Associate 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 Aristotle and the Being of Non-Magnitudes, which argues that Aristotle is the first to argue that things like geometrical points enjoy a special kind of existence. Specifically, he argues that points exist as kinds of divisions. Almost 100 years later Euclid will develop an account of geometrical points very similar to Aristotle’s and it will have a huge impact on the development of mathematics. But for Aristotle, the discovery that something without magnitude goes beyond mathematics. It allows Aristotle to develop a brand new metaphysics as well as a philosophy of mind that until now has largely gone unnoticed. In the manuscript I argue that the discovery of non-magnitudes allows Aristotle to develop an account of the God, time, and mind that would not have been possible before.
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.