POLITEIA IN GREEK AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY - Assetsassets.cambridge.org/97811070/20221/frontmatter/9781107020221... · POLITEIA IN GREEK AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY This is the ﬁrst exploration

P O L I T E I A IN GREEKAND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY

This is the first exploration of how ideas of politeia (constitution)structure relations at once political and extra-political throughout theperiod of Greek and Roman philosophy, ranging from Presocratic toclassical, Hellenistic and Neoplatonic thought. A highly distinguishedinternational team of scholars investigate topics such as the Athenian,Spartan and Platonic visions of politeia, the reshaping of Greek andLatin vocabularies of politics, the practice of politics in Plato andProclus, the politics of value in Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, and theextension of constitutional order to discussions of animals, gods andthe cosmos. The volume is dedicated to Professor Malcolm Schofield,one of the world’s leading scholars of ancient philosophy.

verity harte is Professor of Philosophy and Classics at YaleUniversity. She is the author of Plato on Parts and Wholes: The Meta-physics of Structure (2002) and of various articles on ancient philoso-phy. She is co-editor (with M.M. McCabe, Robert W. Sharples andAnne Sheppard) of Aristotle and the Stoics Reading Plato (2010). From2003 to 2011, she was Managing Editor of the journal Phronesis.

melissa lane is Professor of Politics and Director of the Programin Values and Public Life at Princeton University. She is the authorof Eco-Republic (2012), Plato’s Progeny: How Plato and Socrates StillCaptivate the Modern Mind (2001) and Method and Politics in Plato’sStatesman (1998), as well as of the Introduction to the 2007 PenguinClassics edition of Plato’s Republic. She is co-editor of A Poet’s Reich:Politics and Culture in the George Circle (with Martin Ruehl, 2011).

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Drawing of Malcolm Schofield by Humphrey Ocean (1997)






P O L I T E I A IN GREEKAND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY

edited by

VERITY HARTE and MELISSA LANE






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First published 2013

Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by the MPG Books Group

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Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication dataPoliteia in Greek and Roman philosophy / edited by Verity Harte and Melissa Lane.

pages cmIncludes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 978-1-107-02022-11. Plato. Republic. 2. Constitution (Philosophy) I. Harte, Verity, editor of compilation.

jc71.p6p64 2013320.01 – dc23 2013005746

isbn 978-1-107-02022-1 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence oraccuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to

in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on suchwebsites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.






This volume is a tribute to Malcolm Schofield,friend, teacher and colleague,

and exemplary scholar of ancient philosophy











Contents

Frontispiece: Drawing of Malcolm Schofield by Humphrey Ocean (1997)Contributors page ixAcknowledgements xiv

Introduction 1Verity Harte and Melissa Lane

part i the vocabulary of politics 13

1 The political art in Plato’s Republic 15Alexander Long

2 Putting history in its place: Plato, Thucydides, and theAthenian politeia 32Cynthia Farrar

3 Platonizing the Spartan politeia in Plutarch’s Lycurgus 57Melissa Lane

4 The body politic: Aetius on Alcmaeon on isonomia andmonarchia 78Jaap Mansfeld

5 Latin philosophy and Roman law 96Miriam Griffin

part ii the practice of politics 117

6 The Platonic manufacture of ideology, or how to assembleawkward truth and wholesome falsehood 119Robert Wardy

vii






viii Contents

7 Plato’s politics of ignorance 139Verity Harte

8 The political skill of Protagoras 155Nicholas Denyer

9 Proclus and politics 168Jonathan Barnes

part iii the politics of value 189

10 Relativism in Plato’s Protagoras 191Catherine Rowett

11 Justice writ large and small in Republic 4 212M.F. Burnyeat

12 An aesthetic reading of Aristotle’s Ethics 231Richard Kraut

13 The Stoic sage in the Original Position 251Mary Margaret McCabe

part iv politics extended: animals, gods, cosmology 275

14 Aristotle on the natural sociability, skills and intelligenceof animals 277Geoffrey Lloyd

15 Gods and men in Xenophanes 294James Warren

16 Socrates and his gods: from the Euthyphro to the EudemianEthics 313Christopher Rowe

17 The atheist underground 329David Sedley

Malcolm Schofield bibliography 1970–2012 349Volume bibliography 356General index 377Index locorum 384






