Seth Benardete (April 4, 1930 – November 14, 2001) was an American classicist and philosopher, long a member of the faculties of

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

and

The New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

. In addition to teaching positions at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Brandeis Brandeis is a surname. People *Antonietta Brandeis (1848–1926), Czech-born Italian painter *Brandeis Marshall, American data scientist * Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Austrian artist and Holocaust victim * Irma Brandeis, American Dante scholar * Loui ...

St. John's College, Annapolis St. John's College is a private liberal arts college with dual campuses in Annapolis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. St. John's is one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the United States as the successor institution of Kin ...

and

NYU New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-United States Secretary of the Treasu ...

, Benardete was a fellow for the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

and the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung in Munich.

Life and family

Benardete was born in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

into an academic family. His father,

Maír José Benardete Maír José Benardete (1895, Çanakkale, Ottoman Empire – 1989, U.S.) was a scholar of Sephardi Jews, Sephardic studies and was a long-time Professor of Spanish and Sephardic Studies at Brooklyn College. He was a past Director of The Hispanic I ...

, was a professor of Spanish at

Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls about 15,000 undergraduate and 2,800 graduate students on a 35-acre campus. Being New York City's first publ ...

and expert on

Sephardic Sephardic (or Sephardi) Jews (, ; lad, Djudíos Sefardíes), also ''Sepharadim'' , Modern Hebrew: ''Sfaradim'', Tiberian Hebrew, Tiberian: Səp̄āraddîm, also , ''Ye'hude Sepharad'', lit. "The Jews of Spain", es, Judíos sefardíes (or ), ...

culture. His older brother

José Benardete José Amado Benardete (1928 - 2016) was an American philosopher and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Syracuse University. He was the son of Maír José Benardete and the brother of Seth Benardete and Diego Benardete, professor of mathemati ...

was a noted philosopher. His younger brother Diego Benardete is a professor of mathematics at the University of Hartford. Seth was married to Jane, a professor of English at Hunter College in Manhattan; and they had two children, Ethan and Alexandra.

Career

At the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in the 1950s he was a student of

Leo Strauss Leo Strauss (, ; September 20, 1899 – October 18, 1973) was a German-American political philosopher who specialized in classical political philosophy. Born in Germany to Jewish parents, Strauss later emigrated from Germany to the United States. ...

, along with

Allan Bloom Allan David Bloom (September 14, 1930 – October 7, 1992) was an American philosopher, classicist, and academician. He studied under David Grene, Leo Strauss, Richard McKeon, and Alexandre Kojève. He subsequently taught at Cornell Universi ...

Stanley Rosen Stanley Rosen (July 29, 1929 – May 4, 2014) was Borden Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy and Professor Emeritus at Boston University. His research and teaching focused on the fundamental questions of philosophy and on the most important figur ...

and several others who were to go on to illustrious academic careers.

Philipp Fehl Philipp Pinchas Fehl (May 9, 1920 – September 11, 2000) was an Austrian born American artist and art historian. Early life Fehl was born in Vienna, Austria, to Hugo Fehl and Friederike "Frieda" Fehl (née Beck - previous married name Singer) ...

was one of his fellow students and a good friend. Benardete wrote his doctoral dissertation on

Homer Homer (; grc, Ὅμηρος , ''Hómēros'') (born ) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the ...

(recently reprinted as ''Achilles and Hector: The Homeric Hero'' by St. Augustine's Press). His publications range over the spectrum of classical texts and include works on Homer,

Hesiod Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet i ...

Herodotus Herodotus ( ; grc, , }; BC) was an ancient Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus, part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum, Turkey) and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria ( Italy). He is known f ...

, the Attic tragedians, and most especially

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

and

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

. While his prose is considered by some to be dense and cryptic, as a teacher he regularly impressed his students with his tremendous erudition, which was certainly not limited to classical literature, and by his willingness to take seriously the opinions and thoughts of all his students. Many consider him to be one of America's greatest classical scholars:

Harvey Mansfield Harvey Claflin Mansfield Jr. (born March 21, 1932) is an American political philosopher. He is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1962. He has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships ...

and

Pierre Vidal-Naquet Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet (; 23 July 1930 – 29 July 2006) was a French historian who began teaching at the ''École des hautes études en sciences sociales'' (EHESS) in 1969. Vidal-Naquet was a specialist in the study of Ancient Greece, but ...

are among those who have praised his achievements. Benardete's method of reading is described by his posture as a reader, following Strauss, in this way: the great writers in a tradition are to be treated as powerful thinkers who have complete control over what they say, how and when they said it, and what they omit. The reader thus risks fundamentally misunderstanding the text of a great author if he dissects elements of the text in such a way that they appear capable of explanation through principles of psychology, anthropology, or other methods which assume that the critic has a greater depth of understanding of the text (or of the human condition) than the author. Further, each successive "great" writer in a tradition must be assumed to be fully aware and in control of the elements of the philosophical and artistic conversation that arises in the foundational texts. With this perspective Benardete was able to find threads of unity in authors whose works apparently lack cohesiveness (e.g., Herodotus). In the spirit of the continuing engagement of moderns with the classical authors, Benardete showed great respect for the various traditions of commentary (the

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandria ...

ns, the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

editors, and the German tradition of ''Altertumswissenschaft'') in contrast to more recent trends in scholarship which sometimes tend to homogenize the thought of great writers into their cultures and to adduce bits of textual evidence to prove a point without due regard to the entirety of the text from which it is excerpted. Among Benardete's most important works are ''Herodotean Inquiries'' (The Hague, 1969); ''The Being of the Beautiful: Plato’s Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman'' (Chicago, 1984); ''Socrates’ Second Sailing: On Plato’s Republic'' (Chicago, 1989); ''The Rhetoric and Morality of Philosophy: Plato’s Gorgias and Phaedrus'' (Chicago, 2009); ''The Tragedy and Comedy of Life: Plato’s Philebus'' (Chicago, 2009); ''The Bow and the Lyre: A Platonic Reading of the Odyssey'' (Lanham, MD, 1997); ''Plato’s Laws: The Discovery of Being'' (Chicago 2000); ''Plato’s Symposium'' (with Allan Bloom, Chicago 2001).

References

Harvey C. Mansfield Harvey Claflin Mansfield Jr. (born March 21, 1932) is an American political philosopher. He is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Government at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1962. He has held Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships a ...

,
Seth Benardete, 1930–2001
, originally published in ''

The Weekly Standard ''The Weekly Standard'' was an American neoconservative political magazine of news, analysis and commentary, published 48 times per year. Originally edited by founders Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, the ''Standard'' had been described as a "red ...

(November 27, 2001)

External links

The Benardete Archive
– An ongoing project of bibliography, biography, recollections of his courses and appreciation of his contribution to classical scholarship.

– An excerpt from ''Encounters and Reflections: Conversations with Seth Benardete'' edited by

Ronna Burger Ronna C. Burger (born December 5, 1947) is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy, Catherine & Henry J. Gaisman Chair, and Sizeler Professor of Jewish Studies at Tulane University. Career She received her PhD in Philosophy from the ...

.
Review of Seth Benardete, Encounters & Reflections
– Review and appreciation by a colleague at NYU.
Biography, Bibliography and Introduction to his work
{{DEFAULTSORT:Benardete, Seth 1930 births 2001 deaths American people of Turkish-Jewish descent American philologists Hellenists Jewish philosophers New York University faculty Political scientists who studied under Leo Strauss 20th-century philologists