Paul Shorey


Paul Shorey was an American classical scholar.

Biography

Shorey was born at Davenport, Iowa. After graduating from Harvard in 1878, he studied in Europe at Leipzig, Bonn, Athens, and Munich. He was a professor at several institutions from 1885 onward. Professor Shorey served at Bryn Mawr College, then principally at the University of Chicago. In 1901-02 he was professor in the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Greece, and in 1913-14 he was Roosevelt Lecturer in the University of Berlin. Professor Shorey was made a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. From 1908 he was managing editor of Classical Philology. Shorey was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1920.
He died in Chicago in 1934. After his death, one of many articles published about him asserted that he knew all 15,693 lines of the Iliad by heart.

The Roosevelt Lectureship

The Roosevelt Lecturership involved giving a series of public lectures. In these, Shorey addressed American culture and literature. Besides the public lectures, however, the Roosevelt Lecturer was required to give a seminar in his own special field of study. As a notable Platonic scholar, Shorey naturally offered to conduct a seminar on Plato. He had not reckoned on the views of American scholarship held by the principal German classicist, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, who held sway in Berlin. Wilamowitz had no intention of allowing Shorey any scope on Plato:
In a letter to Diels of 8 May 1912... he wrote that he considered it 'grotesque that the editor of a Chicago journal be brought to Berlin to teach us philology'.... Wilamowitz could not of course know that Shorey would later refer to his Platon as a 'historical novel', but could have been aware that in a 1911 article in the Nation... Shorey had named him in a list of German scholars whose 'big ambitious books... cannot be trusted'. Wilamowitz was no more receptive to Shorey's next suggestion, of Pindar, since the two differed on metrical questions. In the end, permission was given for a seminar on the De Anima.
As Sprague points out, Wilamowitz had not reckoned on Shorey's view that 'Aristotle is a Platonist au fond'. In the seminar he explained the relevance, in his view, of Plato's Theaetetus, Phaedo, Republic, Euthydemus, Sophist. Politicus, Meno, and Philebus to a full and exact understanding of De Anima. Sprague comments: 'I am afraid I find it irresistible to remark that Wilamowitz did not really succeed in preventing Shorey from giving a Plato seminar'.

Writing

BooksDe Platonis Idearum Doctrina. Munich: Theodor Askermann, 1884.
Translations
Selected articlesThe Dial, Vol. V, May 1884/April 1885.The Dial, Vol. V, May 1884/April 1885.The Dial, Vol. VII, May 1886/April 1887.The Dial, Vol. VII, May 1886/April 1887.The Dial, Vol. VIII, May 1887/April 1888.The Dial, Vol. VIII, May 1887/April 1888.The Dial, Vol. VIII, May 1887/April 1888.The Classical Review, Vol. IV, 1890.The Dial, Vol. XIV, January/June 1893.The Dial, Vol. XIV, January/June 1893.The Dial, Vol. XV, July/December 1893.The Dial, Vol. XV, July/December 1893.The Dial, Vol. XV, July/December 1893.The Dial, Vol. XVI, January/June 1894.
  • In: Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. I, The University of Chicago Press, 1895.The Forum, Vol. XVIII, 1895.The Forum, Vol. XIX, 1895.The Dial, Vol. XX, January/June 1896.The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. LXXVIII, 1896.School Review, Vol. V, 1897.The Dial, Vol. XXII, January/June 1897.The Dial, Vol. XXIV, January/June 1898.
  • In: Philosophers and Scientists, Vol. I, Doubleday & McClure Company, 1899.The Dial, Vol. XXVI, January/June 1899.The Dial, Vol. XXVII, July/December 1899.The Dial, Vol. XXIX, July/December 1900.Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. XII, 1901.The Dial, Vol. XXX, January/June 1901.The Dial, Vol. XXX, January/June 1901.The Dial, Vol. XXXI, July/December 1901.The Classical Journal, Vol. I, No. 6, May 1906.The Chautauquan, Vol. XLIII, 1906.The Bookman, Vol. XXIII, 1906.The Dial, Vol. XLII, January/June 1907.The Chautauquan, Vol. XLVI, 1907.The Dial, Vol. XLIII, July/December 1907.The Dial, Vol. XLIII, July/December 1907.International Congress of Arts and Science, Vol. VI, 1908.The University of Chicago Magazine, Vol. I, No. 6, April 1909.The Dial, Vol. XLVI, January/June 1909.The Dial, Vol. XLVII, July/December 1909.The Dial, Vol. XLVIII, January/June 1910.The School Review, Vol. XVIII, No. 9, 1910.The Dial, Vol. XLIX, July/December 1910.Educational Review, Vol. XLII, June/December 1911.
  • In: Greek Literature, The Columbia University Press, 1912.
  • In The American College, Henry Holt and Company, 1915.
  • "The Bigotry of the New Education," The Nation, Vol. CV, 1917.
  • , The Atlantic Monthly, Vols. CXIX/CXX, 1917.Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. L, 1919.Classical Philology, Vol. XV, 1920.
Other publications
  • Pope's translation of of Homer, with an introduction and notes by Paul Shorey, 1899.
  • In: The New International Encyclopædia, Vol. X, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1906, pp. 14–15.
  • In: The New International Encyclopædia, Vol. X, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1906, pp. 166–168.
  • In: The New International Encyclopædia, Vol. XVI, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1906, pp. 31–32.
  • In: The New International Encyclopædia, Vol. XVI, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1906, 101–104.
  • Marion Mills Miller, with an introduction by Paul Shorey, 1909.

Legacy

A house in University of Chicago College housing is named in Shorey's honor. Shorey House was located in Pierce Tower until that building's demolition in 2013 and is now located in International House.
Shorey's student, Harold F. Cherniss, was a well-known historian of ancient philosophy at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and defended Shorey's unitarian interpretation of Plato in several influential books. Shorey's views thus became a central theme of later debates over Plato and Aristotle.