Benardete, Seth 1930–2001

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Benardete, Seth 1930–2001

PERSONAL: Born April 4, 1930, in Brooklyn, NY; died November 14, 2001; son of Mair Jose (a professor) and Doris (a teacher) Benardete; married Jane Johnson (a professor of literature); children: Ethan, Alexandra Emma. Education: University of Chicago, B.A., 1949, Ph.D., 1955.

CAREER: Educator and classics scholar. St. John's College, Annapolis, MD, tutor, 1955–57; Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, professor, 1960–64; New York University, New York, NY, professor of classics, 1964–2001; New School (now New School University), New York, NY, instructor, 1966–2001.

AWARDS, HONORS: American School fellowship to Athens, Greece, 1952–53; Ford Foundation fellowship to Florence, Italy, 1953–54; inducted into Society of Junior Fellows, Harvard University, 1957–60; National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, 1972; Carl Freidrich von Siemens Stiftung to Munich, Germany, 1994, 1998.

WRITINGS:

Herodotean Inquiries, Martinus Nijhoff (The Hague, Netherlands), 1969, St. Augustine's Press (South Bend, IN), 1999.

(Editor) Joel Schmidt, Larousse Greek and Roman Mythology, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1980.

(Translator) The Being of the Beautiful: Plato's Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1984, published in three volumes, as Plato's Theaetetus, Plato's Sophist, and Plato's Statesman, 1986.

Socrates' Second Sailing: On Plato's Republic, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1989.

The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1991.

(Translator) The Tragedy and Comedy of Life: Plato's Philebus, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 1993.

On Plato's Symposium, Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung (Munich, Germany), 1993.

The Bow and the Lyre: A Platonic Reading of the Odyssey, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 1997.

Sacred Transgressions: A Reading of Sophocles' Antigone, St. Augustine's Press (South Bend, IN), 1999.

Plato's "Laws": The Discovery of Being, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2000.

The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy, edited by Michael Davis and Ronna Burger, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2000.

(Translator) Plato's Symposium, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2001.

(Editor and author of foreword) Leo Strauss on Plato's Symposium, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2001.

Socrates and Plato: The Dialectics of Eros, Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung (Munich, Germany), 2002.

(Translator, with Michael Davis) Aristotle on Poetics, St. Augustine's Press (South Bend, IN), 2002.

(With Robert Berman, Ronna Burger, and Michael Davis) Encounters and Reflections: Conversations with Seth Benardete, edited by Ronna Burger, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Philosopher and classics scholar Seth Benardete died in 2001, after a long and distinguished career. Richard L. Velkley wrote for Claremont Institute Online that he "left behind an astonishing body of writing on the ancient poets, historians, and philosophers; translations of Greek tragedies and Platonic dialogues; five books of commentary on Plato; a book apiece on Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles; a volume of essays, and a long list of articles on many authors and subjects." Velkley praised Benardete for his "extraordinary depth and subtlety of interpretation, vast erudition, audacious mastery of the most difficult texts and problems. He belongs to the rare company of classical exegetes who will endure as more than a scholar. He was a philosopher, one of the most important of the past half-century."

Benardete was born in Brooklyn, New York, where he and his older brother, Jose, grew up. Their father, Mair Jose, who had been born in Istanbul, was a professor of Sephardic studies and Spanish at Brooklyn College. Their mother taught English there. Benardete was educated at the University of Chicago, where he developed a network of distinguished scholars and studied under his mentor, Leo Strauss, from whom he began to learn how to read Plato.

After studying abroad, one year each in Athens, Greece, and Florence Italy, he wrote his dissertation and then took a teaching position at St. John's College where he also lent his translation skills to a number of volumes. While a fellow at Harvard, he wrote his first book, Herodotean Inquiries and his essay on Sophocles's Oedipus. He taught for several years at Brandeis University, then began his long career at New York University (NYU), during which time he also taught at the New School for Social Research (now New School University). Benardete taught courses in Latin and Greek history, poetry, and philosophy at NYU, as well as summer courses at the Latin-Greek Institute at the graduate center of City University. At the New School, he lectured on ancient Greek philosophy, typically focusing on one work each term.

