Victor Nuovo


  • Letter to the editor: Nuovos deserve lasting tribute

    As I was reading the tributes to Victor Nuovo in this newspaper following his death a few weeks ago, it occurred to me that a fitting memorial would…

  • Middlebury mourns the loss of Victor Nuovo

    Middlebury mourns the loss of Victor Nuovo

    Longtime educator, philosopher, author, columnist, husband and Middlebury selectboard member Victor Nuovo was recalled as a gentle statesman and great human being whose heart — and love for…

  • Editorial: Tributes for a mentor to many

    Editorial: Tributes for a mentor to many

    Lauded as a long-time academic scholar at Middlebury College, author, philosopher, columnist, devoted husband, mentor to Middlebury selectboard members and good friend, the passing of Victor Nuovo, 91,…

  • Letter to the editor: Nuovo’s essays are a great read

    I’d like to commend the Addison Independent’s publication of Professor Victor Nuovo’s essays.

  • Victor Nuovo: The birth of Neoplatonism and European theological systems

    Victor Nuovo: The birth of Neoplatonism and European theological systems

    Plotinus believed that all existing things, including the physical universe, possess souls, and that there exists in every soul a longing, a deep desire to return to the…

  • Victor Nuovo: Stoicism: Arduous path to wisdom

    Victor Nuovo: Stoicism: Arduous path to wisdom

    The chief end of life, according to the Stoics, is moral autonomy, moral self-governance, which they took as the only reliable path to self-mastery.

  • Victor Nuovo: Epicurus & ‘the gift to be simple’

    Victor Nuovo: Epicurus & ‘the gift to be simple’

    To begin with, Epicurus, the philosopher, was not a vulgar Epicure, which is to say he did not live his life in pursuit of sensual delights, eating and…

  • Victor Nuovo: Aristotle’s metaphysics

    Victor Nuovo: Aristotle’s metaphysics

    Aristotle wondered whether there might be a single cosmological principle that not only gave unity to the whole of nature, but was the cause of its existence. He…

  • Victor Nuovo: Aristotle: ‘substances’ & truth

    Victor Nuovo: Aristotle: ‘substances’ & truth

    He was the first philosopher to conceive of a comprehensive system of the arts and sciences, and he made original contributions to many of them: logic, semantics, politics,…

  • Victor Nuovo: Plato’s ‘Republic’: City and soul

    Victor Nuovo: Plato’s ‘Republic’: City and soul

    “The Republic” of Plato (426-346 BCE), which may be the greatest philosophical work ever written, has two themes, the soul and the city.

  • Victor Nuovo: The trial and death of Socrates

    Victor Nuovo: The trial and death of Socrates

    In 399 BCE a judicial assembly of the city of Athens found Socrates guilty of impiety and corrupting the youth, and it sentenced him to death.

  • Victor Nuovo: The art of persuasion

    Victor Nuovo: The art of persuasion

    Gorgias of Leontini (483–375BCE) was another celebrated sophist, perhaps more celebrated than Protagoras.

  • Victor Nuovo: The Socratic Revolution

    Victor Nuovo: The Socratic Revolution

    Why is Socrates so important? Socrates wrote nothing, so we can’t search a body of writing for answers. And the fact that he was written up by a…

  • Victor Nuovo: Protagoras, the first humanist

    Victor Nuovo: Protagoras, the first humanist

    These teachers, known as “sophists,” travelled from city to city giving instruction for pay. Some of them became rich and famous. One of the most successful of these…

  • Victor Nuovo: The Greek Atomists

    Victor Nuovo: The Greek Atomists

    The atomic theory was first conceived by two Greek philosophers, Leucippus and Democritus, who flourished during the first half of the 5th century BCE.

  • Victor Nuovo: Parmenides: A two-fold reality

    Victor Nuovo: Parmenides: A two-fold reality

    Parmenides endeavored to achieve his goal by demonstrating through purely rational argument that the very idea of Nature is absurd.