Christopher Moore

Professional Bio

Ongoing projects include the origins of the idea of the so-called cardinal virtues; Plato’s Republic; and the lives of Critias of Athens, Hippias of Elis, Protagoras of Abdera, and Aristotle of Stagira.

My fourth monograph, The Thinkery: Ideas and Intellectuals in the Age of Socrates (Harvard UP), is with the Press (Spring 2026). It provides a major new account of cultural developments in the fifth century BCE. It focuses on the advent of putative “thinkers” – sophistai, philosophoi, phrontistai, among others – and what they think and talk about, namely “ideas.” It explains the rise of what we might call a public intellectual sphere and identifies its celebrities. It tells the story of lesser-known figures – professional musicians, founders of colonies, physical trainers – and gives new contours to the lives of the most famous figures, including Aristophanes, Socrates, and Euripides.

I am collaborating on a wide variety of editions and translations concerning fifth and fourth century figures and their later reception. The Cambridge Companion to the Sophists serves as a guide to these figures and texts. A leading ambition of mine is to create and foster academic networks for students and scholars on these topics.

My previous monograph is The Virtue of Agency: Sôphrosunê and Self-Constitution in Classical Greece (Oxford UP). I argue that as the Greeks debated the value and scope of the canonical virtue sôphrosunê, best translated “discipline,” they came to articulate a plausible conception of agency and selfhood. What has often seemed the virtue concerned with moderate drinking turns out to be the virtue of rational personhood.

In 2019 I published Calling Philosophers Names: On the Origin of a Discipline (Princeton UP), a study of the coinage and early use of the term philosophos, especially the role it played in the constitution of the discipline we now call philosophy. The term has long erroneously been thought to have meant, at its start, “lover of wisdom”; I argue that it started instead as a pejorative name-calling name for those seeking the elite social status of sophoi, “sages,” those personages deemed authoritative advice-givers in politics and life. While it eventually got glossed, retrospectively and redemptively, as “lover of wisdom,” it probably began as “sage wannabe.” This book, now quite broadly reviewed, includes discussion of all early uses of the term, from Heraclitus to Aristotle, and advances an institutional-conversational theory of what philosophy is.

Much of my earlier writing – notably Socrates and Self-Knowledge (Cambridge UP), several edited collections, and a sequence of articles – concerned Socrates and his context, influence, and reception, along with Plato’s writing of dialogues

Areas of Specialization

• Classical Greek philosophy and intellectual history, esp. ethics, moral psychology, ‘public philosophy,’ methodology, and Socrates
• Self-knowledge, agency, practical rationality

Recent Courses

• Graduate seminars on Aristotle; Greek virtue ethics; Socrates
• Mixed grad/UG seminar Plato’s Republic and its context
• Ancient philosophy (undergraduate survey)
• Ancient Drama and Philosophy (undergraduate lecture)
• How to Live (“philosophy as a way of life” undergraduate practical experience)

Recent Publications

Books in progress

• Socrates and Friends: The Letters of the Ancient Greek Philosophers, with P. Mensch and J. Romm (Oxford)
• Plato: Three Ethical Dialogues: Protagoras, Laches, Charmides, with C.C. Raymond (Hackett)
• Hippias of Elis: Texts, Translations, Commentaries, Essays, with D. Napoli and D. Williams with many collaborators
• Critias of Athens: Texts, Translations, Commentary, Essays, with C.C. Raymond (Oxford)
• Stobaeus’ Anthology of Wisdom, a collaborative translation (the first in English) (Oxford)
• Public Philosophy of Classical Greece, 470–370: A Sourcebook, with Mirjam Kotwick (Cambridge)
• An Annotated Plato’s Republic, with C.C. Raymond (Princeton)

Books

• 2023. The Virtue of Agency: Sôphrosunê and Self-Constitution in Classical Greece (Oxford), pp. xiv + 394. [link]
• 2023. Cambridge Companion to the Sophists, with J. Billings, edd. (Cambridge), pp. x + 520. [link]
• 2023. Sears Jayne, Plato in Medieval England, ed. (Brepols), pp. xii + 320. [link]
• 2020. Calling Philosophers Names: On the Origin of a Discipline (Princeton), pp. xxi + 411 [link]
• 2019. Brill's Companion to the Reception of Socrates, ed. (Brill), pp. xvii + 1009. [link]
• 2019. Plato: Charmides. Translation, Notes, Introduction, and Analysis, with C.C. Raymond (Hackett), pp. xlii + 124 [link]
• 2018. Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue, with A. Stavru, edd. (Brill), pp. ix + 931 [link]
• 2015. Socrates and Self-Knowledge (Cambridge), pp. xvii + 275 [link]

