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Ancient Philosophy

Northwestern has an active and friendly community of scholars working on Ancient Philosophy in Philosophy and Classics.

The department is excited about its new Ph.D. in Ancient Philosophy, which results in a Philosophy PhD and a certificate in Classics.

Core Faculty

Richard Kraut

(Philosophy and Classics): Moral and Political Philosophy in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle

Sara Monoson

(Political Science and Classics): Plato’s political philosophy, ancient political theory, and their reception 

Additional Faculty

Faculty with a very strong secondary interest in ancient:

Baron Reed

(Philosophy): Ancient epistemology

Graduate Program

Typically, the department admits at least one graduate student a year interested in ancient philosophy and, with some frequency, other graduate students switch to this as their primary focus. Moreover, a number of other graduate students have a strong secondary interest in ancient philosophy and know ancient Greek or Latin.

Graduate students can have a formal link to the classics department through its Classics Cluster.

In addition, graduate students can take courses from University of Chicago and University of Illinois at Chicago through the Chicago Area Consortium in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy. They can also have faculty from these institutions on their dissertation committee.

For more information about the philosophy department’s graduate program, click here.