Contributors

jonathan barnes is Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and hasserved in a number of posts including as Professor of Ancient Philosophyat the University of Geneva and at the University of Oxford. He is theauthor of Logic and the Imperial Stoa (1997); The Toils of Scepticism(1990); The Presocratic Philosophers (1979); The Ontological Argument(1972); and co-author (with Julia Annas) of The Modes of Scepticism:Ancient Texts and Modern Interpretations (1985). He is the editor of TheComplete Works of Aristotle. The Revised Oxford Translation (1982), andco-editor of many volumes on ancient philosophy, including Articles onAristotle (with Malcolm Schofield and Richard Sorabji, 4 volumes, 1975–9), and Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology (withMalcolm Schofield and Myles Burnyeat, 1980). He is the translator ofPorphyry Introduction (2003) and of several texts in the Cornell UniversityPress series of ancient commentators on Aristotle, and co-translator (withJulia Annas) of Outlines of Scepticism by Sextus Empiricus (1994).

m.f. burnyeat is Honorary Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge, andEmeritus Fellow in Philosophy at All Souls College, Oxford. He is theauthor of Aristotle’s Divine Intellect (2008), A Map of Metaphysics Zeta(2001) and The Theaetetus of Plato (1990), and editor of The SkepticalTradition (1983). He has edited Bernard Williams, The Sense of the Past:Essays in the History of Philosophy (2006) and co-edited The OriginalSceptics: A Controversy (with Michael Frede, 1997), Philosophy As It Is(with Ted Honderich, 1989), and Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies inHellenistic Epistemology (with Malcolm Schofield and Jonathan Barnes,1989).

nicholas denyer is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, where he isa College Senior Lecturer in Philosophy; he is also a University SeniorLecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge. He is the authorof Plato: Protagoras (2008), Plato: Alcibiades (2001), Language, Thought

ix






x Contributors

and Falsehood in Ancient Greek Philosophy (1991) and Time, Action andNecessity: A Proof of Free Will (1981).

cynthia farrar is a Research Scientist at the Institution for Social andPolicy Studies at Yale University, where she is also a Lecturer in PoliticalScience. She is the author of The Origins of Democratic Thinking: TheInvention of Politics in Classical Athens (1988), and various articles onancient Greek political thought, on deliberative democracy, and on theimplications of ancient democratic concepts and practices for modernchallenges. She is also a civic entrepreneur, and has adapted methods ofdeliberative democracy as tools for local and regional governance. Sheis the founder and CEO of Purple States, a video production companythat gives ordinary people a voice in the politics and policies that affectthem.

miriam griffin is Emeritus Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford, andof the Faculty of Classics of the University of Oxford. She is the authorof Nero: The End of a Dynasty (1984) and Seneca: A Philosopher in Politics(1976). She is the editor of A Companion to Julius Caesar (2009), and co-editor of Health and Sickness in Ancient Rome: Greek and Roman Poetryand Historiography (with Francis Cairns, 2010), Cicero. On Duties (withE.M. Atkins, 1991), and Philosophia Togata: Essays on Philosophy andRoman Society (1989) and Philosophia Togata II: Plato and Aristotle atRome (1997), both with Jonathan Barnes. She is translator of Seneca. OnBenefits (with Brad Inwood, 2011).

verity harte is Professor of Philosophy and Classics at Yale University.She is the author of Plato on Parts and Wholes: The Metaphysics ofStructure (2002) and of various articles on ancient philosophy. She is co-editor (with M.M. McCabe, Robert W. Sharples and Anne Sheppard)of Aristotle and the Stoics Reading Plato (2010). From 2003 to 2011, shewas Managing Editor of the journal Phronesis.

richard kraut is Charles and Emma Morrison Professor in the Human-ities at Northwestern University. He is the author of Against AbsoluteGoodness (2011), How to Read Plato (2008), What is Good and Why: TheEthics of Well-Being (2007), Aristotle: Political Philosophy (2002), Aris-totle on the Human Good (1989) and Socrates and the State (1984). Heis translator, with commentary, of Aristotle Politics Books vii and viii(1997), and editor of the Cambridge Companion to Plato (1992), Plato’sRepublic: Critical Essays (1997) and the Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’sNicomachean Ethics (2006).






