Pub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340349
Mi-kyoung Lee
In this paper I consider Aristotle’s solutions to two questions about justice and the laws: why think that obeying the law is just? And why think that doing what is just will promote one’s happiness? I analyze Aristotle’s solutions to these two problems in terms of four claims concerning the laws that come from Plato and underwrite Aristotle’s optimism about the potential for politikê epistêmê to issue in laws which are objectively correct.
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Pub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340342
P. 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 defence of law and justice against those who would prefer their opposites, On Excellence by an anonymous author usually referred to as ‘Anonymus Iamblichi’; the views on these topics among the Socratics, including Crito, Simon the Cobbler, Aristippus of Cyrene, and Antisthenes; and Socrates’ debate with Hippias ‘On Justice’ in Xenophon’s Memorabilia (4.4.5–25). Its main contention is that the ‘countless others’ referred to by Glaucon points chiefly, but not solely, to the members of the circle of Socrates, who themselves espoused a range of views on justice and law, and their relations.
{"title":"Law and Justice among the Socratics: Contexts for Plato’s Republic","authors":"P. Horky","doi":"10.1163/20512996-12340342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340342","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000At 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 defence of law and justice against those who would prefer their opposites, On Excellence by an anonymous author usually referred to as ‘Anonymus Iamblichi’; the views on these topics among the Socratics, including Crito, Simon the Cobbler, Aristippus of Cyrene, and Antisthenes; and Socrates’ debate with Hippias ‘On Justice’ in Xenophon’s Memorabilia (4.4.5–25). Its main contention is that the ‘countless others’ referred to by Glaucon points chiefly, but not solely, to the members of the circle of Socrates, who themselves espoused a range of views on justice and law, and their relations.","PeriodicalId":43237,"journal":{"name":"POLIS","volume":"6 2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80041825","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340353
D. 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 and its protector. An example of Julian’s legislation is discussed. Attention is paid to Julian’s use of Plato’s Republic, Statesman, and Laws.
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Pub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340339
Dimitri El Murr, A. Bonnemaison, René de Nicolay
In June 2019 – a not so distant past when scholars from all over the world could still come together and spend three days in the same room exchanging exciting views on difficult ancient texts – Melissa Lane (Princeton University) and I, Dimitri El Murr, assisted by two of our doctoral students, Anthony Bonnemaison and René de Nicolay, organized a conference at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris entitled ‘Legislation and lawgiving: philosophical perspectives on Antiquity’. Our aim with this conference was to offer new philosophical perspectives on law giving (the issuing or writing of real or imagined constitutions for specific peoples) and more generally on legislation in classical antiquity; but we also sought to cover as much historical ground as possible, taking into account a wide range of philosophical traditions, from the Presocratics to Hellenistic philosophers and late Neoplatonists, with a special focus on the different conceptions these traditions develop of the legislator, from a critical as well as a positive point of view. The first drafts of the thirteen papers included in this volume were presented and discussed in Paris, and comments were sent to authors on the final drafts by Anthony Bonnemaison, René de Nicolay and myself.
2019年6月，当来自世界各地的学者仍然可以聚在一起，在同一个房间里花三天时间就困难的古代文本交换令人兴奋的观点时，梅丽莎·莱恩(普林斯顿大学)和我，迪米特里·埃尔·默尔，在我们的两名博士生安东尼·Bonnemaison和ren de Nicolay的协助下，在巴黎École Normale supsamrieure组织了一次题为“立法和立法:古代的哲学视角”的会议。我们这次会议的目的是为法律的制定(为特定民族颁布或编写真实的或想象的宪法)提供新的哲学观点，更广泛地说，是关于古典古代的立法;但我们也试图涵盖尽可能多的历史背景，考虑到广泛的哲学传统，从前苏格拉底到希腊化哲学家和晚期新柏拉图主义者，特别关注这些传统从批判和积极的角度发展出来的立法者的不同概念。本卷中包含的十三篇论文的初稿在巴黎进行了展示和讨论，安东尼·邦尼梅森、雷诺·德·尼古拉和我对最终稿的评论被寄给了作者。
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Pub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340341
A. 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’ discourse, centered around the defense of nomos against the antinomian champions of natural pleonexia, and another, less abstract and more polemical discourse on nomos, which is aimed at the author’s contemporary Athens. I argue that the author’s engagement with well-known sophistic ideas is best understood as instrumental to his polemical agenda: it provides him with a powerful intellectual framework in which to articulate his criticism of democratic society, especially with regard to traditional notions of social ‘benefaction’ and the relation between rich and poor.
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Pub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340346
Myrthe L. Bartels
This contribution analyses the ancient Greek notion of eunomia in the philosophical prose literature of the fourth century BC. While the term eunomia is often translated as ‘good government’ or ‘good order’, such vague translations fail to capture the specifics of eunomia, and thus part of the philosophical debate about constitutions is lost. Closer inspection reveals that within the fourth-century constitutional debate, eunomia entails two distinct aspects: the excellence of the laws and their durability. These two aspects are predicated of various constitutions: the mixed constitution, of which Sparta and Crete are primary examples in the fourth century; the Athenian democracy as a paradigm of law-abidingness; and philosophical constitutions aiming at virtue. It is a hallmark of the last that such law codes start from marriage and childbirth and follow the course of human life.
