John J. Mulhern

My current research is mainly in Greek and Latin philosophical authors, poets, historians, and commentators with an emphasis on their contribution to understanding political and related behavior.  Since coming to Penn in 1991, I have headed the Fels Institute of Government twice and was appointed adjunct associate professor of Classical Studies in 2000, where I have taught in the Benjamin Franklin Scholars program as well as in Classical Studies and Political Science.  I began writing on interpretation of the Platonic dialogues in 1968; typical of my more recent work in this vein is “Plato’s Putative Mouthpiece and Ancient Authorial Practice:  The Case of Homer,” in Second Sailing: Alternative Perspectives on Plato, ed. D. Nails and H. Tarrant.  Commentationes Humanarum Litterarum 132 (Helsinki:  Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 2015), pp. 257-277.  My first published paper on Aristotle’s ethics and politics appeared in 1972; my latest published pieces in this area are “Πολιτεία in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics,” in Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy in Honor of Professor Anthony Preus, ed. D.M. Spitzer (London:  Routledge, 2023), pp. 230-241, and “ΠΟΝΟΣ and ΠΟΝΕΩ in Aristotle,” in Valuing Labour in Greco-Roman Antiquity, Mnemosyne Supplement 481, ed. M. Flohr and K. Bowes (Leiden:  Brill, 2024), pp. 41-61.  Another recent paper, “Φύσις as Natura in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on the Politics and in STh I-II Question 94,”  The Thomist 88 (2024), pp. 599-626, illustrates my approach to the Latin commentators.  I am a life member of the Society for Classical Studies and have served actively on the board of the Bryn Mawr Classical Review since 2009, where I review regularly.  I have presented and served as chair or discussant regularly at the annual meetings of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, the New England Political Science Association, the Northeastern Political Science Association, and at the annual Patristic, Mediaeval, and Renaissance Studies Conference.