Contributors xi

melissa lane is Professor of Politics and Director of the Program inValues and Public Life at Princeton University. She is the author ofEco-Republic (2011/2012), Plato’s Progeny: How Plato and Socrates StillCaptivate the Modern Mind (2001) and Method and Politics in Plato’sStatesman (1998), as well as of the Introduction to the 2007 PenguinClassics edition of Plato’s Republic. She is co-editor of A Poet’s Reich:Politics and Culture in the George Circle (with Martin Ruehl, 2011).

geoffrey lloyd is former Master of Darwin College, Cambridge, andEmeritus Professor of Ancient Philosophy and Science at the Universityof Cambridge. He is author of many books, including most recentlyDisciplines in the Making: Cross-cultural Perspectives on Elites, Learningand Innovation (2009); Cognitive Variations: Reflections on the Unityand Diversity of the Human Mind (2007); Principles and Practices inAncient Greek and Chinese Science (2006); The Delusions of Invulnerabil-ity: Wisdom and Morality in Ancient Greece, China and Today (2005) andAncient Worlds, Modern Reflections: Philosophical Perspectives on Greekand Chinese Science and Culture (2004). He has edited numerous vol-umes, including Aristotle on Mind and the Senses (with G.E.L. Owen,1978).

alexander long is Lecturer in Classics at the University of St Andrews.He is translator and co-editor (with David Sedley) of Plato’s Meno andPhaedo (2010), and author of a number of articles and book chapters onPlato and other topics in Greek philosophy.

mary margaret mccabe is Professor of Ancient Philosophy at King’sCollege London. She is the author of Plato and his Predecessors: TheDramatisation of Reason (2000); Plato’s Individuals (1994); and (as MaryMargaret Mackenzie) Plato on Punishment (1981). She is co-editor of Aris-totle and the Stoics Reading Plato (with Verity Harte, Robert W. Sharplesand Anne Sheppard, 2010), Perspectives on Perception: A Collection ofEssays (with Mark Textor, 2007), Form and Argument in Late Plato (withChristopher Gill, 1996), and (as Mary Margaret Mackenzie) Images ofAuthority: Essays Presented to Joyce Reynolds (with Charlotte Roueche,1989).

jaap mansfeld is Emeritus Professor of Ancient Philosophy in the Fac-ulty of Humanities at the University of Utrecht. He is the author ofDie Vorsokratiker (with O. Primavesi, 2011); Aetiana: The Method andIntellectual Context of a Doxographer (with D.T. Runia, 2 vols., 2008and 1996); Heresiography in Context: Hippolytus’ Elenchos as a Source for






xii Contributors

Greek Philosophy (1992); Prolegomena Mathematica: From Apollonius ofPerga to Late Neoplatonism: With an Appendix on Pappus and the Historyof Platonism (1998); Prolegomena: Questions to be Settled before the Studyof an Author or a Text (1994); Studies in the Historiography of Greek Phil-osophy (1990); Studies in Later Greek Philosophy and Gnosticism (1989),and Die Offenbarung des Parmenides und die menschliche Welt (1964).He has edited several volumes of work in ancient philosophy, includ-ing Aristotle’s On Generation and Corruption 1: Proceedings of the 15thSymposium Aristotelicum (with Frans de Haas, 2004), and Assent andArgument: Studies in Cicero’s Academic Books: Proceedings of the 7th Sym-posium Hellenisticum (with Brad Inwood, 1997).

christopher rowe is Emeritus Professor of Greek at the Universityof Durham. He has written commentaries on four dialogues of Plato:Phaedrus (1988 [second, corrected edition]), Phaedo (1993), Statesman(1995; reprinted with corrections, 2005), and Symposium (1998), as wellas on Hesiod (1978). He is editor of Reading the Statesman: Proceedingsof the 3rd Symposium Platonicum (1995), and co-editor of Approaches toPlato, Modern and Ancient (with Julia Annas, 2002) and The CambridgeHistory of Greek and Roman Political Thought (with Malcolm Schofield,2000). He wrote a new translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics toaccompany a new commentary by Sarah Broadie (2002) and is jointauthor, with Terry Penner, of Plato’s Lysis (2005). He is also the authorof Plato and the Art of Philosophical Writing (2007); his new version ofThe Last Days of Socrates (Penguin Classics) was published in 2010, andhis new translation of Plato’s Republic (also Penguin Classics) appeared,alongside Desmond Lee’s 1955 version, in 2012.

catherine rowett is Professor of Philosophy at the University of EastAnglia. She is the author (as Catherine Osborne, under which nameshe published from 1979 to 2011) of Philoponus: On Aristotle Physics1.4–9 (2009); Dumb Beasts and Dead Philosophers: Humanity and theHumane in Ancient Philosophy and Literature (2007); Philoponus: OnAristotle Physics 1.1–3 (2006); Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short Intro-duction (2004); Eros Unveiled: Plato and the God of Love (1994); andRethinking Early Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics(1987).

