David Bronstein

University of Notre Dame (Australia), Institute for Ethics & Society, Faculty Member

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David Bronstein is Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow in the Institute for Ethics and Society at the University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney, and Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2023-2026).

Bronstein was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, where, like Leonard Cohen, he graduated from Westmount High School. He studied Classics and Contemporary Studies at the University of King’s College and Dalhousie University in beautiful Halifax, Nova Scotia, and he completed his PhD in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He has held positions as lecturer and postdoctoral research fellow at Oxford University (2007-10), as Assistant Professor at Boston University (2010-12), as Assistant and then Associate Professor (tenured) at Georgetown University (2012-20), and as Lecturer at the University of New South Wales (2019-22).

His research is in the area of Ancient Greek Philosophy. He is interested in ethics, epistemology, philosophy of science, logic, and metaphysics in the Ancient Greek tradition and beyond. He has published several articles on Plato and Aristotle and, in 2016, a book: Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning: the Posterior Analytics (Oxford University Press).

Bronstein currently holds an ARC Future Fellowship for a project entitled ‘Virtue with Aristotle: Recovering an Ancient Ethical Theory for Our Time.’ This project aims to produce the first comprehensive study of Aristotle’s concept of virtue in all three areas of human activity in which he applies it (moral action, theoretical cognition, and craft and artistic production) and to trace its relevance for contemporary ethical theory and practice. Bronstein is also completing a project on Aristotle’s philosophy of science, with a particular focus on Aristotle’s theories of demonstration and definition in the Analytics. He serves as Book Reviews Editor for the Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

Email: [email protected]

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Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning: the Posterior Analytics (Oxford University Press, 2016)

Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics is one of the most important, and difficult, works in the history... more Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics is one of the most important, and difficult, works in the history of western philosophy. This book sheds new light on this challenging text by arguing that it is coherently structured around two themes of enduring philosophical interest: knowledge and learning. The Posterior Analytics, Bronstein argues, is a sustained examination of scientific knowledge: what it is and how it is acquired. Aristotle first discusses two principal forms of scientific knowledge (epistēmē and nous). He then provides a compelling account, in reverse order, of the types of learning one needs to undertake in order to acquire them. The Posterior Analytics thus emerges as an elegantly organized work in which Aristotle describes the mind’s ascent from perception of sensible particulars to scientific knowledge of first principles. Aristotle on Knowledge and Learning also highlights Plato’s influence on Aristotle’s text. For each type of learning Aristotle discusses, Bronstein uncovers an instance of Meno’s Paradox (a puzzle from Plato’s Meno according to which inquiry and learning are impossible) and a solution to it. In addition, Bronstein argues, against current orthodoxy, that Aristotle is committed to the Socratic Picture of inquiry, according to which one should seek what a thing’s essence is before seeking its demonstrable attributes and their causes.

David Bronstein

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