Research Interests
Ancient Philosophy
Metaethics
Normative Epistemology
Skepticism
A specialist in ancient philosophy and ethics, Professor Vogt joined the Columbia Philosophy Department in 2002. Her books include Skepsis und Lebenspraxis (1998) on ancient skepticism, and Law, Reason, and the Cosmic City (2008) on Stoic ethics and political philosophy; she just concluded the book manuscript Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato. The question that interests Vogt both in ancient philosophy and ethics is to what extent knowledge and self-knowledge are integral to a good life. What kind of values are knowledge and truth? What makes mere belief inferior? What is the nature of ignorance? Vogt’s next book project, Desiring the Good, aims to bring ancient theories of motivation into conversation with contemporary discussions. In recent papers on the Symposium, Plato’s views on madness, and Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics, Vogt argues that the standard Guise of the Good account of motivation—that, in being motivated, the agent judges something to be good—holds primarily for motivation that relates to what we want for our lives as a whole. She aims to develop a theory of motivation that integrates the analysis of large-scale motivation to have one’s life go well—in her terminology, Background Motivation—with the analysis of mid-scale motivations for pursuits as well as small-scale motivations for particular actions. Vogt has published numerous papers on ancient skepticism, Plato, Stoic philosophy, Kantian ethics, and on a cherished side-interest of hers: the role of friendship and enmity in our ethical lives. Vogt is the author of the SEP articles on Ancient Skepticism and on Seneca.
At Columbia University and due to the pandemic, Vogt became interested in the opportunities and challenges of teaching and conducting research remotely. She chairs a subcommittee of the Policy and Planning Committee on Teaching Modalities and is the academic sponsor of Logic Made Accessible, a project devoted to making ancient logic freely accessible for students of all ages. Vogt serves or has served on the Policy and Planning Committee (PPC), the Committee on Instruction (COI), as Acting Director of the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean (CAM), the Committee on Honors, Awards, and Prizes (COHAP), the Steering Committee of the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean (CAM), the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Accreditation Steering Committee, and as Chair of Classical Studies (CLST).
Selected Publications
Epistemology after Sextus Empiricus (OUP, 2020). Edited by Katja Maria
Desiring the Good: Ancient Proposals and Contemporary Theory (OUP, 2017)
Belief and Truth: A Skeptic Reading of Plato (OUP, 2012)
Law, Reason, and the Cosmic City: Political Philosophy in the Early Stoa. Oxford UP, 2008.
Skepsis und Lebenspraxis: Das pyrrhonische Leben ohne Meinungen. Alber Verlag, 1998.
