Department of Philosophy: People: Core Faculty: James H. Lesher

James H. Lesher received his B.A. from the University of Virginia in 1962 and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 1966. He joined the Maryland Department of Philosophy in the fall of 1967 as a Visiting Assistant Professor. He was awarded tenure and promotion to the rank of Associate Professor in 1973 and promotion to Professor in 1983.

Lesher is the author of two books and more than forty articles on aspects of ancient Greek philosophy. He has held an ACLS Fellowship at Harvard University, a Visiting Research Fellowship at Princeton University, and been a Junior Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C. He was elected to Phi Beta Kappa as an undergraduate at Virginia and to Omicron Delta Kappa as a faculty member at College Park. He currently serves as a Senior Fellow of the Center for Hellenic Studies and a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Ancient Philosophy. He has twice been awarded citations for teaching excellence (1970 and 1994) and was named a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher in 2003.

During his years at Maryland he has served as Acting Chair of the Philosophy Department, Chair of the Classics Department, Associate Dean of the Graduate School, Acting Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, Assistant to the Provost, Assistant to the President, and most recently Acting Director of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. He is the main author of two University re-accreditation reports (1986 and 1992), the University's Policy on Appointment, Promotion, and Tenure (1990), the Strategic Plan of 1996, and the 1997 Statement on the Value of Diversity. He is currently organizing an international conference on Plato's Symposium and completing a book on the relationship between knowledge and divinity in early Greek poetry and philosophy.

E-mail: jlesher@umd.edu

Course Web Page: http://www.philosophy.umd.edu/Faculty/JLesher/PHIL310/

Representative Publications

Xenophanes of Colophon-Fragments: Text and Translation with Notes and Commentary (Volume IV in the Phoenix Series on the Presocratics, University of Toronto Press, 1992), 264 pp.

The Greek Philosophers: Selected Greek Texts from the Presocratics, Plato, and Aristotle, with Introduction, Notes, and Commentary (Bristol Classical Press/Duckworth, 1998), 154 pp.

'Aristotle on Form, Substance, and Universals: A Dilemma,' Phronesis, Vol. 16 (l97l), 169-78.

'The Meaning of Nous in the Posterior Analytics,' Phronesis, Vol.18 (l973), 44-68.

'Xenophanes' Scepticism,' Phronesis, Vol. 23 (l978), 1-21.

'Perceiving and Knowing in the Iliad and Odyssey,' Phronesis, Vol. 26 (l98l), 2-24.

'Socrates' Disavowal of Knowledge,' Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. 25 (l987), 275-288.

'Presocratic Epistemology' in A Companion to Epistemology, eds J. Dancy and E. Sosa (Blackwells, 1993), 359-61.

'The Emergence of Philosophical Interest in Cognition,' Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, Vol. 12 (1994), 1-34.

'Mind's Knowledge and Powers of Control in Anaxagoras DK B12,' Phronesis , Vol. 40 (1995), 125-42.

'Xenophanes of Colophon' in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E.Craig (Routledge, 1998).

'Early Interest in Knowledge' in The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, ed. A.A. Long (Cambridge U.P., 1999), 225-49.

'On Aristotelian epistêmê as "Understanding",' Ancient Philosophy, Vol. 21 (2001), 45-55.

'Parmenidean Elenchos' in G.A. Scott, ed., Does Socrates Have a Method? (Penn State University Press, 2002),19-35.

'Xenophanes' in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html).

'The Secularizing of Knowledge' in P. Curd and D. Graham, eds, The Oxford Guide to Presocratic Philosophy (Oxford, 2004).

'Later Views of the Socrates of Plato's Symposium', Centre for Hellenic Studies Conference Series (Ashgate, 2004).

'The Flourishing of Ancient Philosophy: Some Causes and Concerns' in Rossetti and Thorp, eds, Greek Philosophy in the New Millennium (Akademia Verlag, 2004).

'A Course on the Afterlife of Plato's Symposium', Classical Journal (2004).