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50 Years after OPW: History and Historiography Polis Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Nino Luraghi
This short preface is meant to explain the purpose of the present volume and point to the diverse approaches and lines of argument pursued by the contributors.
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Between ‘The Character of the Athenian Empire’ and The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (and beyond): The Popularity of the Athenian Empire Revisited Polis Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Mirko Canevaro, David Lewis
This article discusses the fortune of Geoffrey de Ste. Croix’s famous article ‘The Character of the Athenian Empire’, and reassesses its basic thesis that the Athenian Empire was popular among the lower classes of the allied cities in the light of recent developments in the field. After surveying the article’s immediate and more recent reception, and discussing its relation with The Origins of the
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Fafner and the Rhinemaidens’ Treasure, Fifty Years On Polis Pub Date : 2024-01-03 David Lewis
This article discusses G.E.M. de Ste. Croix’s contentions about the effect of Helotage on Spartan foreign policy articulated in chapter IV of Origins of the Peloponnesian War, namely that Sparta’s Helot population was uniquely dangerous, constraining Sparta’s ability to send large numbers of citizen hoplites abroad lest it be exposed to the threat within. It shows that while certain arguments advanced
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Old Comedy and Athenian Power Polis Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Leah Lazar
In this article, jumping off from Geoffrey de Ste. Croix’s treatment of Aristophanes and the Megarian Decree, I argue that Old Comedy is an underutilised category of evidence for the study of the popular intellectual history of Athens. My particular focus here is the Athenian empire: how does Old Comedy present Athenian power and what does this comic presentation tell us about how at least some ordinary
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OPW and de Ste. Croix: the Past and Present Views of a Pupil Polis Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Robin Lane Fox
This survey, by a pupil of Geoffrey de Ste. Croix and eventual successor in his Oxford job, combines personal recollections of de Ste. Croix’s horizons and intellectual range with a penetrating study of his Origins of the Peloponnesian War, its underlying debts and detailed contentions. It addresses his, and Thucydides’, engagement with origins and causes, his central contention about votes by the
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Origins and Ends: Money and Power in and beyond Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War Polis Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Andrew Meadows
This article examines the disconnect between, on the one hand, the insistence on the part of multiple characters in Thucydides’ first book on the need for the Peloponnesians to invest in naval power to defeat Athens, and, on the other, the failure to act on this in the narrative of books 2–7. It then analyses the numismatic evidence for the way in which Sparta does then act upon this advice in the
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The Origins of the Peloponnesian War, Chapter IV, and the Development of Spartan Historical Studies Polis Pub Date : 2024-01-03 Stephen Hodkinson
This article examines the impact on Spartan historiography of Chapter IV of de Ste. Croix’s Origins of the Peloponnesian War, focusing on his discussions of Spartan politics and society in Sections v–vi. These sections fit oddly within the overall chapter, but they blew a breath of fresh air into Spartan studies through their revisionist approach, intimations of the socio-economic bases of policy-making
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Aristotle on Friendship in Association Polis Pub Date : 2023-09-20 Mark C. Brennan
This paper argues that Aristotle’s account of friendship can be applied equally to cases of friendship in association and personal friendship. It argues that both types of friendship are similar insofar as both are primarily concerned with the common good that serves as the basis of the friendship. This notion of the common good is what allows Aristotle to draw a connection between personal relationships
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Cicero, Caesar, and the End of Cicero’s Imperium Polis Pub Date : 2023-09-20 Jonathan P. Zarecki
