David Sedley

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David Neil Sedley FBA (born May 30, 1947 in London ) is a British historian of philosophy . He was the seventh Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University.

Life

Sedley studied at Trinity College , Oxford , Literae humaniores . He graduated with First Class Honors there in 1969. He moved to University College London to study for a doctorate with Anthony A. Long , where, in 1974, after a lengthy stay at the Centro Internazionale per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi in Naples , he wrote a dissertation on Book XXVIII of Epicurus' Writing On Nature (Text, translation, commentary) the Ph.D. acquired.

After two years as a Junior Research Fellow at Balliol College , Oxford, Sedley was a Fellow of Christ's College , Cambridge and University Lecturer since 1976 , Reader in Ancient Philosophy from 1989, Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge from 1996 and finally since July 2000 Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy. He retired in September 2014. His pupil Gábor Betegh became his successor at the chair .

He was visiting professor at Princeton University (September 1981 to March 1982), at the University of California at Berkeley (1984 and from 2004 to 2005 as Sather Professor ), at Yale University (1990) and at Cornell University (2001) . In 1994 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and in 1998 a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Sedley is one of the leading specialists in the field of ancient, especially Hellenistic, philosophy. Together with his teacher Long, he has published the authoritative source edition on the philosophy of the Hellenistic schools, which has been handed down mainly in fragments. Also of note is his writing on ancient creationism , which appeared in the Sather Classical Lectures . He also dedicated two monographs to Plato. He is also working on the edition of ancient papyri of philosophical writings.

Sedley was editor of the philological journal The Classical Quarterly (1986–1992) and Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy (1998–2007).

Fonts (selection)

  • Epicurus, On nature, Book XXVIII. In: Cronache Ercolanesi. Volume 3, 1973, pp. 5-83.
  • with Anthony Arthur Long: The Hellenistic Philosophers. Volume 1: The principal sources in translation with philosophical commentary. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1987.
  • with Anthony Arthur Long: The Hellenistic Philosophers. Volume 2: Greek and Latin texts with notes. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1987.
    • German translation of Volume 2: The Hellenistic Philosophers. Texts and comments. Translated by Karlheinz Hülser . JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2000.
  • Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1998.
  • The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003.
  • Plato's Cratylus. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2003.
  • The Midwife of Platonism. Text and Subtext in Plato's Theaetetus. Clarendon Press, Oxford 2004.
  • Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity (= Sather Classical Lectures. Volume 66). University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles 2007.
  • as ed. with Anna Maria Ioppolo : Pyrrhonists, Patricians, Platonizers. Hellenistic Philosophy in the Period 155-86 BC. Bibliopolis, Naples 2007.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Sedley, David
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sedley, David Neil (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British historian of philosophy
DATE OF BIRTH May 30, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH London