Erica Benner
Visiting Fellow
Phone: (203) 432-1366
Email: erica.benner@yale.edu
Erica Benner works on ethics, political philosophy, and the history of ideas. She taught at Oxford after receiving her doctorate there in 1993, moving to the London School of Economics in 1997. Now based in Berlin, she has recently held visiting posts at the Freie Universität, the Central European University, and Tulane University. Her book Really Existing Nationalisms (Oxford UP) and other previous work dealt with the ethics and intellectual history of nationalism. A new book, Machiavelli’s Ethics (Princeton UP 2009) reconsiders and rejects the standard view that Machiavelli was indifferent to justice, or that he defended the maxim that ‘ends justify means’. A central argument is that ancient Greek ethics influenced Machiavelli more than is usually recognised.
Benner is currently working on a study of Thucydides’ ethics and on a philosophical history of self-determination. Other research interests include Plato, Hobbes’ relationship to Greek moral and political thought, and Rousseau.