This article argues that Cicero laid down his imperium in Brundisium in September 47 after Caesar had, in a meeting between the two men, granted Cicero permission to retain his imperium and title of imperator for as long as Cicero wished to do so. Instead of accepting Caesar’s offer, Cicero instead immediately repudiated it, laid down his imperium in the city of Brundisium, and went immediately to
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Diffusion of Political Ideas between Ancient India and Greece: Early Theories of the Origins of Monarchy Polis Pub Date : 2023-09-20 Otto H. Linderborg
This investigation examines the question of whether the similar theories of the origins of monarchy encountered in certain early Greek and Indian literary sources should be taken as evidence of cross-cultural diffusion of political ideas. The paper argues against the alternative explanation, according to which the similarity in form in the Greek and Indian versions of the kingship theory is rooted
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Mining Plato’s Cave: Silver Mining, Slavery, and Philosophical Education Polis Pub Date : 2023-09-20 Geoffrey Bakewell
The Allegory of the Cave (Pl. Resp. 514a1–520e2) is often analyzed in terms of metaphysical, epistemological, political, and psychic hierarchies that are clarified and reinforced by philosophical education. But the Allegory also contains an important historical allusion to the silver mining that took place in classical Attica. Examining the Cave in light of the enslaved miners around Lavrio leads us
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Persistent Dissent and Plato’s Later Theory of Civic Participation Polis Pub Date : 2023-09-20 Vilius Bartninkas
Plato in the Laws proposes a simulation of nearly ideal conditions regarding the experts’ persuasion and observes that even in these circumstances some citizens will not agree with the epistemic authorities. In this paper, such situations are labelled as exhibiting persistent dissent. Plato maintains that persistent dissenters lack the virtue of sōphrosynē, but its meaning is notoriously difficult
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Recognition and Redistribution in Aristotle’s Account of Stasis: a Response to Our Critics Polis Pub Date : 2023-09-20 Douglas Cairns, Mirko Canevaro, Kleanthis Mantzouranis
We reply to the objections raised in Polis 40 (2023) by Ryan Balot and Manuel Knoll to our original paper ‘Recognition and Redistribution in Aristotle’s Account of Stasis’, published in Polis 39 (2022). We argue that Knoll is correct in arguing that Aristotle distinguishes between democratic views of distributive justice and his own, but wrong to argue that this wholly resolves a tension in Aristotle’s
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Sophoclean Epistemology: Justice in the Theban Plays Polis Pub Date : 2023-09-20 Gillian Hunnisett, Sara MacDonald
In Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles shows that neither individual reason nor piety are singularly sufficient for either individual happiness or the common good. Human understanding is dependent on a decentering of the individual, such that the reason of the wider community, including that of the gods, can augment the limitations of individual perspective. Sophocles shows not only the dependence of faith
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Tacitus’ Critique of Republicanism in His Germania Polis Pub Date : 2023-09-20 Thomas J.B. Cole
Although Tacitus began his writing career during the Principate at the end of the first century CE, the dominant approach to thinking about political life was still guided by Republicanism, a constellation of concepts from the mid-first century BCE Roman Republic. Republicanism held that there was only one type of monarchy and that it necessarily precluded libertas. Tacitus, who was living under different
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Writing as Pharmakon and the Limits of Law in Plato’s Statesman, Phaedrus, and Laws Polis Pub Date : 2023-09-20 Leo Trotz-Liboff
In the Statesman and Phaedrus Plato addresses the problem inherent to law of how a general rule can be applied appropriately to particular circumstances. Previous scholarship has shown the connection between these dialogues’ critiques of written law and writing, a similarity this paper argues extends to the comparison of writing to a pharmakon (‘drug’) in both dialogues. Furthermore, close textual
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Aristotle’s Understanding of Democratic Justice and His Distinction between Two Kinds of Equality: A Response Polis Pub Date : 2023-04-25 Manuel Knoll
