ProfessorDirk Baltzly

Project Total: $3,800; This project brings together representatives of all three disciplines to work on identifying parallels/similarities and differences between the three cases that emerge when we look at these three separate and disconnected literatures in conjunction. Our primary research question is: 'Does the radical diagnosis of philosophical reason as itself gendered (cf. Dodds & Goddard, 2013) find any parallels in the literature on women's under-representation in Engineering and Theology and Religious Studies? Or are these disciplines still dominated by 'chilly climate' or 'pipeline' diagnoses that were previously the norm in Philosophy?' Funded by: University of Tasmania - Grant-CAL Hothouse Research Enhancement Program; University of Tasmania ($3,800).

Project Total: $16,950; Funded by: Australian Research Council ($16,950); University of Tasmania.

Project Total: $11,684; The ancient notion that the goal of living an ethical life was 'becoming like god' can seem particularly remote and strange to our secular age. Nonetheless, this is a pervasive idea at least from Plato (5th-4th centuries BC) throughout antiquity and into Christianity and Islam. My proposed project is part of a broader attempt to understand what this idea meant to a range of ancient thinkers: Christians, Jews, Muslims and pagans, some with a belief in a non-material reality, others materialists. To understand this on the ancients' own terms contributes to our understanding of ancient religion and philosophy, and the legacy of ancient thought in the present day. It contributes a deeper understanding of the nature of philosophy and of an ethical life, and of the changing concepts of divinity across cultures and religions. Funded by: University of Tasmania - Grant-Research Enhancement (REGS); University of Tasmania ($11,684).

Project Total: $265,000; This project has two main aims. First, it will further advance our knowledge of late antique Platonism (200-600 CE) by producing a translation and commentary on a significant and difficult ancient Greek text from the period - Proclus' Commentary on Plato's Republic. Second, it will produce a book of an interdisciplinary nature that seeks to make the study of late antique Platonism more relevant to contemporary philosophy. This book will analyse the Platonic schools as textual communities and will argue that both the form and content of the neoplatonic commentary tradition makes sense when we understand the role their written works play in maintaining textual communities. Funded by: Australian Research Council - Grant-Discovery Projects ($265,000); University of Tasmania ($40,485).

Project Total: $292,000; Using new evidence for the interpretation of mythical, oracular, and religious discourse since 430BC we will examine such discourse in the myths and 'inspired' passages of Plato, focussing particularly on differences from standard argumentative discourse. We aim to discover the philosophical and practical significance, for the Platonic community, of discourse that asserts superiority over logic while challenging listeners to grasp its deeper meaning. We consider how far later Platonists could recognise Plato's myth voice as the vestiges of an oral society founded on myth-telling progressively faded, and whether the decline of allegorical traditions led to basic misunderstandings in the interpretation of Plato today. Funded by: Australian Research Council - Grant-Discovery Projects; University of Sydney; University of Tasmania.