{"title":"Philosophical Perspectives on Eunomia","authors":"Myrthe L. Bartels","doi":"10.1163/20512996-12340346","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340346","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This contribution analyses the ancient Greek notion of eunomia in the philosophical prose literature of the fourth century BC. While the term eunomia is often translated as ‘good government’ or ‘good order’, such vague translations fail to capture the specifics of eunomia, and thus part of the philosophical debate about constitutions is lost. Closer inspection reveals that within the fourth-century constitutional debate, eunomia entails two distinct aspects: the excellence of the laws and their durability. These two aspects are predicated of various constitutions: the mixed constitution, of which Sparta and Crete are primary examples in the fourth century; the Athenian democracy as a paradigm of law-abidingness; and philosophical constitutions aiming at virtue. It is a hallmark of the last that such law codes start from marriage and childbirth and follow the course of human life.","PeriodicalId":43237,"journal":{"name":"POLIS","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89126929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340348
S. 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’ cultivated by persuasive preludes to the laws; nor is it the rational self-control essential to virtuous character, or citizens’ ability to decide and act for themselves; nor is it a restriction on the size of individual political authority. Rather, it is a freedom based on equality: a polis is free to the extent that its constitution mitigates the inherent inequality between rulers (archontes) and ruled (archomenoi), between those who wield political authority and those who are subject to that authority.
{"title":"Civic Freedom in Plato’s Laws","authors":"S. Meyer","doi":"10.1163/20512996-12340348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340348","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In 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’ cultivated by persuasive preludes to the laws; nor is it the rational self-control essential to virtuous character, or citizens’ ability to decide and act for themselves; nor is it a restriction on the size of individual political authority. Rather, it is a freedom based on equality: a polis is free to the extent that its constitution mitigates the inherent inequality between rulers (archontes) and ruled (archomenoi), between those who wield political authority and those who are subject to that authority.","PeriodicalId":43237,"journal":{"name":"POLIS","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81865092","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-09DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340344
D. 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 also include rhetoric, strategy, the art of the judge and education.
{"title":"Kingship and Legislation in Plato’s Statesman","authors":"D. El Murr","doi":"10.1163/20512996-12340344","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340344","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000One 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 also include rhetoric, strategy, the art of the judge and education.","PeriodicalId":43237,"journal":{"name":"POLIS","volume":"81 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85535438","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-01-14DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340309
P. Liddel
Recent research in the field of New Institutionalist analysis has developed the view that institutions are grounded not only upon authoritative rules but also upon accepted practices and narratives. In this paper I am interested in the ways in which honorific practices and accounts of identity set out in ancient Greek inscriptions contribute towards the persistence of polis institutions in the Hellenistic period. A diachronic survey of Erythraian inscriptions of the classical and Hellenistic periods gives an impression of the adaptation and proliferation of forms of discourse established in the classical period. It demonstrates the ongoing prominence of the rhetoric of identity in conversations that went on not only between peer polities and within real or imagined kinship groups but also in negotiations between powerful and weak state entities and in inward-facing discourses on euergetism.
{"title":"The Discourses of Identity in Hellenistic Erythrai: Institutions, Rhetoric, Honour and Reciprocity","authors":"P. Liddel","doi":"10.1163/20512996-12340309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340309","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Recent research in the field of New Institutionalist analysis has developed the view that institutions are grounded not only upon authoritative rules but also upon accepted practices and narratives. In this paper I am interested in the ways in which honorific practices and accounts of identity set out in ancient Greek inscriptions contribute towards the persistence of polis institutions in the Hellenistic period. A diachronic survey of Erythraian inscriptions of the classical and Hellenistic periods gives an impression of the adaptation and proliferation of forms of discourse established in the classical period. It demonstrates the ongoing prominence of the rhetoric of identity in conversations that went on not only between peer polities and within real or imagined kinship groups but also in negotiations between powerful and weak state entities and in inward-facing discourses on euergetism.","PeriodicalId":43237,"journal":{"name":"POLIS","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72841570","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-01DOI: 10.1163/20512996-12340297
Charlotta Weigelt
This article argues that the Statesman should be read as a historically informed reflection on the nature and possibility of political rule, and that it presents us with a dilemma precisely in this regard. On the one hand, as indicated by the famous myth on the evolution of the cosmos, politics is only possible today, in the age of Zeus, when man no longer is like a sheep, ruled by a caring herdsman, as he used to be in the age of Cronus. Instead, he has become an expert who is capable of some degree of self-rule. On the other hand, however, as a ‘technocratic’ age, the present is marked by its loss of the ‘natural’ model for statesmanship. More specifically, when politics tends to be identified with technical expertise, it becomes difficult to make sense of the very idea of political rule.
{"title":"Sign of the Times: the Rise and Fall of Politics in Plato’s Statesman","authors":"Charlotta Weigelt","doi":"10.1163/20512996-12340297","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/20512996-12340297","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article argues that the Statesman should be read as a historically informed reflection on the nature and possibility of political rule, and that it presents us with a dilemma precisely in this regard. On the one hand, as indicated by the famous myth on the evolution of the cosmos, politics is only possible today, in the age of Zeus, when man no longer is like a sheep, ruled by a caring herdsman, as he used to be in the age of Cronus. Instead, he has become an expert who is capable of some degree of self-rule. On the other hand, however, as a ‘technocratic’ age, the present is marked by its loss of the ‘natural’ model for statesmanship. More specifically, when politics tends to be identified with technical expertise, it becomes difficult to make sense of the very idea of political rule.","PeriodicalId":43237,"journal":{"name":"POLIS","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76329996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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