Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas

Luck (and Lucklessness) in Ancient Greek Thought

Season 2 Episode 43

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 47:11

Daniel Schillinger joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new book Luckless: The Idea of Luck in Ancient Greek Thought, which recently appeared with Oxford University Press.

Find out more about Daniel's work here: https://www.danielschillinger.com/

Ancient authors and texts

  • Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
  • Euripides, Trojan Women (and Hippolytus)
  • Thucydides
  • Aristotle, Physics, Nicomachean Ethics, Poetics (Daniel's book also contains a chapter on the Eudemian Ethics)

Other works/authors

  • Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy; The Prince
  • Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy
  • Arlene Saxenhouse, work on tragedy (see esp. her 1988 "The tyranny of reason in the world of the polis, in The American Political Science Review 82: 1261-1275)
  • H.P. Stahl, Thucydides: Man's Place in History
  • Leo Strauss, On Thucydides' War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians," chapter in The City and Man
  • Bernard Williams, Moral Luck
  • Adam Parry's scholarship on Thucydides
  • And others: Arendt, Freud, Kant, Nietzsche, Rawls...

About our Guest

Daniel Schillinger is a Lecturer in Political Science at Yale University, where he teaches in the Directed Studies Program and offers seminars on Greek political thought. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Yale Center for Civic Thought and a recipient of the Lux et Veritas teaching prize.

________________________________

Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!

Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius

This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.

Instagram: @leschepodcast
Email: leschepodcast@gmail.com
Suggest a book using this form

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.

Byzantium & Friends Artwork

Byzantium & Friends

Byzantium & Friends
Ottoman History Podcast Artwork

Ottoman History Podcast

Ottoman History Podcast
I, Podius Artwork

I, Podius

Maximum Fun
Women Who Went Before Artwork

Women Who Went Before

Rebekah Haigh & Emily Chesley
Ancient Office Hours Artwork

Ancient Office Hours

Lexie Henning
Peopling the Past Artwork

Peopling the Past

Chelsea Gardner, Melissa Funke