Mauro Bonazzi appointed professor in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy

From March onwards, Mauro Bonazzi is appointed professor in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy. The chair is embedded within the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies.

Bio

Mauro Bonazzi studied Classics and Philosophy at Milan University (Università degli Studi di Milano), where he also earned his PhD with highest distinctions in 2002. After some research periods in Leiden and Cambridge he returned to Milan, where he was appointed assistant professor first and then associate professor in History of Ancient Philosophy. In recent years he also held teaching positions (as ‘professeur invité’) in several French (Clermont-Ferrand, Bordeaux twice, the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, and Lille) and Italian (Vercelli, Piedmont) universities.

Research on Plato

Bonazzi's reasearch focuses on Plato, taking two different directions. On the one side he is working on Plato in his intellectual and philosophical context. At the moment he is finishing a book on the sophists for Cambridge University Press, his last publicaion on this subject was Atene la città inquieta (Einaudi 2016). On the other side his second main area of interest revolves around the history of ancient Platonism (À la recherche des Idées. Platonisme et philosophie hellénistique d’Antiochus à Plotin, Vrin 2015), also in comparison with contemporary debates on Plato. The task of modern philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche and Gilles Deleuze said, is to overturn Platonism, ‘renverser le platonisme’; first however it would be advisable to understand what Platonism is. Since 2016 he collaborates with the Corriere della Sera (an Italian newspaper).