Myles Burnyeat was born on 1 January 1939 to Peter James Anthony Burnyeat and Cynthia Cherry Warburg.[1][2][3] He received his secondary school education at Bryanston School.[4][3]
He became an assistant lecturer in philosophy at University College London in 1964,[5] and a lecturer in 1965.[3] In 1978, he was appointed a lecturer in classics at the University of Cambridge, and became a fellow of the new Robinson College, Cambridge, where he remained until 1996.[5]
From 1996 until 2006 he was Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy at All Souls College, Oxford.[5] From 2006 he was an Emeritus Fellow at All Souls.[5] From 2006, he would also hold the titles of Emeritus Professor of Ancient Philosophy and of Honorary Fellow at Robinson College.[13][5]
In 2007, he was made CBE for his services to scholarship.[6] That same year saw the publication of a Festschrift in his honour: Maieusis: Essays in Ancient Philosophy in Honour of Myles Burnyeat.[15] The same included contributions from, amongst others, Mary Margaret McCabe[16] and David N. Sedley.[17]
His first marriage, from 1971 to 1982, was to lecturer in education and Jungian psychoanalyst Jane Elizabeth Buckley, with whom he had a son and daughter.[1][2][3] From 1982 until 2000 he was married to the classicist and poet Ruth Padel, with whom he had a daughter Gwen in 1985.[18][19][3] Both marriages ended in divorce.
From the winter of 2002 until her death in the spring of 2003 he was married to the scholar of ancient philosophy Heda Segvic, whose essays he prepared for posthumous publication.[20][21] His partner in later life was the musicologist Margaret Bent.[1]
Myles Burnyeat died on 20 September 2019 at the age of 80.[1][22]
"Above all, he is a paradigm to philosophers and classicists for combining formidable learning with first hand engagement in philosophy’s own concerns: principally its concerns with ethics and epistemology. His writings on the ancients take issue with such moderns as Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, Descartes, Berkeley, and for that matter Ronald Dworkin. The aim – in which he has set and achieved the highest standards – isn’t simply to compare different specimens of the genus ‘philosopher’, but to open us up to the transformative toing and froing of philosophy as an on-going enterprise."
Notes on Books Eta and Theta of Aristotle's Metaphysics, being the record by Myles Burnyeat and others of a seminar held in London, 1979–1982, Oxford: Sub-faculty of Philosophy, 1984, ISBN0-905740-27-0
Aristotle's Divine Intellect, Marquette University Press 2008, ISBN0-87462-175-5
The Pseudo-Platonic Seventh Letter (Uehiro Series in Practical Ethics), (co-author with Michael Frede) Oxford University Press 2015, ISBN9780198733652[27][28]
Essay collections
Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy, Vol. 1, Cambridge University Press 2012, ISBN0-521-75072-5[29][30]
Explorations in Ancient and Modern Philosophy, Vol. 2, Cambridge University Press 2012, ISBN0-521-75073-3
Science and Speculation: Studies in Hellenistic Theory and Practice (with J. Barnes; J. Brunschwig; M. Schofield) Cambridge University Press 1982, ISBN0-521-02218-5[33]
The Sceptical Tradition (ed.) University of California Press 1983, ISBN0-520-04795-8[34]
Bernard Williams, The Sense of the Past. Essays in the History of Philosophy, (ed. with introduction) Princeton University Press 2007, ISBN9781400827107
Heda Segvic, From Protagoras to Aristotle: Essays in Ancient Moral Philosophy (ed.), Princeton University Press 2008, ISBN0-691-13123-6
^Williams, Bernard (2009). "Introduction". In Burnyeat, Myles (ed.). The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy. Princeton University Press. pp. xx. ISBN9781400827107.
^Crown, Sarah (15 May 2009). "A life in poetry: Ruth Padel (interview)". The Guardian. ISSN0261-3077. Retrieved 22 September 2019. she took a teaching post at Birkbeck and met and married Myles Burnyeat, professor of ancient philosophy at Cambridge. In 1985, their daughter, Gwen, was born ...As the writing took off, however, Padel returned to London with her daughter (then five). The family saw one another at weekends, but distance took its toll; Burnyeat and Padel eventually separated, "although we remain very good friends".
^Segvic, Heda; Brittain, Charles (2009). "Introduction"(PDF). From Protagoras to Aristotle : essays in ancient moral philosophy. Burnyeat, Myles. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. pp. xi. ISBN9781400835553. OCLC828425151. Myles Burnyeat, whom she had come to know through his visiting appointments in the Pittsburgh department ... took her to England, cared for her through the extraordinary pain of her illness, and finally allowed her to find the happiness that had eluded her in America. (They were married in the winter of 2002.) She died in Cambridge in the early spring of 2003... The cause of her death was chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, a disease of the nervous system, compounded by undiagnosed multiple sclerosis.
^Emlyn Jones, Chris (1984). "Science and Speculation: Studies in Hellenistic Theory and Practice. Edited by J. Barnes, J. Brunschwig, M. Burnyeat, and M. Schofield. Cambridge U.P. and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris, 1982. Pp. xxvii + 351. £25.00". Greece and Rome. 31 (1): 83. doi:10.1017/S0017383500027959. ISSN0017-3835. S2CID163124372.
