General CV

I studied Classics at King’s College, London (BA 1998) and Religious Studies at the University of Amsterdam (2008), where I worked on the thought of the late East-Roman thinker George Gemistos Plethon. In this period I developed a fascination with the thought-worlds of late antiquity, and went on to write my PhD thesis on ‘philosophic silence’ in the thought of the great Platonist philosopher Plotinus (University of Exeter 2013). My work tends to be focus on the history of philosophy, but my real interest is in belief systems more generally, and I am particularly interested in the territory where philosophy as a genre encompasses what we would nowadays tend to call religion. I am delighted to hold a two-year IRC postdoctoral research fellowship at Trinity, and hugely excited to be working with Professor John Dillon. The project is entitled Accounts of the Ascent: Cosmology, Embodiment, and Narratives of Cosmic Journeying in Ancient Platonism, and aims to find ways to interpret a fascinating and little-known type of Platonist philosophical writing, the first-hand narrative of cosmic ascent.

Publications

Banner, N. (in press) Plotinus: Ennead VI.7, On How there is a Multiplicity of Forms, and On the Good. New translation with philosophical commentary and notes, Las Vegas, Zurich, Athens: Parmenides Publishing.

Banner, N. (2018) Plotinus, the ‘One’, and Philosophical Silence, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Banner, N. (2017) ‘The Indeterminate Self and its Cultivation in Plotinus’, in R. Seaford, J. Wilkins, and M. Wright (eds.), Selfhood and the Soul: Essays on Ancient Thought in Honour of Christopher Gill, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 139-59.

Banner, N. (2015) ‘L’Idee de la tradition dans la philosophie de Plotin’, in N. Lhostis, R. Loriol, and C. Sarrazanas (eds.), Discours antiques sur la tradition: formes et fonctions de l’ancien chez les anciens, Paris: de Boccard, 119-34.