This short article is a response to Douglas Cairns, Mirko Canevaro, and Kleanthis Mantzouranis, who in Polis 39 (2022) explicitly criticize both of my previous interpretations of Aristotle’s view of democratic justice and of the relation of proportional and numerical equality. Against Cairns et al., I argue that there is no tension or contradiction between Aristotle’s statements on these two kinds
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Did Platon (Politeia 571d) Believe That Every One of Us Is a Repressed Cannibal? Polis Pub Date : 2023-04-25 Cătălin Enache
At the beginning of Book 9 of the Politeia (571cd), Platon suggests that all people bear in themselves unlawful desires like the desire to have sex with their own mother or with any other human, god, or beast, the desire to murder anyone, or the desire to eat anything. Modern scholars take it for granted that by the desire to eat anything, Platon means cannibalism. This view is based on the fact that
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Greed, Outrage, and Civil Conflict in Aristotle’s Politics Polis Pub Date : 2023-04-25 Ryan K. Balot
Scholars generally agree that, according to Aristotle, factionalizers are motivated by a sense of injustice (the ‘first cause’) to redress imbalances in wealth and honor (the ‘second cause’). Recent discussions, however, have offered a misleading interpretation of Aristotle’s third cause, which he identifies as the origin of the factionalizers’ sense of injustice. It involves, most importantly, greed
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The Model of Voting in Cicero’s Best State Polis Pub Date : 2023-04-25 Sean McConnell
In the proposed law-code in De legibus there is a law that votes are to be known by the best citizens (the optimates) but free to the common people (the plebs) (3.10). This law, Cicero claims, grants ‘the appearance of liberty’ (libertatis species), preserves the authority (auctoritas) of the optimates, and promotes harmony between the classes (3.39). The law and the precise meaning of libertatis species
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Servile Stories and Contested Histories: Empire, Memory, and Criticism in Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita Polis Pub Date : 2023-04-25 Maxwell J. Lykins
Scholars often turn to Livy’s famous digression on Aulus Cossus and the spolia opima (4.17–20) to shed light on his larger political inclinations. These readings generally regard Livy as either an Augustan (or at least a patriotic Roman) or an apolitical skeptic. Yet neither view, I argue, fully explains the Cossus affair. What is needed is an interpretation that recognizes the political nature of
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Tyranny in Tragedy Polis Pub Date : 2023-04-25 Edmund Stewart
The meaning of the word tyrannos in Greek tragedy is much debated. Some have assumed that the word is always a neutral term signifying ‘ruler’ alone. Others argue for competing ideologies regarding tyranny: the result of an evolution in thinking on autocracy. This article challenges both of these assumptions. The negative meaning of tyrannos is always latent in tragedy, even where the word is used
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‘What’s in a Name?’ Ideology and Language in the Epistulae ad Caesarem Polis Pub Date : 2023-04-25 Héctor Paleo-Paz
The following paper offers a study on how contestation over the meaning of language forged the political ideology present in the second of the Epistulae ad Caesarem. ‘Ideology’ being a notoriously malleable concept, Michael Freeden’s theoretical approach is used to focus what it means, how it is manifested in the sources, and how it can be located and analysed. The political thought of the Late Republic
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Boni Gone Bad: Cicero’s Critique of Epicureanism in De Finibus 1 and 2 Polis Pub Date : 2023-02-06 Michelle T. Clarke
This paper argues that Cicero’s critique of Epicureanism in De finibus is motivated by a concern about its degrading effect on the moral sensibility of Rome’s best men. In place of earlier objections to Epicureanism, which centered on its inability to explain or recommend the virtuous conduct of Roman maiores, De finibus focuses on its inability to do so properly and, more prospectively, to assist
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Cicero’s Philosophical Leadership, an Academic Consideration Polis Pub Date : 2023-02-06 Charlotte C. S. Thomas
In Pro Murena, Cicero argues that Cato’s rigid philosophical comportment to politics reflects a mistaken understanding both of philosophy and of politics. By implication, he suggests that there is an approach to philosophy that is compatible with political leadership. Specifically, he argues that a thoroughgoing commitment to the philosophy of the Platonic Academy (i.e., Academic Philosophy) is entirely
