Professor Verity Harte

Core subject area: Greco-Roman Philosophy

Research interests: My interests in Greco-Roman Philosophy are broad, but my scholarship has focused in particular on the interconnected metaphysical, epistemological, psychological, and ethical theorising of Plato and, to a lesser extent, Aristotle. Early in my career, I was particularly interested in questions of ontology, including Platonic and Aristotelian understandings of the relation between parts and whole, which work resulted in my monograph, Plato on Parts and Whole: The Metaphysics of Structure. While maintaining my interest in Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of reality, influenced by these ancient thinkers’ own integrated view of philosophy and its various, modern subfields, I have also written and continue to think about such diverse topics as Platonic theorising of knowledge and also of ignorance; Platonic philosophy of language; Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical psychology, particularly of memory and of desire; pleasure in Plato and in Aristotle; the political philosophy of Plato’s Crito and of his Republic; Platonic aesthetics. For the last several years, my principal project has been the preparation of a monograph on Plato’s Philebus, a late work concerned with the respective contributions of knowledge and of pleasure to the best human life, to appear in the series, Cambridge Studies in the Dialogues of Plato, now approaching completion.

Departmental websites: Yale Philosophy, Yale Classics