The Via Christa: Library: John Burnet

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John Burnet

“John Burnet (1863–1928) was a Scottish Classicist, a Fellow of the British Academy, educated at the University of Edinburgh, and Balliol College, Oxford, receiving his M.A. in 1887. From 1890 to 1915, he was a Fellow at Merton College, Oxford; he was a professor of Latin at Edinburgh; from 1892 to 1926, he was Professor of Greek at the University of St. Andrews. He became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1916. In 1909, Burnet was offered, but did not accept, the Chair of Greek at Harvard University.
“John Burnet was born in Edinburgh on 9 December 1863 and died in St Andrews on 26 May 1928. The son of an advocate and the eldest of five children, he was educated at Edinburgh's Royal High School, the University of Edinburgh, and in 1883 went to Oxford (Balliol College), where he gained first classes in Classical Moderations and Literae Humaniores. The most profound scholarly influences on him in his early years were Richard Nettleship and Ingram Bywater; to Bywater he would later attribute his vocation to classical scholarship. He left Oxford in 1887 to take an appointment for a year as personal assistant to Lewis Campbell, the beginning of an association with the University of St Andrews that would last until his death. In 1892 he succeeded Campbell in the Greek Chair (he had been interim professor from 1891 to 1892). He held this post until retirement in 1926, though he was offered a chair at Harvard in 1909. In 1916 he was elected fellow of the British Academy.”–Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Burnet is best known for his Platonic Opera; his philological works and spuria of Plato comprise the Oxford Classical Texts in five volumes. Burnet also authored commentaries on Plato’s Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, which remain widely read, respected, and used by scholars.
He maintained that Socrates was closely connected to the early Greek philosophical tradition, now generally known as Pre-Socratic philosophy. Burnet believed that Socrates had been in his youth the disciple of Archelaus, a member of the Anaxagorean tradition. His editions of Early Greek Philosophy have been considered authoritative for more than a century.

Selected Works by John Burnet

Early Greek Philosophy

Platonism

Plato’s Phaedo

The Socratic Doctrine of the Soul

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John Burnet, M.A., LL.D
1863–1928
Scottish Classicist, Greek Scholar, Fellow of the British Academy, Fellow of Merton College, Oxford; Professor of Latin, Edinburgh, Professor of Greek, University of St. Andrews; Sather Professor of Classics, University of California, 1926.

Burnet

Works Cited

Burnet, John. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Burnet, John. Early Greek Philosophy, 3rd ed. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1920.

Burnet, John. Platonism, Sather Classical Lectures, 1928, vol. 5. London. Berkeley: University of California Press 1928.

Burnet, John. The Socratic Doctrine of the Soul, Second Annual Philosophical Lecture, Henriette Hertz Trust, Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. VII. London: Oxford University Press, January 26, 1916.

Plato; Burnet, John, Platonis Opera, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900-1907.

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