Professor of Philosophy at Union College.
I specialize in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy. My research focuses on perception, memory, phantasia (imagination) and mind in Plato and Aristotle. I am especially interested in how and why Aristotle moves away from Plato’s Theory of Forms when explaining how things in the material world come to exist and how we can have knowledge. I am currently working on a manuscript entitled Plato and Aristotle on the Being of Indivisibles, which argues that Aristotle is the first to develop an account of indivisibles must be not only immaterial, but must also be simple and without parts. As far back as the Pythagoreans there was an assumption among ancient Greek philosophers that something without any magnitude or extension or parts of any kind could not exist. But something that has parts seems as if it is necessarily divisible. It isn’t until we get to Plato that we get a metaphysical argument in Parmenides that something can both have parts and still be indivisible. Aristotle, however, argues that indivisibles cannot have any parts. What is more, he shows how something with no parts or properties can exist. He claims that such a thing exists as a kind of division. Aristotle is the first ancient Greek philosopher to argue that things like geometrical points enjoy a special kind of existence as kinds of divisions…more than 60 years before Euclid will develop a similar account of geometrical points in his Elements. For Euclid, the import of points is mathematical, but for Aristotle, geometrical points become the paradigm for anything that is indivisible, whether it be time, essences, or the unmoved mover itself. For Aristotle, proof that points and other indivisibles have real existence is the cornerstone of his metaphysics and fundamentally changes the way he thinks about the world.
My work has been published in Phronesis and I recently contributed a chapter to Aristotle’s On the Soul: A Critical Guide (ed. Caleb Cohoe). I published an co-edited a volume for Springer with Paula Satne (Leeds) entitled Conflict and Resolution: the Ethics of Forgiveness, Revenge, and Punishment. In 2015 I received a Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship that led to my paper “Honor, Worth, and Justified Revenge in Aristotle”. My research has been featured on Academic Minute and Ethics Untangled.
For more information about my work please check out my Curriculum Vitae or feel free to email me at scheitek@union.edu.