John Dillon
JOHN DILLON, who is a Director of Green Foundation Ireland, graduated in Classics from Oxford in 1961. In 1969, following a PhD in Greek philosophy, he joined the Department of Classics at the University of California in Berkeley, serving as chair of the department from 1977-80. He then returned to Ireland to assume the position of Regius Professor of Greek at Trinity College Dublin, a post in which he remained until his retirement in 2006.
Elected to the Royal Irish Academy in 1983, John served as Senior Vice-President 2001-02, and in 2005 was awarded the Academy’s Gold Medal in the Humanities. In 1997 he founded the Dublin Centre for the Study of the Platonic Tradition, based in Trinity College Dublin, of which he is still an active member. He is the author or editor of over 30 books in the area of ancient philosophy, as well as over 150 articles. His study of Plato has led him to develop strong views on the destruction of the environment endemic to modern civilisation, and the capitalist concept of incremental growth.
John has written an article entitled “Platonism and the World Crisis”.