david sedley is a Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, and LaurenceProfessor of Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. He is






Contributors xiii

the author of Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity (2007), The Mid-wife of Platonism: Text and Subtext in Plato’s Theaetetus (2004), Plato’sCratylus (2003), and Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom(1998). He has published, with A.A. Long, The Hellenistic Philosophers(1987), and is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Greek andRoman Philosophy (2003). He has also worked extensively on the editingof philosophical papyri, including an edition (with G. Bastianini) ofthe Anonymous Commentary on Plato’s Theaetetus, in Corpus dei papirifilosofici greci e latini, vol. iii, 1995 (Florence), 227–562, and ‘Epicurus,On Nature, Book xxviii’, in Cronache ercolanesi 3 (1973), 5–83.

robert wardy is a Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and aReader in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. He is theauthor of Doing Greek Philosophy (2005); Aristotle in China: Language,Categories and Translation (2000); The Birth of Rhetoric: Gorgias, Platoand Their Successors (1996); and The Chain of Change: A Study of Aristotle’sPhysics vii (1990).

james warren is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and aReader in Ancient Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. He is theauthor of Epicurus and Democritean Ethics: An Archaeology of Ataraxia(2002); Facing Death: Epicurus and his Critics (2004); and Presocratics(2007). He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism(2009).






Acknowledgements

To prepare this volume and to celebrate its honorand, Malcolm Schofield,the traditional ancient philosophy ‘Mayweek’ conference of the B Caucusof the Faculty of Classics, University of Cambridge, in 2011 was devotedto the theme of Politeia. The conference was attended by ninety-fourregistered delegates, including a wide range of graduate students, youngscholars and scholars of global repute from some forty academic institutionsspanning Britain, the United States, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece,Japan, Korea, Denmark, the Czech Republic and Poland, many of whomengaged in lively questioning of the speakers. All of the papers in thisvolume with the exception (owing to timetable constraints) of the editors’own were first presented at this conference and benefited from discussionthere. Their authors are drawn from Malcolm’s many graduate students,colleagues, editorial collaborators and friends in the discipline of ancientphilosophy. We take great pleasure in presenting this volume to him.

The conference was made possible by generous financial support fromthe B Caucus and Faculty of Classics; Brill Publishers; the British Academy;and the University Committee for Research in the Humanities and SocialSciences of Princeton University. It was organized by the editors togetherwith David Sedley, to whom both editors wish to express warm gratitudefor shouldering the burden of local arrangements and for advice through-out the development of the conference and volume. We are grateful also forthe contribution made in financial management by Lucyna Prochnicka;research assistance, website management and logistical coordination byJulie Rose; and further logistical support by the Cambridge graduate stu-dents in ancient philosophy. Chairs of sessions included Margaret Atkins,Rene Brouwer, Paul Cartledge, Peter Garnsey, Angie Hobbs, DominicScott and Richard Sorabji; the speaker at the opening reception was MaryBeard; and initial encouragement for the conference and volume was givenby Margaret Atkins, Cynthia Farrar and M.M. McCabe.

xiv






Acknowledgements xv

The Principal and Fellows of Newnham College kindly allowed us tohold the conference there and to enjoy the College’s gardens. We are gratefulto the Master and Fellows of St John’s College for their generous hospitalityto conference guests and for granting permission for the gala conferencedinner to be held in the Combination Room, and to the Vice-Master DrMark Nicholls, Catering and Conferences Manager Bill Brogan and theCollege staff for helping to make the dinner so memorable an occasion.Fellow of the College Peter Linehan read the Grace; toasts were given byTony Long and M.M. McCabe.

In the preparation of the volume we have been greatly helped by researchassistance supported at our respective institutions and provided by JulieRose and Gina White (Princeton) and Maya Gupta (Yale). We have beenwell advised by our editor Michael Sharp and cheerfully aided by the staff ofCambridge University Press. The copy-editing was done with exceptionalskill by Virginia Catmur, and the indices prepared with great care by MayaGupta; any errors are our responsibility.

The frontispiece is Humphrey Ocean’s drawing of Malcolm Schofield,which is reproduced by kind permission of the Master and Fellows ofSt John’s College, Cambridge.






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POLITEIA IN GREEK AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY - Assetsassets.cambridge.org/97811070/20221/frontmatter/9781107020221... · POLITEIA IN GREEK AND ROMAN PHILOSOPHY This is the ﬁrst exploration