Benardete taught until shortly before his death, after a brief illness. Ronna Burger, who had been his student, wrote in a memorial in the Review of Metaphysics that "over thirty-seven years, Benardete's lectures included the pre-Socratic thinkers and Aristotle, while covering almost the entire corpus of Platonic dialogues." Burger wrote that philosophy, as Benardete understood it, is the "encounter with the unexpected, and he exemplified this uniquely in his thinking and reading, his conversation and writing. No predetermined system or method stood in the way of his openness to such an encounter." She concluded by saying that "in his teaching and writing, but especially vividly in conversation—where humor, insight, and soaring thought were inextricably intertwined—Benardete was a model of what it means to live the philosophic life."

Among his volumes, Benardete's The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy reprints essays on a range of topics, including Hesiod's Theogony, Homer's Iliad, eleven Platonic dialogues, and Aristotle's Metaphysics. They are arranged chronologically over the four decades during which they were written. Religious Studies Review critic Anne-Marie Bowery remarked that they "admirably convey the breadth and depth of Benardete's philosophical thinking."

Steven Berg reviewed The Argument of the Action in the Review of Metaphysics, noting that in the final two essays Benardete "acknowledges his debt to Leo Strauss, whom he understands to be the first to have succeeded in recovering political philosophy since the similar and comparably momentous efforts of al-Farabi in the tenth century. In doing so, he identifies his own work as an extension of the renewal of political philosophy that the thought of Strauss represents. Benardete's accomplishment in this regard is extraordinary." Berg said that Benardete's interpretations, "while proceeding on the basis of Strauss's own principles, illuminate in unprecedented ways the central concern of Platonic political philosophy as both Strauss and Benardete understand it."

Encounters and Reflections: Conversations with Seth Benardete was published posthumously. It focuses on his relationships with leading philosophers and scholars, including Strauss and David Grene, and others with whom he studied at the University of Chicago, such as Allan Bloom, George Steiner, and Severn Darden.

In a Weekly Standard tribute to Benardete, Harvey C. Mansfield noted that the man who worked seven days a week never rose to great prominence. Harvey observed that Benardete "was extremely learned in the details of philology, more so indeed that those who know nothing else and are proud of it. But if you want to know his specialty, it was the whole. The whole is depicted to us by poetry and explained to us by philosophy." Harvey said that before Benardete died, "he was the most learned man alive, and I venture to assert, the deepest thinker as well."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Ancient Philosophy, spring, 1996, Sherry R. Blum, review of The Tragedy and Comedy of Life: Plato's Philebus, pp. 215-220.

Canadian Philosophical Review, August, 1992, Ronna Burger, review of The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus, pp. 229-231.

Choice, September, 1989, N.A. Greenberg, review of Socrates' Second Sailing: On Plato's Republic, p. 144; December, 1991, M. Andic, review of The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy, p. 607; March, 1994, P.A. Streveler, review of The Tragedy and Comedy of Life, p. 1147.

Classical World, September, 1992, Mary Whall, review of The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy, pp. 44-45.

Classical Outlook, spring, 1998, Ralph E. Doty, review of The Bow and the Lyre: A Platonic Reading of the Odyssey, p. 117.

Greece & Rome, April, 1990, Richard Wallace, review of Socrates' Second Sailing, p. 122.

Journal of the History of Philosophy, October, 1991, Victorino Tejera, review of Socrates' Second Sailing, pp. 665-667; April, 1995, Dorothea Frede, review of The Tragedy and Comedy of Life, pp. 331-333.

Library Journal, April 15, 2000, Terry C. Skeats, review of The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy, p. 95; March 15, 2003, T.L. Cooksey, review of Encounters and Reflections: Conversations with Seth Benardete, p. 84.

Political Theory, November, 1990, Arlene W. Saxonhouse, review of Socrates' Second Sailing, pp. 690-693.

Religious Studies Review, January, 1991, Larry J. Alderink, review of Socrates' Second Sailing, pp. 64-65; July, 1998, Leon Golden, review of The Bow and the Lyre, p. 293; April, 2002, Anne-Marie Bowery, review of The Argument of the Action, p. 163.

Review of Metaphysics, June, 1992, Scott R. Hemmenway, review of The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy, pp. 842-844; June, 1994, Kenneth Dorter, review of The Tragedy and Comedy of Life, pp. 799-801; June, 1998, Martin Sitte, review of The Bow and the Lyre, p. 911; September, 2001, Steven Berg, review of The Argument of the Action, p. 119; September, 2002, Laurence Lampert, review of Plato's Symposium, p. 159.

Review of Politics, fall, 1998, Zdravko Planinc, review of The Bow and the Lyre, pp. 809-813.

Village Voice Literary Supplement, July, 1989, Mark Caldwell, review of Socrates' Second Sailing, p. 7.