Ronna Burger

Ronna Burger is Professor of Philosophy, Catherine & Henry J. Gaisman Chair and Director of Judeo-Christian Studies, Sizeler Professor of Jewish Studies, and Director of the Religious Studies Minor. Teaching at Tulane since 1980, she offers seminars almost every semester on particular works of Plato or Aristotle. She has recently been teaching a series of courses, “Bible and Philosophy,” on different topics each term, such as “Women in the Bible,” “The Political World of the Bible,” or “The Problem of Evil.”

Interests:

• Plato and Aristotle
• Maimonides
• Bible and Philosophy

Books and Monographs:

• The Phaedo: A Platonic Labyrinth. (Yale, 1984. Reprinted, St. Augustine's Press 1999; Chinese translation 2015; Revised Edition with new Preface and "On the Euthyphro," St. Augustine Press, 2023)
• On Plato's Euthyphro (Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung, 2015)
• Aristotle's Dialogue with Socrates: on the Nicomachean Ethics. (Chicago , 2008; Chinese translation 2011)
• Plato's Phaedrus: A Defense of a Philosophic Art of Writing (Alabama, 1980; Chinese translation 2016)
• Co-editor, The Eccentric Core: the Thought of Seth Benardete (St. Augustine's Press, 2018)
• Co-editor, The Archaeology of the Soul: Platonic Readings in Ancient Poetry and Philosophy by Seth Benardete (St. Augustine's Press, 2012)
• Editor, Encounters and Reflections: Conversations with Seth Benardete (Chicago, 2002)
• Co-editor, The Argument of the Action (Chicago, 2000)
• Nature, Law, and the Sacred: Essays in Honor of Ronna Burger, edited by Evanthia Speliotis (Mercer University Press, 2020)

Selected Articles:

• "Maimonides’ Dialogue with Aristotle: Virtue and Self-Restraint in Eight Chapters,” Knowing and Being in Ancient Philosophy (Palgrave Macmillan, July 2022).
• “Chance, Divine Providence, or Human Prudence?: on the Book of Esther,” Writing The Poetic Soul of Philosophy, ed. Denise Schaeffer (St. Augustine’s Press, 2020).
• "Eros and Mind: Aristotle on Philosophic Friendship and the Cosmos of Life," Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, Spring 2019
• "The Erotic and the Thumotic Soul," in The Eccentric Core (St. Augustine's Press, 2018)
• “Woman and Nature: the Female Drama of the Book of Genesis,” Athens, Arden, Jerusalem (Lexington Books, 2017)
• “Imitation and Representation: Mimesis in Aristotle’s Poetics,” Encyclopedia of Aesthetics (Oxford, 2nd ed. 2014)
• “Socrates’ Odyssean Return: on Plato’s Charmides,” in Strange Fellows: Socratic Philosophy and its Others (Lexington Books, 2013, reprinted 2015)
• "Maimonides on Knowledge of Good and Evil: The Guide of the Perplexed I.2,” in Political Philosophy Cross-Examined (Palgrave Macmillan. 2013)

Public Lectures:

• Plenary Speaker, "Plato's Sophist and Its Homeric Model," International Plato Society, July 2022.
• Keynote Speaker, " Aristotle's 'Philosophy of Human Affairs': the Pairing and Parting of Ethics and Politics," Voegelin Center Conference, LSU, April 2022.

Selected Online Lectures:

• "The Fall from our Ancient Nature: Plato’s Aristophanic Speech on Eros and the Biblical Story of Adam and Eve,” Harvard Program on Constitutional Government, 2018
• “The Best Human Life: on Aristotle’s Ethics I.5,” Emory University, Atlanta, 2013