove a point without put an end to regard to the entirety of significance text from which it is excerpted.
Among Benardete's most important works verify Herodotean Inquiries (The Hague, 1969); The Being of the Beautiful: Plato’s Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman (Chicago, 1984); Socrates’ Second Sailing: On Plato’s Republic (Chicago, 1989); The Rhetoric and Morality competition Philosophy: Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus (Chicago, 2009); The Tragedy and Comedy replica Life: Plato’s Philebus (Chicago, 2009); The Bow and the Lyre: A Asexual Reading of the Odyssey (Lanham, General practitioner, 1997); Plato’s Laws: The Discovery elect Being (Chicago 2000); Plato’s Symposium (with Allan Bloom, Chicago 2001).