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Encounters in Friendship with Nepos, Cicero, Atticus, and Rex Stem Polis Pub Date : 2023-02-06 Grant A. Nelsestuen
This article offers a critical appraisal of approaches to ‘friendship’ (amicitia) in Cornelius Nepos’s Atticus and Cicero’s De Amicitia, as found in the scholarship of Rex Stem and Grant Nelsestuen. In light of the former’s untimely passing in 2020, it uses an exchange of personal correspondence in 2019 between these two scholars – as well as John Alexander Lobur’s 2021 book on Nepos – as a basis for
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Machiavelli’s Catilinarian Oration Polis Pub Date : 2023-02-06 John T. Scott
In the Discourses on Livy, Machiavelli claims that writers who are afraid to condemn Caesar instead criticize Catiline. I argue that Machiavelli follows this advice by inverting it. He openly condemns Caesar and the empire he founded while signaling that he has in mind another inimical example: the Church. He signals his intention by echoing Cicero’s fourth Catilinarian oration, imitating Cicero’s
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Nepos, Atticus, and the Quiet Life Polis Pub Date : 2023-02-06 Carey Seal
Cornelius Nepos’ Life of Atticus shows its author as living a life of deliberate withdrawal from politics. This paper compares that life to other models of political withdrawal in Greco-Roman thought and finds that it does not cohere very closely with any of them. Nepos, the paper proposes, deviates from these existing models in showing Atticus as avoiding politics not out of a desire to transcend
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Philosophizing Age in De Senectute and the Second Philippic Polis Pub Date : 2023-02-06 Jonathan P. Zarecki
This paper examines the intricate relationship between De Senectute and the Second Philippic, arguing that De Senectute is an important lens through which to read the Second Philippic. When Cicero decided on irrevocable opposition to Antony, the moral and political theorizing about the role of senes (literally, ‘old men/elders’) in the state found in De Senectute provided a convenient and topical framework
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Republicanism in Desperate Times: Cicero’s Critique of Cato’s Stoicism Polis Pub Date : 2023-02-06 Mark E. Yellin
This essay examines two articles by Rex Stem about Cicero and Cato: ‘The First Eloquent Stoic and Cato the Younger’ and ‘Cicero as Orator and Political Philosopher: The Value of the Pro Murena for Ciceronian Political Thought’. It places these articles in dialogue and draws upon them to present an overarching argument about Cicero’s critique of Cato’s Stoicism. It also assesses their respective defenses
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The Society of the Cincinnati and Exemplarity in Late 18th-Century America Polis Pub Date : 2023-02-06 Daniel Kapust
Drawing on Rex Stem’s analysis of exempla, I explore Mercy Otis Warren and John Marshall’s narrations of the Society of the Cincinnati, and Washington’s place within it, to draw out the lessons they sought to impart. Beginning with an exploration of Cincinnatus’ exemplum in antiquity, its relationship to late 18th-century portrayals of Washington, and its invocation in the establishment of the Society
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Aristotle’s Philosophy of Histories Polis Pub Date : 2022-09-07 Andrew Hull
Aristotle is often considered to have a very pessimistic view about what histories can tell us, considering them too particular and lacking the generality required for scientific knowledge. Most importantly, they are considered to lack causal explanations. I argue against this view and instead that Aristotle considers histories to provide a highly practical level of knowledge. Histories can provide
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Aristotle’s Political Theory as a Craft and Science in Politics 4–6 Polis Pub Date : 2022-09-07 Kazutaka Inamura
This article maintains that Aristotle develops his political theory as a craft and science in Politics 4–6. The literature, however, has argued that he views political knowledge as a form of practical wisdom or prudence. This article discusses the way that Aristotle proposes political theory as a skill to help deal with unfavorable circumstances. In Greek political thought, craft and science are characterized
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Kratos and Other Forms of Power in the Two Constitutions of the Athenians Polis Pub Date : 2022-09-07 Daniela Cammack
