Erica Benner

Erica Benner works on ethics, political philosophy, and the history of ideas. She taught at Oxford after receiving her doctorate there in 1993, then had a tenured post at the London School of Economics until 2002. Now based in Berlin, she has recently held fellowships or visiting professorships at the Freie Universität, the Central European University, and Tulane University.

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: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9041.html.

Her book Really Existing Nationalisms (Oxford UP) and other previous work dealt with the ethics and intellectual history of nationalism. She has recently completed long essays on the intellectual origins of nationalism for the Oxford Handbook on Nationalism (ed. John Breuilly) and on the nation-state for the Cambridge History of Nineteenth Century Philosophy (ed. Allen Wood). 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.

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