John Michael Chase

Michael Chase (PhD EPHE, Ve Section, Paris-Sorbonne, 2000) is Senior Researcher at the Centre Jean Pépin (UMR 8230-École normale supérieure) of the CNRS (National Center of Scientific Research), Paris-Villejuif, France, as well as Visiting Professor at the Universidad Panamericana, Mexico City (2019–2021) and Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria, Canada. He works at the intersection of Greek, Arabic, and Latin philosophy, and has published widely on ancient Greco-Roman philosophy, Greek and Latin Patristics, and medieval Latin and Arabic philosophy. A former student of Pierre Hadot, he has translated a half-dozen of Hadot’s books into English.

Chase’s interests are broad, multicultural, and interdisciplinary. In addition to his work on the thought of Hadot, he is interested in interactions between contemporary science and ancient philosophy, the transmission of Greek philosophy to the Islamicate world, and comparative ancient and contemporary philosophy in general. His current projects include critical editions of two Arabic philosophical texts (Avicenna, Notes on the Theology of Aristotle, and the Arabic translation of Alexander of Aphrodisias, On the Intellect). He is currently working on a monograph on meditation-style methods of attention management in ancient Greek, Islamic, Jewish, Byzantine, and medieval Latin thought. At the MPIWG, he will study the intersections between experience and translation in the framework of the Working Group “Knowledge Ensouled: Premodern Experience of the Natural World.”