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SPRAGUE, Rosamond Kent

  • Rosamond Kent Sprague
  • Date of Birth: May 16, 1922
  • Born City: Brookline
  • Born State/Country: MA
  • Parents: Ira Rich, an editor at Houghton Mifflin, & Louise Andrews Kent, a newspaper columnist.
  • Date of Death: September 10, 2022
  • Death City: Columbia
  • Death State/Country: SC
  • Married: Arthur Colby Sprague, August 3, 1946.
  • Education:

    B.A., Bryn Mawr, 1945; M.A., 1948; Ph.D., 1953.
  • Dissertation:

    “Parmenides, Being and the Theory of Types" (Bryn Mawr, 1953).
  • Professional Experience:

    Lectr., Haverford, 1953-4; part-time lectr., Bryn Mawr, 1954-6; fellow, American Association of University Women, 1956-7; vis. fellow, Princeton, 1956-7; instr. Bryn Mawr, 1968-6; lect. 1961-2; asst. lectr. U. Birmingham, 1964-5; asso. prof. U. of South Carolina, 1965-68, prof., 1968-91; vis. prof., Toronto, 1971-2; vis. fellow, Wolfson College, Cambridge; vis. prof., Catholic U., 1992-3; ed. Board, CP 1968-91; JHPh, 1970-91; contrib. ed., New Oxford Review, 1978-91; founder, Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy, pres., 1972-4.
  • Publications:

    “The Ontological Significance of Negation,” JPh 44 (1947) 179-84; “Must Philosophers Be Obscure?” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1949) 142; “Negation and Evil,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 11 (1950) 561-7; “Parmenides: A Suggested Rearrangement of Fragments in the Way of Truth,” CP 50 (1955) 124-6; “Introduction to Philosophy,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 16 (1955) 431; Plato's Use of Fallacy: A Study of the Euthydemus and Other Dialogues (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1962); Plato, Euthydemus (trans.) Bobbs-Merrill, 1965); “Logic and Literary Form in Plato,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 48 (1967) 560; “Aristotle De anima 414a4-14,” Phoenix 21 (1967) 102-7; “An Unfinished Argument in Plato’s Protagoras,” Apeiron 1 (1967) 1-4; “Parmenides' Sail and Dionysodorus' Ox,” Phronesis 12 (1967) 91-8; “The Four Causes,” The Monist 52 (1968) 298-300; “Socrates’ Safest Answer: Phaedo 100d,” Hermes 96 (1968-9) 632-5; “The Four Causes: Aristotle’s Exposition and Ours,” The Monist 52 (1968) 298-300; “Dissoi logoi or dialexeis,” Mind 77 (1968) 155-67; “A Platonic Parallel in the "Dissoi Logoi," JHPH 6 (1968) 160-1; “Theodore Thomas Lafferty 1901-1970,” PAAPhA 43 (1969) 204-5; “Symposium 211A and Parmenides frag. 8,” CP 66 (1971) 261; The Older Sophists: A Complete Translation by Several Hands of the Fragments in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Edited by Diels-Kranz. With a New Edition of Antiphon and of Euthydemus (ed.) (Columbia, SC: U. of South Carolina Press, 1972); “Empedocles, Hera, and Cratylus 404c,” CR 22 (1972) 169; “A Parallel with De anima III, 5,” Phronesis 17 (1972) 250-1; A Matter of Eternity; Selections from the Writings of Dorothy L. Sayers (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1973); Laches and Charmides (trans.) (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1973);  “An Anonymous Argument against Mixture,” Mnemosyne 26 (1973) 230-3; “Aristotelian Periphrasis: A Reply to Mr. Cobb,” Phronesis 20 (1975) 75-6; Plato’s Philosopher-King: A Study of the Theoretical Background (Columbia, SC: U. of South Carolina Press, 1976); “Platonic Unitarianism, or What Shorey Said,” CP 71 (1976) 109-12; “Plato's Sophistry,” PAS, Supplementary Volumes 51 (1977) 21-61; “The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato Banished the Artists,” Philosophical Books 18 (1977) 105-6; “Reflexiones sobre la teoria de las formas; Dedicado a la memoria de A.L. Peck,” AClás 21 (1977) 261-72; “Aristotle and the Metaphysics of Sleep,” RMeta 31 (1977) 230-41; “Phaedrus 262D1,” Mnemosyne 31 (1978) 72; “Eating, Growth, and the Sophists: Some Aristotelian Food for Thought,” The Sophists and Their Legacy: Proceedings of the Fourth international Colloquium on Ancient Philosophy held in Cooperation with Projektgruppe Altertumswissenschaften der Thyssenstiftung at Bad Hamburg, 29 August-1 September 1979, ed. George B. Kerford (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1981) 64-80; Paul Shorey, A Dissertation on Plato's Theory of Forms and on the Concepts of the Human Mind, (preface) (trans. R.S. Hawtrey) AncPhil 2 (1982) 1-59; “The Sophistic Movement,” with G.B. Kerferd,  JHS 103 (1983) 189-90. “Plato and Children’s Games,” in Greek Poetry and Philosophy: Studies in Honour of Leonard Woodbury, ed. Douglas E. Gerber (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984) 275-84; “Aristotle on Red Mirrors (On Dreams II 459b24 - 460a23),” Phronesis 30 (1985) 323-5; “Apories sophistiques et descriptions du processus,” in Positions de la sophistique: Colloque de Cerisy ed. Barbara Cassin, Paris: Vrin, 1986) 91-104; “Plato: Hippias Major,” ISPh 18 (1986) 115-16. “Metaphysics and Multiple Births,” Apeiron 20 (1987) 97-102; “Models for the Practical Syllogism,” AncPhil 7 (1987) 87-94; “Aristotle and Divided Insects,” Méthexis 2 (1989) 29-40; “Aristotle on Mutilation: Metaphysics 5.27,” SyllClas 2 (1990) 17-22; “Plants as Aristiotelian Substances,” ICS 16 (1991) 221-9; “Some Platonic Recollections,” in Plato’s Dialogues: New Studies and Interpretations, ed. Gerald A. Press (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993) 249-58; “Aristotle’s de anima as Biology,” Sandalion 16-17 (1993-4) 41-52; “Platonic Jokes with Philosophical points,” in Laughter Down the Centuries, ed. Diegfried Jäkel & Asko Timonen (Turku: Turun Yliopisto, 1994) 1:53-8; “A Missing Middle Term: De Anima II,2,” Phronesis 41 (1996) 104-8; “Two Kinds of Paideia in Plato’s Euthydemus,” The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 3 (1998) 269-73; “The Euthydemus Revisited,” in Plato Euthydemus, Lysias, Charmides: Proceedings of the V Symposium Platonicum: Selected Papers, ed. Thomas More Robinson & Luc Brisson (Sankt Augustin: Academia, 2000) 3-19; “James Willard Oliver, 1912-2001,” PAAPhA 75 (2002) 197-8; “Foster Eliott Tait, 1934-2002,” PAPhA 75 (2002) 202-3; “Roger Joseph Sullivan, 1928-2005,” PAAPhA 79 (2006) 138; “Plato’s Phaedo as Protreptic,” in Reading Ancient Texts: Essays in Honour of Denis O’Brien 1: Presocratics and Plato, ed. Suzanne Stern-Gillet & Kevin Corrigan (Leiden: Brill, 2007) 125-34.
  • Notes (2):

