Research

Dr Frisbee Sheffield is the Crausaz Wordsworth Interdisciplinary Fellow in Philosophy and will be at CRASSH in Lent Term 2022.

The proposed research explores Arendt’s dialogue with Plato, with particular reference to the relationship between dialogue, thinking, and ethics, which is central to Arendt’s analysis of political evil. Arendt’s attention to the normative dimension of dialogical thinking shows that the very form of Socrates’ habitual practice was already an intimation of its value laden-content. This attention to the normative dimension of dialogical thinking is used by Arendt to reflect on some of the most vital and urgent questions of the twentieth century, and serves as a sobering reminder that how we think and speak is often as important as its content, – ethically and politically speaking.

About

Frisbee Sheffield is a University Lecturer in Classics, and a Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. Areas of expertise are ancient Greek philosophy, particularly ethics, moral psychology, aesthetics and politics. She also works on Hannah Arendt and her reception of ancient Greek Philosophy. She is the author of Plato’s Symposium: The Ethics of Desire (2006) as well as co-editor of a collection of essays: Plato’s Symposium: Issues in Interpretation and Reception (2006), co-editor of a new edition of Plato’s Symposium, for the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy Series (2008), and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Ancient Philosophy (2013). She has written numerous articles on love and friendship in Plato, and is currently writing a book on Plato’s Phaedrus for Cambridge University Press.

CENTRE FOR RESEARCH IN THE ARTS, SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

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