Lorraine Smith Pangle

Lorraine Smith Pangle is Professor of Government and Co-director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas at the University of Texas at Austin. Her teaching and research focus on the history of political and moral philosophy, with special interests in Homer, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle.

She holds a B.A. in history from Yale University, a B.Ed. from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Committee on Social Thought. She is recipient of the Raymond Dickson Centennial Endowed Teaching Award at the University of Texas and of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Earhart Foundation.

In addition to her five books, she has written articles on Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, the American founders, the philosophy of education, and the contemporary academy, which may be found on academia.edu.

Current research projects include studies of the relation between Plato’s moral and epistemological thought in the Theaetetus; the relation between Plato and Homer, focusing on the moral psychology presented in the Iliad and Republic and the “contest between philosophy and poetry”; the place of contemplation in Nietzsche’s political philosophy; and recent developments in evolutionary psychology and the way they confirm and shed new light on ancient claims about human nature.