Rate My Professor Ryan Drake

Ryan Drake serves as Department Chair and Associate Professor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences at Fairfield University, where he joined the faculty in 2012. In 2025, he was appointed to the inaugural Morris Family Professorship in Philosophy by the Fairfield Meditz College of Arts and Sciences, honoring his excellence in teaching, service, and scholarship. Drake holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Oregon and a Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy from Pennsylvania State University, completed in 2005. He also serves as Associate Director of the Humanities Institute at Fairfield University.

Drake's research spans ancient philosophy, social and political thought, and 19th- and 20th-century European philosophy. His areas of specialization include Plato's moral psychology, eros, moral education, the good, philosophical method, interpretive strategies, Classical Greek Philosophy, Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy, and Aristotle's works in aesthetics, particularly the Poetics. Additional interests encompass Critical Theory, Aesthetics, Continental Philosophy, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, and mimetic sympathy in Aristotle. His scholarship in hermeneutics and intellectual history deepens students' understanding of enduring philosophical questions and connects them to contemporary ethical and political concerns. Key publications include "Wonder, Nature, and the Ends of Tragedy" (International Philosophical Quarterly, 2010), "Plato's Fable: On the Mortal Condition in Shadowy Times" (Ancient Philosophy, 2008), "Recovering Plato in (and against) the continental tradition" (2006), "Orphaned and Adopted Texts in the Protagoras" (2005), and articles on topics such as mimetic sympathy in Aristotle's Poetics and Plato's enchantment of politics.