What did kratos imply in the classical democratic context? Focusing on the two Constitutions of the Athenians traditionally attributed to Xenophon and Aristotle respectively, this article explores differences among kratos and three proximate terms: archē (de facto governance or magistracy), kuros (authority, perceived as legitimate), and dēmagōgia (leadership). With Benveniste and Loraux, it argues
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Martha Nussbaum and Aristotle on Distributive Justice and Equality Polis Pub Date : 2022-09-07 Manuel Knoll
This article gives a detailed analysis of Nussbaum’s ‘capabilities approach’ and her claim that it is a genuinely Aristotelian contemporary po-litical philosophy. The paper examines how Nussbaum bases her ‘capabilities approach’ on human nature and questions her assertion that both Aristotle’s account of human nature and her own approach are not metaphysical. In order to analyze the normative dimension
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Plato’s Market Optimism Polis Pub Date : 2022-09-07 Brennan McDavid
Despite the extensiveness of top-down control in his ideal city, Plato takes seriously the idea that the market does not require total regulation via legislation and that participants in the market may be capable of self-regulation. This paper examines the discussion of market regulation in the Republic and argues that the philosopher rulers play a very limited role in regulating market activities
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Political, All Too Political. Again on Protagoras’ Myth in Its Intellectual Context Polis Pub Date : 2022-09-07 Mauro Bonazzi
The paper argues for an analytic interpretation of Protagoras’ myth in Plato’s dialogue by showing that its goal is not so much to reconstruct the origins of civilization as to identify some essential features of humankind. Against the widespread opinion that human progress depends on the development of technai, Protagoras claims that political art is the most important one, insofar as it is the condition
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Automation, Slavery, and Work in Aristotle’s Politics Book I Polis Pub Date : 2022-05-11 Ziyaad Bhorat
Engaging Aristotle’s broader corpus, this paper offers an exegesis of his counterfactual statement in the Politics regarding self-weaving shuttles and self-playing lyres. It argues that Aristotle imagines and offers his own theory of automation – if by automation we understand the conditions, limits, and consequences of substituting human work with artificial tools capable of acting themselves to complete
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The Best Life in Aristotle’s Politics Polis Pub Date : 2022-05-11 Keita Ishino
It is often emphasized that the Athenians viewed philosophy as essentially apolitical or anti-political. Placed in this context, Aristotle’s Politics 7.1–7.3 deserves special attention because here Aristotle presents his argument on the best life for ‘each human being (ἑκάστῳ τε τῶν ἀνθρώπων) and commonly for cities and human beings (κοινῇ ταῖς πόλεσι καὶ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις)’, which culminates in his conclusion
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Conspicuous by Their Presence: Brutus, Cassius, and Cato the Younger in the Writings of Tacitus Polis Pub Date : 2022-05-11 Thomas E. Strunk
Tacitus is an unlikely source for our study of Brutus, Cassius, and Cato, as they stand outside the chronological framework of Tacitus’ writings; nonetheless, they do appear a number of times throughout his works, and Tacitus portrays them with nuance and significance. As Brutus, Cassius, and Cato are rarely the precise focus for Tacitus, they are often referred to obliquely or in dialogue or speeches
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The Double Life of Ibn Bajja: A Platonic Philosopher among the Potentates of His Time Polis Pub Date : 2022-05-11 Alexander Orwin
Ibn Bajja both lavishly praises Plato, and quietly alters his teaching. He develops a novel version of the Platonic city, taken partly from Alfarabi, which completely excludes non-philosophers from it, arguing that the gap between purely intellectual philosophy and mostly corporeal politics is simply too great. This allows Ibn Bajja to escape many of the problems associated with the exposition and
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The Ecological Sustainability of Plato’s Republic Polis Pub Date : 2022-05-11 Susan Erck
The Republic’s political discussion begins with the construction of two contrasting cities: a ‘healthy’ city and a ‘city with a fever’; one defined by environmentally sustainable subsistence practices and the other by ‘luxurious’ over consumption that exceeds the carrying capacity of its land. Plato’s characters proceed to cure the inflamed city of its fever, resulting in the delineation of the ideal
