Agnes Callard is an Associate Professor in Philosophy. She received her BA from the University of Chicago in 1997 and her PhD from Berkeley in 2008. Her primary areas of specialization are Ancient Philosophy and Ethics. She is currently Director of Undergraduate Studies.
Selected Publications
Aspiration (2017); (i) reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement by Adam Bales; (ii) Reviewed in On Riding the Dragon by Katherine October Matthews
“Transformative Activity in Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend,” forthcoming in Transformative Experience, ed. John Schwenkler and Enoch Lambert (Oxford University Press)
Ignorance and Akrasia-Denial in the Protagoras (Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy vol. 47)
"Enkratēs Phronimos" (Archiv für Geschichte Der Philosophie 99, no. 1, 2017)
"Everyone Desires the Good: Socrates' Protreptic Theory of Desire," Review of Metaphysics 70, no. 4 (2017)
"Aristotle on Deliberation," forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason, ed. Ruth Chang and Kurt Sylvan
"The Reason to Be Angry Forever," forthcoming in The Moral Psychology of Anger, ed. Owen Flanagan and Myisha Cherry (part of Rowman and Littlefield's Moral Psychology of the Emotions series, series editor Mark Alfano)
"Proleptic Reasons" (Oxford Studies in Meta-Ethics, vol. 11)
"The Weaker Reason" (Harvard Review of Philosophy, vol. 22)
Liberal Education and the Possibility of Valuational Progress, Social Philosophy and Policy 34, no. 2 (2017)
Public Philosophy
-- Is There Progress in Philosophy? Guest post on Daily Nous (5/27/18)
-- Interviewed by 3am Magazine on flattery, anger and other topics (4/27/18)
-- Interviewed by Economist Tyler Cowen on wanting to live forever, Elena Ferrante, and other topics (4/11/18)
-- Essay on Aspirational Faith in New York Times' Stone column (1/8/2018)
Media
Agnes Callard's lectures and podcasts
Recent Courses
PHIL 21834 Self-Creation as a Literary and Philosophical Problem
Can we choose who to be? We tend to feel that we have some ability to influence the kind of people we will become; but the phenomenon of 'self-creation' is fraught with paradox: creation ex nihilo, vicious circularity, infinite regress. In this class, we will read philosophical texts addressing these paradoxes against novels offering illustrations of self-creation.
Students who are not enrolled by the start of term but wish to enroll must (a) email the instructor before the course begins and (b) attend the first class.
PHIL 55504 The Socratic Elenchus
Socrates found himself surrounded by people who took themselves to know things: about the Gods; about statesmanship; about how to educate the youth; about friendship and justice and human excellence, etc. Socrates was inclined to trust those around him - but also afraid that, by doing so, he would end up taking himself to know what he in fact did not. So went around testing all those claims, attempting to refute them. Over and over again, he proved that his interlocutor did not know what he took himself to know, thereby successfully protecting himself from the illusion of knowledge. Along the way, however, he made an interesting discovery: as his interlocutor pressed some point, and as he resisted it, the two of them were doing something together. The interlocutor's need to believe that he had an account of the way things are, coupled with Socrates' commitment to rejecting falsity, taken together, amounted to a shared pursuit of knowledge. This class investigates that discovery - arguably, of philosophy itself - by way of a close reading of some Socratic dialogues: Euthydemus, Protagoras, Meno, Euthyphro, Charmides. (IV)
Students who are not enrolled by the start of term but wish to enroll must (a) email the instructor before the course begins and (b) attend the first class.
PHIL 20102/30102 Changing, Resting, Living: Aristotle's Natural Philosophy
How can many things be one thing? Aristotle's answer to this question treats living things - plants and animals - as the paradigm cases of unified multiplicities. In this class, we will investigate how such things are held together, and what makes it possible for them to change over time. Readings will be from Aristotle's Physics, Metaphysics, De Anima, Parts of Animals, On Generation and Corruption and De Motu Animalium. (B)
Students who are not enrolled by the start of term but wish to enroll must (a) email the instructor before the course begins and (b) attend the first class.
PHIL 21717/31717 Socrates, Plato & Aristotle on Courage
What is courage? Is it: doing what you should do, even when you are afraid? Can you be courageous without being afraid? Can you be couragoues and know that you are doing the right thing? Can you be courageous if you are not in fact doing the right thing? Can you have precisely the correct amount of fear and still fail to be courageous? Could you be courageous if you weren't afraid to die? Courage is, arguably, the queen of the virtues. In this class, we will use some Socratic dialogues (Laches, Protagoras, Republic, Phaedo) and some Aristotelian treatises (Nicomachean Ethics, Eudemian Ethics) as partners in inquiry into the answers to the questions listed above. (A)
Students who are not enrolled by the start of term but wish to enroll must (a) email the instructor before the course begins and (b) attend the first class.
For full list of Agnes Callard's courses back to the 2012-13 academic year, see our searchable course database.