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Biography
Matthew Duncombe is a scholar of Ancient Greek Philosophy. His research runs from Presocratics to Plato, Aristotle, Hellenistic Philosophy and Neoplatonism, and combines close historical scholarship with contemporary philosophical analysis to recover the systematic ambitions of ancient philosophy, particularly its theories of logic, modality, metaphysics and dialectic
His work on ancient relativity has been published in top journals such as Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy and Phronesis. It resulted in a monograph Ancient Relativity: Plato, Aristotle, Stoics and Sceptics (Oxford University Press, 2020). He followed this with a further monograph Relative Change (Cambridge University Press 2020). His most recent book in this area is Truth and Relativism in Ancient Philosophy, co-edited with Tamer Nawar (Cambridge University Press, 2026). The volume collects papers from a constellation of eminent philosophers, including Gabor Betegh, Voula Tsouna and John MacFarlane, focused for the first time on the positive case for relativism.
His most cited paper considered thought as inner speech in Plato and Aristotle. His is one of the very few studies of this topic, and the paper is widely cited in the humanities, social sciences, and psychology. He has done important work in the study of ancient logic, especially Aristotle's account of logical consequence and its roots in multi-agent dialectic, published in The Philosophical Quarterly.
He has contributed to definitive volumes and collections, including Conceptualizing Concepts in Greek Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2024), Authors and Authorities in Ancient Philosophy (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Stoic Ontology (forthcoming).
He is a recognized authority on the Megaric and Dialectical groups in the Socratic lineage. He is the author of numerous entries on these thinkers for the Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the standard reference work for philosophy. He has published on them in leading journals such as the Journal of the History of Philosophy. He is presently completing a monograph entitled Megaric Philosophy: Possibility and Paradox. This will be the first monograph study of these thinkers for over 200 years. He is simultaneously completing the first ever English translation and commentary of the sources for the Megarics and Dialeticians.
He is a saught-after mentor and supervisor. His recent doctoral students have worked on topics including: Aristotle's ethics and metaphysics; desire in Homer and Plato; Plato's Parmenides; Stoicism and Psychotherapy; moral education in Epictetus; and the Arabic reception of Aristotle's Logic. Several of his PhD students gone on to academic careers and/or have published their doctoral work. He regularly mentors junior colleagues, and was awarded a British Academy-Newton grant to deliver mentorship to junior scholars in Brazil, and has acted as a mentor for the SWIP mentorship programme.
His public writing in The Conversation has led a wide audience to ancient Greek philosophy. Together his pieces, covering Stoicism, democracy, vegetarianism, paradoxes and film, have been read over 200,000 times, and have generated an offer to write a trade book on paradoxes.
He has been awarded fellowships and scholarships from: the British Academy, The Loeb Classical Library Foundation, KU Leuven, the University of Groningen, Erasmus+, l'脡cole Normale Sup茅rieure, Paris, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He holds a BA and MPhil in philosophy and a PhD in Classics, all from the University of Cambridge.
He is REF coordinator for philosophy at Nottingham.
Expertise Summary
Ancient Philosophy; Ancient Logic.
Teaching Summary
Matt has a wide range of teaching experience, from pre-university to post-graduate teaching. He teaches core areas of philosophy, including logic, metaphysis, philosophy of science and philosophy of… read more
Research Summary
Mattthew is completing a monograph on the Megaric and Dialectical schools, a translation of their sources, as well the arguments they presented. This work was funded by a Loeb Classical Library… read more
Selected Publications
MATTHEW DUNCOMBE, 2020. Ancient Relativity: Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, and Sceptics Oxford University Press.
MATTHEW DUNCOMBE, 2020. Cambridge University Press.
MATTHEW DUNCOMBE, 2020. The Scandal of Deduction and Aristotle鈥檚 method for discovering syllogisms Rhizomata. 8(2), 289-311
MATTHEW DUNCOMBE, 2019. Fine-grained and coarse-grained knowledge in Euthydemus 293b7-d1: A response to MMcCabe Australasian Philosophical Review. 3(2),
Current Research
Mattthew is completing a monograph on the Megaric and Dialectical schools, a translation of their sources, as well the arguments they presented. This work was funded by a Loeb Classical Library Fellowship from Harvard University. The Megarics and Dialectiains were Socratic thinkers, who apparently influenced Plato, Aristotle and especially Stoic logic, including inventing in the Liar and Sorites paradoxes. But these thinkers are not well understood and his work sheds light on the philosophical interest of their views, as well as their historical importance.
In 2020 he published a monograph entitled Ancient Relativity: Plato Aristotle, Stoics and Sceptics, with OUP. The book asks at what it is for things to relate to each other. What is it to be larger or smaller, for example? In particular, it looks at ancient views of relativity and how underlying assumptions about relativity affected ancient philosophy. The book articulates Plato's ideas about relatives and follow how Aristotle, the Stoics and Sceptics develop these ideas, given their own agendas. The book argues that ancient thinking can help us get clear the phenomenon of relativity more generally.
In 2020, he published a short book on the phenomenon of relative change in Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics with Cambridge University Press for their Elements series.
I'm available to supervise research projects involving any aspect of Ancient Greek Philosophy.
Past Research
In 2018-19 he held a Newton Fund Mobility Award, to collaborate with colleagues in Brazil on a project entitled 'Non-contradiction and infinite regress arguments in Plato and Aristotle'. With Luca Pitteloud, he co-edited a journal issue based on these workshops, showcasing work form young scholars of ancient philosophy working in Brazil, Europe and the UK.
His work in Groningen looked at dialectic in Aristotle's logic as part of a project on the .
Future Research
I'm developing a number of projects centered on ancient logic and argument, especially dialectic, modality, future contingents and paradoxes.