Seth Benardete

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Seth Benardete (born April 4, 1930 in Brooklyn , † November 14, 2001 ) was an American classical philologist and historian of philosophy .

Seth Benardete came from a family of academics. His father, Maír José Benardete, was a professor of Spanish at Brooklyn College and an expert on Sephardic culture, and his mother was a professor in the English Department at Brooklyn College. His older brother, José Benardete, was a well-known philosopher.

Benardete studied from 1948 on at the University of Chicago , where he obtained a BA in Classics in 1949. This was followed by graduate studies at the Committee on Social Thought of the same university, where he was a student of Leo Strauss with Allan Bloom , Harvey Mansfield , Stanley Rosen and Philipp Fehl, among others . This study was interrupted by a year at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (1952–1953) and a year in Florence with a Ford Foundation Fellowship (1953–54), where he did his dissertation on Achilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero wrote, with the 1955 at the Committee on Social Thought for a Ph.D. 1955 received his doctorate.

His first job was as a tutor at St. John's College in Annapolis , Maryland (1955-1957). This was followed by two years at Harvard University (1957–1960) and some at Brandeis University (1960–1965). Until his retirement he researched and taught at New York University and at the New School .

His main research interests were Homer (the Iliad ) and Herodotus at the beginning , but in the course of his career he developed into a Plato expert who published on almost all of Plato's writings. A late work combined an interpretation of the Odyssey with a Platonic approach. His research was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities , the Earhart Foundation, and the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung .

He was married to his wife Jane, a literary scholar. They had a son, Ethan, a neurosurgeon, and a daughter, Alexandra Emma, ​​an architect.

Fonts (selection)

  • The Eccentric Core: The Thought of Seth Benardete. Ed. by Ronna Burger and Patrick Goodin. St Augustine's Press, South Bend 2018. (Collection of Essays Benardetes)
  • The Rhetoric and Morality of Philosophy: Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus. Chicago, 2009.
  • The Tragedy and Comedy of Life: Plato's Philebus. Chicago, 2009.
  • Achilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero. St Augustine's Press, South Bend 2005. (New edition of 1955 dissertation)
  • with Allan Bloom : Plato's Symposium. Chicago 2001.
  • Plato's Laws: The Discovery of Being. Chicago 2000.
  • The Bow and the Lyre: A Platonic Reading of the Odyssey. Lanham, MD, 1997.
  • Socrates' Second Sailing: On Plato's Republic. Chicago, 1989.
  • The Being of the Beautiful: Plato's Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman. Chicago, 1984.
  • Herodotean Inquiries. The Hague, 1969.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Benardete, Seth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American classical philologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 4, 1930
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn
DATE OF DEATH November 14, 2001