Forthcoming articles

• “Gorgias of Leontini as virtue theorist,” in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy
• “Socrates between city and self: the Apologies of Xenophon and Plato,” in Oxford Handbook on Ancient Greek Political Thought, Carol Atack, ed. (Oxford)
• “Socrates,” in Encyclopedia of Skepticism and Jewish Tradition, Giuseppe Veltri, ed. (Brill)
• “Plato’s philosophical inquiry into rhetoric,” in The Cambridge History of Rhetoric, vol. 1, Henriette van der Blom and Harvey Yunis, edd. (Cambridge)

Articles in print

• 2026. “The dialogue between Zeno and Protagoras.” Ancient Philosophy.
• 2024. “Who were the ‘Ideas-men’ (gnômotupoi andres)?” Humanities 13 (172). doi.org/10.3390/h13060172i
• 2024."Sôphrosunê and self-knowledge in Xenophon and the fourth century," in Xenophon's Virtues, Gabriel Danzig, ed.
• 2023. “The fourth-century creative reception of the Sophists,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Sophists, Joshua Billings and Christopher Moore, edd. (Cambridge), 337–69
• 2023. “Self-Knowledge,” in Bloomsbury Handbook of Plato, 2nd ed., Mateo Duque and Gerald Press, edd. (Bloomsbury), 342–44
• 2023. “Philosophia in the Gorgias,” in Politeia: Studies in Ancient Philosophy in Honor of Professor Anthony Preus, David Spitzer, ed. (Routledge), 96–109
• 2023. Xenophon and the Spartan education in sôphrosunê (Lac. Pol. 3),” in Xenophon, the Philosopher: Argumentation and Ethics, Claudia Mársico and Daniel Rossi Nunes Lopes, edd. (Peter Lang), 129–48
• 2021. "Promêtheia as rational agency in Plato," Apeiron 54, 89–107
• 2020. “Critias in Plato's Protagoras: an opponent of agôn?," in Athletics, Gymnastics, and Agôn in Plato (Parnassos), 67–80
• 2020. “Questioning Aristotle's radical analysis of sôphrosunê," in Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 35, 73–97.
• 2020. “Ancient Greek philosophia in India as a way of life,” Metaphilosophy 51, 169–86
• 2020. "Aristotle's philosophêmata," in Revisiting Aristotle's Fragments (De Gruyter), 49–65.
• 2019. "Socrates in Aristotle's history of philosophy," in Brill's Companion to the Reception of Socrates (Brill), 173–210
• 2019. "Aristotle and philosophia," Metaphilosophy 50, 339–60
• 2019. "Critias of Athens," Oxford Bibliographies, with C.C. Raymond
• 2018. "Heraclitus and 'knowing yourself,'" Ancient Philosophy 38, 1–21
• 2018. "Xenophon’s Socratic education in Memorabilia 4” in Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue (Brill), 500–520
• 2018. "Xenophon, 'philosophy,' and Socrates" in Xenophon and Plato: Comparative Studies (Brill), 128–164
• 2017. "Heracles the philosopher (Herodorus fr. 14)," Classical Quarterly 67, 27–48
• 2017. "Narrative constitution of friendship," with S. Frederick, Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review 56, 111–130
• 2017. "Plato and images of oneself," in Plato and the Power of Images (Brill), 88–106
• 2016. "Anaxagoras, Socrates, and the History of 'Philosophia,'" CHS Research Bulletin [link]
• 2016. "'Philosophy' in Plato’s Phaedrus," Plato Journal 15 [link]
• 2016. “Spartan philosophy and Sage wisdom in Plato’s Protagoras," Epoché 23
• 2015. “Promêtheia ('forethought') until Plato,” American Journal of Philology 136
• 2015. "Socrates and self-knowledge in Aristophanes' Clouds," Classical Quarterly 65
• 2015. "Socratic self-knowledge in Xenophon Memorabilia 4.2," Classical Journal 110
• 2014. "How to 'Know Thyself' in Plato's Phaedrus," Apeiron 47
• 2014. "Arguing about the immortality of the soul in the palinode of Plato’s Phaedrus," Philosophy & Rhetoric 47
• 2014. "Pindar’s charioteer in Plato’s Phaedrus," Classical Quarterly 62
• 2013. "Socrates Psychagogos (Birds 1555, Phaedrus 261a7)," in Socratica III
• 2013. "Chaerephon the Socratic," Phoenix 67
• 2013. "Deception and knowledge in the Phaedrus," Ancient Philosophy 33
• 2012. "Socrates and Clitophon in the Platonic Clitophon," Ancient Philosophy 32
• 2012. "Chaerephon, Telephus, and cure in Plato’s Gorgias," Arethusa 45
• 2012. "The myth of Theuth in the Phaedrus," in Plato and Myth
• 2012. "Appearance and reality," in Continuum Companion to Plato
• 2011. "Socratic persuasion in the Crito," British Journal of the History of Philosophy 19
• 2007. “Between persuasion and coercion in Plato's Republic," Newsletter of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy [link]

Dissertation

• Socratic Persuasion (2008)