Professor of Philosophy

(212) 854-7887
wrm4@columbia.edu
705 Philosophy Hall

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Research Interests

Ancient philosophy, in all its periods
A.B., Ph.D. Princeton (1978, 1987). Professor Mann joined the Columbia Philosophy Department in 1992. He is the author of The Discovery of Things: Aristotle’s Categories and Their Context?(Princeton, 2000); and he recently co-edited, with James Allen, Eyjólfur Emilsson, and Benjamin Morison,?Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, vol. 40:?Essays in Memory of Michael Frede(2011). His research interests include: theories of argumentation (i.e. logic and rhetoric, broadly construed), beginning with Socrates and Plato; the history of central metaphysical contrasts—e.g. corporeal/incorporeal, composite/simple, whole/part, matter/form, object/property, potentiality/ actuality — throughout antiquity and the middle ages; and within ethics, treatments of the relation between rational and non-rational motivation, and accounts of freedom (e.g. those of Epictetus and Plotinus) which do not require that an agent be able to act differently (from how s/he actually does act) in order to count as free. He has also worked on English and German Romanticism (especially, Wordsworth and H?lderlin); the reception of classical antiquity in 19th century Britain and Germany; and the historiography of philosophy.

Selected Publications

“‘You’re Playing You Now’: Helvidius Priscus as a Stoic Hero”, in G. Williams and K. Volk, eds., Roman Reflections: Studies in Latin Philosophy (Oxford, 2015), 213-237.
“Plato in Tübingen”,?Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 31 (2006), 349-400.
“Was kann man von Euthydemos und seinem Bruder lernen?”, in C. Rapp and T. Wagner, eds.,?Wissen und Bildung in der antiken Philosophie (Stuttgart, 2006), 103-126.
“Learning How to Die: Seneca’s Use of Aeneid 4, 653 at Epistulae morales 12, 9”, in K. Volk and G. Williams, eds.,?Seeing Seneca Whole: Perspectives on Philosophy, Poetry and Politics (Leiden, 2006), 103-122.?
“On two Stoic ‘paradoxes’ in Manilius”, in S. Green and K. Volk, eds.,?Forgotten Stars: Rediscovering Manilius’?Astronomica (Oxford, 2011), 85-103.?
“Elements, Causes, and Principles: A Context for Metaphysics Z 17”,?Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 40 (2011), 29-61.
The Discovery of Things: Aristotle's Categories and Their Context.?Princeton, 2000.

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