David Konstan
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David Konstan is Professor of Classics at New York University. His undergraduate degree is in mathematics and his doctorate in Greek and Latin. He has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has been visiting professor at the American University in Cairo and at various universities in South America and Europe. He is a past president of the American Philological Association, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Research interests
History of emotion; Greek and Roman comedy; the ancient novel; classical philosophy (especially Epicurus and Aristotle); aesthetics; history of ideas and values
On the Margins of Love: Gratitude, Loyalty, and Altruism in the Classical World – and Beyond
Is it possible to bestow a gift, in the sense of an altruistic act, without demand or expectation of return (by which a gift becomes an economic exchange)? Is gratitude a promissory note, the commitment to repay a gift when the opportunity arises? To what extent is loyalty required of friends – are we bound to do wrong on behalf of friends? These questions concerning altruism, gratitude, and friendship take us to the heart of the classical ethical code, and the answers tend to be subsumed under a single social concept: reciprocity. Thus, gifts are not really possible, since they are always conditional upon reciprocation, even if the agents conceal this from themselves (what Marcel Mauss called “méconnaissance”). Friendship is quasi-contractual, and depends upon the mutual exchange of services. Altruism is out of the question. Yet this is not the way that ancient philosophers and writers thought of things. Aristotle insists that both affection and favors consist in doing things for another’s sake and not one’s own, and all Greeks knew the difference between a gift and a sale or loan. My project is to rehabilitate, on the basis of classical Greek and Roman texts, the idea of generosity and friendship as intrinsically unselfish, as opposed to being implicitly based on reciprocity, and to argue for the relevance of the classical view to considerations of social life today.
Key publications
Beauty: The Fortunes of an Ancient Greek Idea, Oxford University Press, 2014
Before Forgiveness: The Origins of a Moral Idea, Cambridge University Press, 2010
“A Life Worthy of the Gods”: The Materialist Psychology of Epicurus, Parmenides Press, 2008
The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, University of Toronto Press, 2006
Friendship in the Classical World, Cambridge University Press, 1997
 Round table organized by D. Konstan (2016-2017 Paris IAS fellow), with the participation of P. Campeggiani (2018-2019 Paris IAS fellow)  Lecture by D. Konstan, Paris IAS fellow Talk by D. Konstan, Paris IAS fellow Lecture by D. Konstan, Paris IAS fellow Lecture by D. Konstan (Paris IAS fellow) Talk by D. Konstan, Paris IAS fellow Conference organized by D. Konstan (Paris IAS) and R. Gagné (SCAS / Cambridge) Lecture by D. Konstan, Paris IAS fellow Lecture by D. Konstan, Paris IAS fellow Lecture by D. Konstan, Paris IAS fellow Lecture by D. Konstan, Paris IAS fellow Talk by D. Konstan, Paris IAS fellow Talk by D. Konstan, Paris IAS fellow Talk by D. Konstan, Paris IAS fellow |
 Bloomsbury Publishing  Oxford University Press  Ciceroniana On Line |
 Workshop organized by Yang Huang (Paris IAS) and Anca Dan (Labex TransferS, CNRS- ENS Paris), with the support of the Paris IAS, Labex TransferS |