JAMES H. LESHER Professor

James Lesher did his graduate work at the University of Rochester and taught at the University of Maryland before joining the UNC department in the fall of 2007. He has held research appointments at Harvard, Princeton, and the National Humanities Center, and currently serves as a senior fellow of the Center for Hellenic Studies, a research institute of Harvard University located in Washington, D.C.

Lesher is the author of three books on ancient Greek philosophy: Xenophanes of Colophon (Toronto, 1992). The Greek Philosophers: Greek Texts with Notes and Commentary (Duckworth/Bristol Classical Press, 1998) and Plato’s Symposium: Issues in Interpretation and Reception, co-edited with Debra Nails and Frisbee Sheffield (Harvard, 2006). He is also the author of more than fifty articles on topics relating to ancient Greek philosophy. Among them: ‘Gnôsis and Epistêmê in Socrates' Dream in the Theaetetus,' The Journal of Hellenic Studies (l969); ‘Danto on Knowledge as a Relation,' Analysis (l970); ‘Aristotle on Form, Substance, and Universals: A Dilemma,’ Phronesis (1971); ‘The Meaning of Nous in the Posterior Analytics,’ Phronesis (1973); 'Genetic Explanations of Religious Belief,' Philosophical Studies (l975); ‘Perceiving and Knowing in the Iliad and Odyssey,’ Phronesis (1981); ‘Socrates' Disavowal of Knowledge,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy (1987); ‘The Emergence of Philosophical Interest in Cognition,’ Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy (1994); ‘Mind's Knowledge and Powers of Control in Anaxagoras DK B12,’ Phronesis (1995); ‘Early Interest in Knowledge’ in The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, 1999); ‘Xenophanes of Colophon,’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2000);’On Aristotelian epistêmê as Understanding,’ Ancient Philosophy (2001); ‘The Humanizing of Knowledge’ in The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy (Oxford, 2008); “Xenophanes of Colophon’ in the Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Religion (2008); ‘Anselm Feuerbach’s Das Gastmahl des Platon and Plato’s Symposium’ in Imagines: La Antiqüedad en las Artes Escénicas y Visuales (La Rioja, 2008); and ‘The Meaning of Saphêneia in Plato’s Divided Line’ in A Critical Guide to Plato’s Republic (Cambridge, 2009), and 'Saphêneia in Aristotle: Clarity, Precision, and Knowledge' in Apeiron (forthcoming). He is currently writing articles on 'Plato and the Presocratics' and 'Analytic Approaches to Plato' for a new companion volume on Plato. He is also preparing for publication the papers presented a the Duke-Chapel Hill conference on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. They will appear as a special issue of the journal Apeiron. [Complete CV]

phone: 962-4570
email:  jlesher@email.unc.edu