Rachel Barney


Rachel Barney is a Canadian philosopher and Professor and Acting Associate Chair at the department of philosophy at the University of Toronto.
She is known for her works on ancient philosophy.

Education and career

Barney got her undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto. She earned her PhD at Princeton. She returned back to the University of Toronto after teaching at the University of Chicago, the University of Ottawa, and Harvard. Barney did research that ranged from the early sophists to the late Neoplatonic commentator Simplicius; nevertheless, most of her research focused on Plato. Her most prominent areas of research are ethics, psychology, philosophical methods, and epistemology.
In the 2011 Canadian federal election, Barney was Green Party candidate in Trinity—Spadina, placing fourth.

Publications

Names and Nature in Plato’s Cratylus, Routledge, 2001Plato and the Divided Self, co-edited with Tad Brennan and Charles Francis Brittain, Cambridge University Press, 2012
  • “History and Dialectic ”, in Carlos Steel ed., Aristotle’s Metaphysics Alpha
  • “Notes on the Kalon and the Good in Plato,” Classical Philology
  • ”Plato on Desire for the Good”, S. Tenenbaum, ed., Desire, Good, and Practical Reason.
  • “Ring-Composition in Plato: the Case of Republic X,” in M. McPherran, ed., Plato’s Republic: A Critical Guide
  • “Gorgias’ Defence: Plato and his Opponents on Rhetoric and the Good,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 48.1 : 95-121
  • “Simplicius: Commentary, Harmony, and Authority,” Antiquorum Philosophia 3 : 101-20
  • “Aristotle’s Argument for a Human Function,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 34 : 293-322
  • “Eros and Necessity in the Ascent from the Cave,” Ancient Philosophy 28:2 : 357-72
  • “The Carpenter and the Good”, in D. Cairns, F. G. Herrmann, and T. Penner Pursuing the Good: Ethics and Metaphysics in Plato’s Republic.