About

Carla Snyder is the Associate State Program Leader for the Energy, Business and Community Vitality unit with Penn State Extension. She focuses on education surrounding business development and marketing valued added agricultural products and international entrepreneurship-driven community and economic development. She currently serves as the chair of the Globalizing Extension Committee and leads the Nicaraguan Extensionist Project where she focuses on providing agricultural technology exchange to support sustainable livelihoods. She has worked to bolster the hard cider industry across 7 countries and has led cultural immersion experiences for both university students, agricultural professionals and Extension peers throughout the world to exchange knowledge and expertise.

Research topics

• Philosophy
• Epistemology
• Materials science
• Nanotechnology
• Business

Selected publications

• Philo of Larissa on Therapy and ἐποχὴ περὶ πάντων

  Epoché A Journal for the History of Philosophy · 2025-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  To reconstruct the philosophy of Philo of Larissa, and the changes he brought to the Academic orientation of philosophy, historians depend on the conceptual resources of the modern discipline of epistemology. This regime of concepts enables reconstructions of his thought to assert that at some point after becoming head of the Academy Philo departed from the skepticism of Carneades and Clitomachus, abandoning their epistemological position and rejecting ἐποχὴ περὶ πάντων. Accordingly, Philo is supposed to have adapted Carneades’ theory of the probable impression, either during or soon before his Roman period, formulating a fallibilist epistemology on its basis. Philo’s eventual rejection of ἐποχὴ περὶ πάντων represents a departure from the “epistemological pessimism” of his predecessors. This paper contests this epistemological framing. It presents an account of his innovations in terms of what Michel Foucault described as an ethics revolving around the care of the self. The argument for ἐποχὴ περὶ πάντων is repurposed by Philo as a therapeutic purgative to facilitate the transformation of those under his tutelage.

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• The Purification of Struggle in Foucault’s Analysis of Ancient Philosophy

  Rethinking Marxism · 2024-10-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• ON THE MEANING OF INAPPREHENSIBILITY IN ACADEMIC ARGUMENT*

  Kriterion Revista de Filosofia · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT This paper maintains that the standard epistemological reconstructions of Academic argument against Stoic apprehension distort the meaning of “inapprehensibility” (ἀκαταληψία) and “the suspension of assent about all things” (ἐποχὴ πɛρὶ πάντων). The paper therefore defends the few traces in recent scholarship of the ontological specifications of inapprehensibility and the suspension of assent. This paper’s purpose is to reinforce the view that the Academy’s attack on Stoicism extended to the latter’s ontological commitments.

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• Skepticism in the Renaissance: Short Overview

  2022-01-01

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• Cherbury, Herbert of

  2022-01-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
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• Foucault and the Historiography of Early Hellenistic Philosophy

  Critical Horizons · 2021-07-03

  article1st authorCorresponding

  In his 1981–82 lectures The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Michel Foucault claims that a significant portion of the modern historiography of ancient philosophy tends to discredit the ethical framework of epimeleia heautou (“care of the self”). The thematic analysis of knowledge in the historiography of ancient philosophy overshadows the theme of care of the self. Taking Foucault’s claim as a point of departure, the aim of this paper is twofold. First, the paper provides a genealogy of the early Hellenistic Academy, from Polemo to Arcesilaus. Second, the paper demonstrates that for Arcesilaus, the alleged pioneer of what modern historiography has designated the Academy’s epistemological scepticism, philosophy is not restricted to a continual search for knowledge at a theoretically rarefied level of challenging arguments or discursive statements. This paper situates Arcesilaus’ opposition to early Stoic epistemology within the framework of Academic epimeleia heautou, and defends the thesis that under Arcesilaus the Hellenistic Academy undergoes a shift in the practice of care of the self.

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• Beyond Hellenistic Epistemology

  Bloomsbury Academic eBooks · 2021-01-01 · 1 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Charles E. Snyder considers the New Academy’s attacks on Stoic epistemology through a critical re-assessment of the 3rd century philosopher, Arcesilaus of Pitane. Arguing that the standard epistemological framework used to study the ancient Academy ignores the metaphysical dimensions at stake in Arcesilaus’s critique, Snyder explores new territory for the historiography of Stoic-Academic debates in the early Hellenistic period. Focusing on the dispute between the Old and New Academy, reveals the metaphysical dimensions of Arcesilaus’ arguments as essential to grasping what is innovative about the so-called New Academy. Resisting the partiality for epistemology in the historical reconstructions of ancient philosophy, this book defends a new philosophical framework that re-positions Arcesilaus’ attack on the early Stoa as key to his deviation from the metaphysical foundations of both Stoic and Academic virtue ethics. Drawing on a wide range of scholarship on Hellenistic philosophy in French, Italian, and German, Beyond Hellenistic Epistemology builds

  PublisherDOI

• Beyond Hellenistic Epistemology: Arcesilaus and the Destruction of Stoic Metaphysics

  2021-07-29 · 1 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  "Charles E. Snyder considers the New Academy's attacks on Stoic epistemology through a critical re-assessment of the 3rd century philosopher, Arcesilaus of Pitane. Arguing that the standard epistemological framework used to study the ancient Academy ignores the metaphysical dimensions at stake in Arcesilaus's critique, Snyder explores new territory for the historiography of Stoic-Academic debates in the early Hellenistic period. Focusing on the dispute between the Old and New Academy, reveals the metaphysical dimensions of Arcesilaus' arguments as essential to grasping what is innovative about the so-called New Academy. Resisting the partiality for epistemology in the historical reconstructions of ancient philosophy, this book defends a new philosophical framework that re-positions Arcesilaus' attack on the early Stoa as key to his deviation from the metaphysical foundations of both Stoic and Academic virtue ethics. Drawing on a wide range of scholarship on Hellenistic philosophy in French, Italian, and German, Beyond Hellenistic Epistemology builds bridges between analytical and continental approaches to the historiography of ancient philosophy, and makes an important and disruptive contribution to the literature"--

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• St. Augustine

  2020-08-23

  other1st authorCorresponding
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• Concepts of Love in Augustine

  2020-08-23

  other1st authorCorresponding
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Frequent coauthors

• Darrell Velegol

  Pennsylvania State University

  9 shared

• Allison M. Yake

  Pennsylvania State University

  4 shared

• Craig Van Slyke

  Louisiana Tech University

  2 shared

• Ira M. Tillotson

  Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors

  2 shared

• Nathaniel D. Kopp

  Pennsylvania State University

  1 shared

• Rocco A. Panella

  Carnegie Mellon University

  1 shared

• Mary Parent

  1 shared

• Huda A. Jerri

  Firmenich (United States)

  1 shared