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Geordnete Gemeinschaft. Politische Autarkie bei Aristoteles Polis Pub Date : 2022-05-11 Simon Varga
In Aristotelian understanding, political autarky does not imply individual isolation, but the order of all human relationships within the (political) community. The final aim is not ‘not-needing-anybody-else-anymore’, the independent identity, but the collective-cooperative shaping and ordering of life in the immediate forms of community. This includes in a special way (i) basic social-anthropological
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Philosopher-Strangers: Xenia and Panhellenism in Plato’s Laws Polis Pub Date : 2022-05-11 Samuel Ortencio Flores
Since antiquity, there has been little consensus on how to interpret the identity of the anonymous Athenian Stranger of Plato’s Laws. This paper uses the Stranger’s identification as xenos as a starting point in examining the role of xenia in Plato’s Laws. In this dialogue, Plato uses xenia throughout the dialogue to portray philosophic relationships between characters from different poleis and to
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Xenophon, the Old Oligarch, and Alcibiades Polis Pub Date : 2022-05-11 William H.F. Altman
Modifying the conjecture of Wolfgang Helbig (1861) by means of the distinction between Xenophon and his various narrators introduced by Benjamin McCloskey (2017), this paper uses the insights of Hartvig Frisch (1942) to show how drawing a distinction between the first-person speaker in pseudo-Xenophon’s Constitution of the Athenians and its author indicates that the former is Alcibiades and the latter
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The Beautiful in Aristotle’s Ethics Polis Pub Date : 2022-01-06 David H. Little
This article argues for an aesthetic reading of to kalon, primarily as it appears in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle uses to kalon to indicate that, to the morally serious, virtue is attractive and productive of a kind of pleasure. Read aesthetically, to kalon mitigates the tension between one’s own good and the common good. Aristotle shows how his students’ understanding of to kalon can
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Cynicism as Immanent Critique: Diogenes and the Philosophy of Transvaluation Polis Pub Date : 2022-01-06 Darren Gardner
I argue that Diogenes and early Cynicism can be understood in an explicitly social and political context, where Cynic praxis, performative public action, can be seen to make visible oppositions inherent to the polity. In doing so, Diogenes’ praxis should be understood as a form of immanent critique, one that demonstrates, for example, that nature and custom (phusis and nomos) are interrelated oppositions
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Cyrus’ Beehive: Ruling Eros and with Eros in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia Polis Pub Date : 2022-01-06 Antoine Pageau-St-Hilaire
This paper examines the role of love in Xenophon’s Cyropaedia. I argue that an essential aspect of Cyrus’ knowledgeable rule is a specific understanding of eros and a corresponding strategy to cope with the power of love. Specifically, I contend that by exploiting a common Greek distinction between the beloved and the lover, he articulates the view that lovers are subjects or even slaves to their beloved
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Demagogues and Demagoguery in Hellenistic Greece Polis Pub Date : 2022-01-06 Matt Simonton
This paper introduces scholars of Greek political thought to the continued existence of the phenomenon of demagoguery, or ‘(mis-)leadership of the people’, in the Hellenistic period. After summarizing Classical elite discourse about demagoguery, I explore three areas in which political leaders continued to run afoul of elite norms in Hellenistic democratic poleis: 1) political persecution of the wealthier
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Eumenides and the Invention of Politics Polis Pub Date : 2022-01-06 Peter J. Steinberger
Recent scholarship has shown that the Eumenides of Aeschylus, far from presenting a complete and coherent picture of the well-ordered polis, in fact offers something quite different, namely, a complex set of questions, concerns and conundrums regarding the very nature of political society. But I suggest that the literature has not yet provided a fully satisfying account of the ways in which those questions
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Odd, Idle, and Vicious: Plato’s Use of Public Opinion in His Characterization of the Philosopher in Republic VI Polis Pub Date : 2022-01-06 Trinidad Silva