    Rosamond Kent Sprague was a New England native who spent the bulk of her career in the Deep South. At Bryn Mawr she excelled on the field hockey team and though she majored in Greek, she fell in love while still an undergraduate with the distinguished Shakespeare scholar Arthur Colby Sprague (1895-1991), who was nearing retirement from the college. The figure of Paul Shorey (1857-1934) still cast a penumbra over Bryn Mawr long after he had left it for the University of Chicago and Rosamond Sprague accepted his view as expressed in The Unity of Plato’s Thought (1903) and What Plato Said (1933), that when Plato put fallacious arguments in Socrates’ or any of his antagonists’ mouths he did so for dramatic effect, not for logical purity. Sprague took up the troublesome issue in defense of Shorey and in response to the attacks on Shorey’s arguments by Fr. Jósef Maria Bocheński (1902-95).  In a series of articles that culminated in Plato’s Use of Fallacy, she focused on the fallacies of equivocation and secundum quid in the Euthydemus, Theaetetus, Cratylus, andHippias minor. For example, Theaetetus, upon Socrates’ instruction, lays bare the equivocation and secundum quidfallacies. If Plato knew these fallacies so well, he would not have repeated them in other dialogues like the Euthydemus, except for the dramatic purpose of character portrayal and to satirize them. Although the wealth of information about Plato evident in the book revealed her deep knowledge of her author, her argumentation was controversial, especially for British philosophers. She also wrote on Aristotelian metaphysics and was a devotee of the British mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers (1893-1957), on whom she taught a course in the USC Honors College.

    When Sprague joined the faculty of the University of South Carolina she insisted on being a member of both the philosophy and foreign languages departments. Following her retirement in 2008, she regularly worked in her office, taught informal courses in “philosophical Greek,” and was an important source of information and advice for students and colleagues alike into her 10th decade. In 1993 her home department established an Annual Rosamond Kent Sprague Lecture in Ancient Philosophy. 
  • Sources:

    DAS 2002;  Justin Steinberg, Daily Nous (13 September 2022) https://dailynous.com/2022/09/13/rosamond-k-sprague-1922-2022(accessed 11/4/23).
  • Author: Ward Briggs