G.R.F. (John) Ferrari
Department Chair; Professor of Classics
Ancient Philosophy, Greek Culture, Ancient Poetics and Rhetoric, Philosophical Aesthetics
B.A. 1977, Ph.D. 1983 Cambridge University
Contact information
Office: 7217 Dwinelle Hall
Email: gferrari@berkeley.edu
Office phone: (510) 642-3164
Mailing address:
7233 Dwinelle Hall #2520
Berkeley, CA 94720-2520
Selected publications
Listening to the Cicadas: A Study of Plato's Phaedrus. Cambridge Classical Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1987.
City and Soul in Plato's Republic. Lecturae Platonis. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag. 2003. 123 pp. (Hardback.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2005. (Paperback.)
The Cambridge Companion to Plato’s Republic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2007. (Editor and contributor.)
Personal statement
In my Guggenheim fellowship year (2008-9) I took a break from my habitual study of ancient philosophy in order to begin writing a book of contemporary philosophy whose working title is The Messages We Send. The project stems from a long-standing interest of mine in a kind of social message-sending that falls short of full-blown communication. A connected project has appeared as an article, "The Meaninglessness of Gardens," in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Work on the book continues concurrently with my research into ancient philosophy, esp. Plato.
