The 2023 SAGP Distinguished Lectureship
Photo by Bill Jelinek
This lecture has been rescheduled.
New date: March 12, 2024 at 12pm Eastern
2023 SAGP
Distinguished Lectureship
Tony Long
Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Classics & Affiliated Professor of Philosophy
The University of California Berkeley
“The Stoic Zeus and the Values of Nature”
Tuesday, March 12th, 2024, 12pm Eastern
Commentators: Tad Brennan & Gretchen Reydams-Schils
Abstract: The founders of Stoicism applied a range of terms to the world’s “active principle,” including god, nature,
cause, reason, fate, and necessity. They also, and perhaps most notably, called the principle Zeus. In this paper I will
discuss the conceptual relationship between these designations, especially that between nature and Zeus. I will also
ask how we should construe Chrysippus’s claim that Zeus and universal nature are the foundation of justice and
ethical theory (Plutarch, On Stoic Self-contradictions 1035cd).
Tony Long began his teaching career at the University of Otago, New Zealand, in 1961. After lectureships at the
University of Nottingham and University College London, and a decade as Gladstone Professor of Greek at the
University of Liverpool, Tony Long moved to Berkeley in 1983, where he continues to work and sometimes teach
as an emeritus professor. His publications range from the Presocratics to Plotinus, but he has particularly focused on
Hellenistic philosophy, including The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge University Press, 1987), which he co-
authored with David Sedley. His most recent books include Greek Models of Mind and Self, Plotinus
Ennead II.4 On Matter, and Selfhood and Rationality in Ancient Greek Philosophy.
Tad Brennan is a Professor of Philosophy and
Classics at Cornell University. He has previously held
faculty positions at Northwestern, Yale, and King’s
College, London. He has published articles on
Presocratics, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic,
and late Platonic authors.
Gretchen Reydams-Schils is a Professor in the
Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre
Dame, and holds concurrent appointments in Classics,
Philosophy, and Theology. She specializes in the
traditions of Platonism and Stoicism and directs the
Notre Dame Workshop on Ancient Philosophy.
This event will be held via zoom. To register for the event, email apreus@binghamton.edu
Afterwards, a YouTube recording of the event will be made available to SAGP members.
The SAGP Distinguished Lecturer is chosen annually by the Board of Directors in recognition of very substantial contributions to scholarship in our field. This lectureship is a high professional distinction in its own right, an honour bestowed upon a scholar by their peers under the auspices of SAGP.