| 1 | Name: | Dr. Anthony A. Long | |
| Institution: | University of California, Berkeley | ||
| Year Elected: | 2009 | ||
| Class: | 4. Humanities | ||
| Subdivision: | 402b | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Living | ||
| Birth Date: | 1937 | ||
I was born August 17, 1937 in Manchester, England, where my parents were secondary school teachers. As a high-school student, I was introduced to Plato by my school's charismatic principal. That experience was the primary reason I decided to study Classics as an undergraduate. After two years of military service I entered University College London where I had the good fortune to be taught by some of Britains's most outstanding scholars of Greek and Latin. I graduated BA in 1960, and was immediately appointed Lecturer in Classics, specializing in ancient philosophy, at the University of Otago, NZ. While teaching at Otago, I completed a PhD for the University of London with a dissertation on abstract nouns in Sophocles. This was the basis for my first book, Language and Thought in Sophocles (1968). In 1964 I left Otago in order to return permanently to Britain, where I held appointments, first at the University of Nottingham, then at University College London, and finally as Gladstone Professor of Greek at the University of Liverpool (1973-83). During these years I made several visits to the USA, most significantly in 1978-9, when I held fellowships consecutively at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study. Princeton gave me my first experience of teaching graduate seminars, which I found so rewarding that I decided I would move permanently to the USA if I were offered a suitable position. That opportunity soon emerged at the University of California at Berkeley, where I have been Professor of Classics since 1983 and Irving Stone Professor of Literature since 1991, with occasional absences as visiting professor or fellowship holder in Germany, France, and Holland. Although my first book was on Sophocles, my first article (1963) was a study of Parmenides, and it is ancient philosophy that has been the primary focus of my research. That has always included the early Greek philosophers on whom I edited a volume in the Cambridge Companion series (1999), but in 1967 I began a series of studies of the Hellenistic philosophers, especially Stoics, and these thinkers have remained the principal focus of my research ever since. When I began this work, Hellenistic philosophy was very much a minority pursuit, but it has now definitely become main stream. My first attempt to publicize it was a general study, Hellenistic Philosophy. Stoics, Sceptics, Epicureans (first edition 1974), which has been translated into seven languages. In collaboration with David Sedley (Lawrence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge), Cambridge University Press commissioned me to publish a two-volume source book of the principal texts of the Hellenistic Philosophers with philosophical commentary (1987). This work has been translated into French and German. Since then, I have continued to work on many Hellenistic philosophical topics and Roman thinkers, including Cicero, Seneca and Epictetus on whom I published Epictetus. A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (2002). At the same time, I have been working extensively on ancient models of mind and selfhood, with reference to all periods of ancient philosophy, and also on conceptual connexions between theology and rationality. I hope in due course to complete two further books on these topics. | |||