Plato’s characterization of the philosopher often emerges as a way to respond to popular conceptions and representations of the intellectual in Athenian society. In book 6 of the Republic in particular, he articulates his greatest defense of the philosopher against two major charges – that of being vicious and useless. Voicing what appears to be a commonly held view among Athenians, this representation
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Platonic and Aristotelian Teichopolitics Polis Pub Date : 2022-01-06 Adam Woodcox
This paper provides a sustained investigation into ancient teichopolitics – the politics of constructing walls – and the question of whether the best city should be surrounded by walls. Plato’s Laws adopts the Spartan view that walls have a negative effect on national character and argues that they should be ‘left lying asleep and undisturbed in the ground’ (Leg. 6.778d). Aristotle’s Politics puts
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Recognition and Redistribution in Aristotle’s Account of Stasis Polis Pub Date : 2022-01-06 Douglas Cairns, Mirko Canevaro, Kleanthis Mantzouranis
In Politics 5.1–3, Aristotle sees different conceptions of proportional equality and justice as the fundamental causes of stasis and metabolē (constitutional change). His account shows what happens to notions of ‘particular’ justice when they become causes of individual and collective action in pursuit of moral and political revolution. The whole discussion of the causes of stasis should be read through
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Anonymus Iamblichi and Nomos: Beyond the Sophistic Discourse Polis Pub Date : 2021-09-09 Anders Dahl Sørensen
The paper challenges the traditional assumption that the fragments of ‘Anonymus Iamblichi’ (Diels-Kranz 89) are best understood and interpreted against the intellectual and cultural background of the so-called ‘sophistic movement’. I begin by suggesting that we can distinguish, in the fragments, between two separate ‘discourses’ concerning nomos (‘law’) and its role in human life: an abstract ‘sophistic’
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The Birth of Unlawful Freedom in Plato’s Laws 3 Polis Pub Date : 2021-09-09 René de Nicolay
Plato’s pronouncements about political freedom in the Laws have sparked renewed interest in the literature. The present paper takes a new angle on that vexed question. It focusses on Plato’s account of the birth of unlawful freedom, or ‘theatrocracy’, at the end of book 3. By studying the transition from moderate to excessive freedom, it wishes to shed light on what sets the two apart. The paper provides
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Civic Freedom in Plato’s Laws Polis Pub Date : 2021-09-09 Susan Sauvé Meyer
In Book 3 of Plato’s Laws, we read that a legislator must aim to endow the polis with a trio of properties: freedom, wisdom, and internal friendship (philia). This paper explores what such freedom consists in, with a focus on the so-called doctrine of the mixed constitution. It argues that such freedom is a constitutional matter; that it is not to be identified with ‘voluntary servitude to the laws’
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Kingship and Legislation in Plato’s Statesman Polis Pub Date : 2021-09-09 Dimitri El Murr
One of the main philosophical outcomes of Plato’s Statesman is to define statesmanship as a prescriptive (epitactic) form of knowledge, exercising control over subordinate tekhnai. Against a widespread scholarly view according to which the Statesman offers a radically critical view of laws, this paper argues that the art of legislation (nomothetikē) has pride of place among these subordinate arts which
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Law and Justice among the Socratics: Contexts for Plato’s Republic Polis Pub Date : 2021-09-09 Phillip Sidney Horky
At the beginning of Republic 2 (358e–359b), Plato has Glaucon ascribe a social contract theory to Thrasymachus and ‘countless others’. This paper takes Glaucon’s description to refer both within the text to Thrasymachus’ views, and outside the text to a series of works, most of which have been lost, On Justice or On Law. It examines what is likely to be the earliest surviving work that presents a philosophical
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Law and Legislator in the Philosophy of Julian the Emperor Polis Pub Date : 2021-09-09 Dominic J. O’Meara
This paper surveys the conceptions of law and of legislation to be found in the philosophy of Julian the Emperor. A hierarchy of levels of law is described, going from transcendent divine orders and paradigmatic laws down to the laws of nature, laws innate in human souls and regional laws. Julian’s ideal legislator is discussed, as inspired by transcendent, paradigmatic laws and as subordinate to law