POLIS最新文献

Scholarship on the Republic has tended to stress the centrality of the tripartite soul to the Republic’s conception of justice. Yet since Socrates’s task in the dialogue is to show the desirability of justice in the ordinary Athenian sense, any emphasis on idiosyncratic psychology would render his account of justice fundamentally beside the point. This paper suggests a way out of this dilemma. It argues that Platonic justice in the Republic represents a shrewd twist on the entirely conventional, distributive Athenian notion of justice as refraining from seizing for oneself what belongs to another. Plato’s twist is to substitute the performance of one’s own activity (πρᾶξις τα ἑαυτοῦ) for the possession of one’s household goods (ἕξις τα ἑαυτοῦ) as the proper object of justice. The paper then shows how this account of Platonic justice makes sense both textually and contextually, before concluding.

This article examines Xenophon’s suggestion for conducting cavalry displays in Eq. mag. 3 and develops the argument that the text is a significant document of Xenophon’s thought about political performativity as well as of 4th century Athenian political culture. I argue that one of Xenophon’s strategies to reform the relationship between the Athenian demos and the ideologically fraught elite institution of the cavalry was to conduct public displays that draw on the aesthetics and formal features of New Dithyramb. On the basis of my analysis, I argue that understanding political performances requires closer attention to specific audience expectations, aesthetic norms, and cultural power, and suggest that Xenophon was a political thinker and actor who was highly attentive to such issues in the Athenian context.

This article critically analyses the concept of ‘partnership’ (koinōnia) in Book II of the Republic (Pl. Resp. 369b–374e), a concept it believes grounds Plato’s political thesis. It attempts to determine the nature of the concept, explore the agential capacities of the partnering agents, identify the original and derivative rational principles that could emerge from it, and argue that these rational principles are also moral principles. Platonic social justice spells out one of the rational and moral principles that emerge from the partnership. In this regard, the paper aims to show, inter alia, the connection between Platonic partnership and social justice and how such connection helps to explain, for instance, the quality of relationship that could exist between the rulers and ruled in Kallipolis. Incidentally, the paper compares Platonic partnership in respect of his defence of justice with Glaucon’s contractarian moral thesis in connection with his pean for injustice.

In the Republic, Plato’s Socrates argues that the wealthy feel contempt for the poor, and the poor feel hatred for the rich. But why is Socrates, leading a life of scandalous poverty, without taking wages for philosophical work, an exception to this rule? Instead of hatred, envy, or no emotion at all, Socrates consistently treats wealth and the wealthy with ridicule and kataphronēsis – active looking-down or contempt – while meditating on the temptation of the poor to appropriate the excess flesh of the wealthy (Resp. 556d). It is contempt that allows Socrates to remain free and wageless, away from the tempting distortion wealth has on the soul (Resp. 330c, 554a–b). Socrates therefore insists his philosopher-kings should be paid only in food, the same reward he proposes for himself in the Apology. Instead of securing freedom from murderous epithumia through moderate property, Socrates implies only contemptuous poverty can safeguard a philosophic life.

This article contributes to the scholarly movement beyond rigid classifications of East and West by arguing that the Persia of Herodotus’s History, commonly understood to be a tyrannical regime, possessed both external and internal freedom. It was once common to argue that, for Herodotus, internal freedom was the exclusive purview of the Greeks. Recent scholarship has shown that Herodotus laced the History with several incriminating parallels between Greek and Barbarian political practices, thereby casting doubt on the claim that Herodotus uncritically supported Greek supremacy. This article reverses that method and argues, contrary to previous scholarship, that Herodotus offers several indications in the History that he knew Persia was a politically free regime. By examining the three prominent theories on the ancient definition of tyranny and showing their inapplicability to Persian government, I offer an even-handed defense of Persia that neither excuses real cruelty nor condemns without justification.

This article concerns the dangers of demagogues in democracies described in the Politics and the edifying purposes of Aristotle’s ethical works in relation to the politically ambitious student. The translation of σπουδαῖος as serious is key to understanding the connection between these works. Although similar arguments appear elsewhere in his Corpus, Aristotle’s arguments in the Great Ethics are unique because the audience is warned about the dangers of political rule and is ultimately led away from the pursuit of it. Aristotle appears to specifically lead this class of politically ambitious students toward a serious pursuit of virtue, justice, and prudence with a final view to both friendship and citizenship. This emphasis is significant because an ‘individual who is serious-about-rule’ (σπουδάρχης) is excessively eager for office. Furthermore, ‘those serious-about-rule’ are dangerous when they act as demagogues, and this is one cause of revolutions in democracies.