Research

Current Research Projects

The Trinity Plato Centre is an interationally recognised centre of excellence for research in Ancient Philosophy.

The members of the Centre are engaged in diverse research projects on an ongoing basis; and the numerous seminars, workshops and lectures that the Centre organises and hosts feed into the research projects of the members.

Explore current research projects, in which some of the members of the Centre are involved.

Professor John Dillon

Edition of Selected Tractates of Plotinus

Together with Prof. Andrew Smith, I am currently engaged in a project of editing a series of translations of and commentaries on the tractates of Plotinus for Parmenides Publishing. The first of these volumes went to press in 2012, and, to date, more than 15 have been published, with more than 15 more due to come out soon. They are designed to embody new translations of the texts with a running commentary, along the lines of the French edition edited by Pierre Hadot.

Professor Vasilis Politis

POWER – REASON – LOVE: Crosroads in Plato’s Ethics

My current research project poses the question: What is the place of love—erōs—in life? It investigates this in regard to Plato, Aristotle, and later philosophers. It asks whether the way in which we are disposed to this question makes a significant difference to us today and how we shape ourselves and the world that we inhabit. This project forms the basis of an ERC application, currently under review.

Dr Nicholas Banner

IRC Postodoctoral Fellowship: Accounts of the Ascent

I am currently an Irish Research Council postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Classics, and the Trinity Plato Centre. I have recently published a mongraph titled Philosophic Silence and the “One” in Plotinus (Cambridge University Press, 2018). I have also recently finished a translation and commentary of Plotinus Ennead V.7, which is forthcoming in the series edited by John Dillon and Andrew Smith (Parmenides Publishing). My current research project is titled Accounts of the Ascent: Cosmology, Embodiment, and Accounts of Cosmic Journeying in Ancient Platonism. As part of this project I am working on a monograph, and also organizing an international conference to be held in the Trinity Long Room Hub on The Theory and Practice of Cosmic Ascent: Comparative and Interdisciplinary Approaches.

Dr Giulio Di Basilio

IRC Postodoctoral Fellowship: Practical Wisdom, Natural Virtue, and Habituation in Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics

I am an Irish Research Council postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin, and the Trinity Plato Centre. My research focuses on Aristotle’s ethics. My current reseach project is on Practical wisdom, Natural Virtue, and Habituation in Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics. I am preparing an edited volume titled: The relationship between Aristotle’s Eudemian and Nicomachean Ethics, to be published by Routledge. I am also organizing, together with Dr Margaret Hampson, a workshop to be held at Trinity College Dublin on the topic of Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics Book III – The Character Virtues.

Dr Margaret Hampson

IRC Postodoctoral Fellowship: Aristotle on Moral Development and Sensitivity to the Fine

I am an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, Trinity College Dublin, and the Trinity Plato Centre. My research focuses on Aristotle’s ethics. My current research project is titled: Aristotle on Moral Development and Sensitivity to the Fine. I am organising, together with Dr Giulio Di Basilio, a workshop to be held at Trinity College Dublin on the topic of Aristotle’s Eudemian Ethics Book III – The Character Virtues.

Publication Library

Author

Year

Type

Plato’s Essentialism: Reinterpreting the Theory of Forms

Author Vasilis Politis

Monograph Cambridge University Press

Year Forthcoming

Note on Plato’s Statesman 275d8–e1

Author Vasilis Politis

Journal Article Classical Quarterly

Year Forthcoming

Is Plato’s Theaetetus an exercise in epistemology? A granite epitaph erected also on the strength of the Parmenides

Author Vasilis Politis

Book Chapter Brill

Year Forthcoming

The Status of Xenocrates in the History of the Text of Plato’s Corpus Reconsidered

Author Tianqin Ge

Journal Article Phoenix

Year Forthcoming

Show Abstract

Neoplatonists on the Place of Aristotle’s Biological Works

Author Tianqin Ge

Journal Article Journal of Hellenic Studies

Year Forthcoming

Show Abstract

Plotinus: Ennead VI.7, On How there is a Multiplicity of Forms, and On the Good

Author Nicholas Banner

Translation and Commentary Parmenides Publishing

Year Forthcoming

Teleology and Sophistic Endeavour in the ‘Euthydemus’

Authors Saloni de Souza, Daniel Vázquez

Journal Article Australasian Philosophical Review

Year Forthcoming

“A notion of the true system of the world”: Berkeley and his use of Plato in Siris

Author Peter D. Larsen

Journal Article Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie

Year Forthcoming

Show Abstract

Middle Platonists and Pythagoreans

Author Carl O’Brien

Book Chapter Routledge

Year Forthcoming

The Platonism behind Basil’s Trinitarian Theology

Author Carl O’Brien

Book Chapter Franciscan University Press

Year Forthcoming

The Learner’s Motivation and the Structure of Habituation in Aristotle

Author Margaret Hampson

Journal Article Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie

Year Forthcoming

Aristotle on the nature of ethos

Author Margaret Hampson

Book Chapter Routledge

Year Forthcoming

Show Abstract

Aquinas’ Theory of Decision and its Aristotelian Origins: the Role and Nature of Consent

Author Giulio Di Basilio

Journal Article Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales

Year Forthcoming

Habituation in Aristotle’s Ethics: The Eudemian Ethics, the Common Books, and the Nicomachean Ethics

Author Giulio Di Basilio

Journal Article Journal of the History of Philosophy

Year Forthcoming

EN1113a12: Some Textual Remarks Based on Aspasius

Author Giulio Di Basilio

Journal Article Rheinisches Museum für Philologie

Year Forthcoming

Knowing Opposites and Formalising Antonymy

Author Keith Begley

Journal Article Epistemology & Philosophy of Science

Year 2022

Aristotle on the Voluntariness of Self-Control and the Lack of Self-Control (EE II 8, 1224a7-1225a2)

Author Giulio Di Basilio

Journal Article British Journal for the History of Philosophy

Year 2021

Aristotle on the Necessity of Habituation: Re-Reading Nicomachean Ethics 2.4

Author Margaret Hampson

Journal Article Phronesis

Year 2021

Heraclitus against the Naïve Paratactic Metaphysics of Mere Things

Author Keith Begley

Journal Article Ancient Philosophy Today: DIALOGOI

Year 2021

Shared decision‐making and maternity care in the deep learning age: Acknowledging and overcoming inherited defeaters

Authors Keith Begley, Cecily Begley, Valerie Smith

Journal Article Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice

Year 2021

The Relation Between Knowledge and Inquiry in the Phaedo

Author Vasilis Politis

Journal Article History of Philosophy and Logical Analysis

Year 2020

Epistemic Wonder and the Beginning of the Enquiry: Plato’s Theaetetus 155d2–4

Author Vasilis Politis

Book Chapter Brill

Year 2020

Metametaphysics in Plato and Aristotle

Author Vasilis Politis

Book Chapter Routledge

Year 2020

Plato’s Master Argument for a Two-Kind Ontology in the Sophist: A New Reading of the Final Argument of the Gigantomachia Passage (249b5–249c9)

Author Pauline Sabrier

Journal Article Apeiron

Year 2020