Professor Sir Richard Sorabji, impatient to learn philosophy, started his undergraduate studies in the mid-1950s with the first 300 years of ancient Greek Philosophy from 600 to 300 BCE. By temperament he found the most congenial Aristotle, who combined a broad canvas with an insistence on trying to get it sewn up into a coherent whole. But Philosophy needs also the brilliant imagination of Aristotle’s teacher, Plato, the interpreter of Socrates, and the equally imaginative Pre-Socratic philosophers. Sorabji’s first teaching post at Cornell University in 1962 required him to teach the 1900 years from the first Pre-Socratic, Thales, to the great Christian thinker Thomas Aquinas (died 1274 CE). He has been trying to qualify himself to teach that course ever since. A first book of 1970 focused on re-interpreting Aristotle’s system of memory techniques, influential on the Renaissance. But he moved on to three books in the 1980s which considered the philosophy of the physical universe in different periods and cultures, concerning cause and necessity, time, space, matter, and motion, and implications for human responsibilty. This took him to all four of the schools founded in Athens in the fourth century CE (those of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and the Stoics), but also to many of their Greek successors in the 1200 years of ancient Greek philosophy, to some Christian opponents in that period and to some subsequent Christian, Arabic and Jewish reactions.
Sorabji’s philosophical interest had been ignited at a much earlier age. When he was six, somebody told him, ‘You will die one day’. ‘Don’t be ridiculous’, he replied, ‘dying is for flies and butterflies’. But when he put this question to his mother, she told him the truth in the nicest possible way, adding that she herself believed in an after-life and pictured it like a garden. Sorabji read about this over the next ten years, but, to his regret, could not share her optimistic conviction. He was later to write about whether philosophy could show that it was irrational to fear death, but that was in a book of 2006 on some of the many conceptions of the self, and there were other subjects to write about first.
In the late 1980s, he agreed, after hesitation, to take up an invitation to start up a project he had mentioned to a colleague 20 years earlier, but only as an impossible task: the translation into English the largest surviving body of Greek literature, the ancient Greek re-interpretations of Aristotle over a 600 year period, with subsequent 12th century revivals. The 100th volume was published in 2012, with 300 collaborators in 20 countries, and the project is continuing.
In the 1900s, he turned to questions about ethics and society, first with a book on animal minds and implications for human morality towards them. In 2000, he wrote a book on Emotion and peace of mind in Stoics and Christians, and about how Stoic analysis of emotion could be used to calm emotions. The 2006 book on selfhood followed, and by now Sorabji had to compare notes not only with scholars of Arabic Philosophy, to compare to Gandhi, from Augustine to Averroes, from cosmic issues of time and space to the very human issue of the self and our relationship with other creatures and pertinent to our contemporary world, the ethics of war and free speech.
He went on to study ancient philosophy at Oxford University and subsequently worked at his old prep school, The Dragon, in Oxford and imagined his life would be that of a schoolmaster. Fortunately he was asked to return to study philosophy at postgraduate level on a BPhil at Oxford University under Gwil Owen and John Ackrill.
“The first urbane and ebullient, a continuous firework display of knowledge and references, t Professor Sir Richard Sorabji’s beginnings were founded in the classics and ancient Greek Philosophy. This grounding facilitated his evolution and growth into a myriad of branches of global human philosophy from the ancient Stoics to Gandhi, from Augustine to Averroes, from cosmic issues of time and space to the very human issue of the self and our relationship with other creatures and pertinent to our contemporary world, the ethics of war and free speech.
Sorabji’s imagination was switched on to the philosophical realm at an early age. When he was six, his sister Francina told him, ‘You will die one day’. ‘Don’t be ridiculous’, he replied, ‘dying is for flies and butterflies’. But when he put this question to his mother she told him the truth in the nicest possible way, she herself believing in an after-life and picturing it like a garden. Sorabji describes how he could never put this truth behind him, and that it led him in large part to philosophical study.
He went on to study ancient philosophy at Oxford University and subsequently worked at his old prep school, The Dragon, in Oxford and imagined his life would be that of a schoolmaster. Fortunately he was asked to return to study philosophy at postgraduate level on a BPhil at Oxford University under Gwil Owen and John Ackrill.
“The first urbane and ebullient, a continuous firework display of knowledge and references, t Professor Sir Richard Sorabji’s beginnings were founded in the classics and ancient Greek Philosophy. This grounding facilitated his evolution and growth into a myriad of branches of global human philosophy from the ancient Stoics to Gandhi, from Augustine to Averroes, from cosmic issues of time and space to the very human issue of the self and our relationship with other creatures and pertinent to our contemporary world, the ethics of war and free speech. Sorabji’s imagination was switched on to the philosophical realm at an early age. When he was six, his sister Francina told him, ‘You will die one day’. ‘Don’t be ridiculous’, he replied, ‘dying is for flies and butterflies’. But when he put this question to his mother she told him the truth in the nicest possible way, she herself believing in an after-life and picturing it like a garden. Sorabji describes how he could never put this truth behind him, and that it led him in large part to philosophical study.
He went on to study ancient philosophy at Oxford University and subsequently worked at his old prep school, The Dragon, in Oxford and imagined his life would be that of a schoolmaster. Fortunately he was asked to return to study philosophy at postgraduate level on a BPhil at Oxford University under Gwil Owen and John Ackrill.
“The first urbane and ebullient, a continuous firework display of knowledge and references, the second a perfectly matched scholar inculcating care and exactitude, so that you knew that any loose thread would lead to your entire tapestry being unravelled.”
Subsequently he was invited by Cornell University in Ithaca, New York state to a professorship. At that time in the US the civil rights movement was raging and, surprisingly poignantly for today, Sorabji had to fight to be allowed to enter the US as a man of more than one sixteenth ‘colour’. With the help of Gwil Owen a special case was made for him on the grounds that no available US citizen could do the job, as few philosophers were trained in ancient Greek in the USA at that time. It was at Cornell that Professor Sir Richard Sorabji spent seven and a half of his formative years of teaching, working side by side with Max Black and Norman Malcolm, a student and biographer of Wittgenstein. He became associate professor in 1968.
In 1970 Sorabji was offered a post in the philosophy department at Kings College and returned with his family to live in England. It was there that he was appointed Professor of Ancient Philosophy in 1981, became head of department and Director of the Institute of Classical Studies. He founded the King’s College Centre for Philosophical Studies between 1989 and 1991, with the aim of promoting philosophy to the wider public. In 1987 he set sail on one of the biggest projects of his life, translating the ancient commentators, which has led him around the world to Alexandria in Egypt and ……….
On retirement in 2000 Professor Sir Richard Sorabji received a 3-year appointment to a 400-year old professorship, the Gresham Chair of Rhetoric in the City of London. He was also invited to a second three-year invitation to mount activities on subjects of wide interest in Classics at New York University. This invitation coincided with the attack on 9/11.
“The streets were still full of the smell of smoke when I gave my lectures there in October 2001. A minor side effect of the September 11th massacre was that I was prevented a few days later from addressing an Institute in Iran set up to promote 'Dialogue Among Civilisations', at a time when such dialogue was much needed.”
Sorabji was made a fellow for life at Wolfson College in 2002.
“When I had the privilege of becoming a Fellow of Wolfson College I encountered the embodiment of a humane and liberal imagination in the design of a college uniquely devised for the needs of researchers of all ages and countries.”
He has published 24? Books, co-edited ?? to date and the Commentator Translations have reached 117 Volumes. He continues to study, write and lecture on the world stage.