Justiça, lei e poder são três conceitos que se interligam na História da Guerra do Peloponeso, de Tucídides. Este artigo desenvolve-se em torno do confronto que se pode estabelecer entre as noções de nomos (lei) e physis (natureza), tanto em Tucídides, como nos sofistas, nos pré-socráticos, em Platão e Aristóteles.

The relationship between nature and normativity in Aristotle’s practical philosophy is problematic. On the one hand, Aristotle insists that ethical virtue arises through the habitual repetition of ethically good actions, and thus no one is good or virtuous by nature. Phusikê aretê or “natural virtue” is more like cleverness (demotes) than prudence (phronêsis) and it can result in wrong actions. Yet on the other hand, at times Aristotle appears to use nature to justify normative claims. Thus the problem with Aristotle’s (...) use of the notion of nature in his practical philosophy is that in some instances what is natural seems to be ethically neutral, but in other instances it seems to set the standard for human perfection. Modern Aristotle exegetes have sometimes argued that Aristotle must, consciously or not, be using the term “nature” in at least two different senses here. To use the language of Julia Annas, when Aristotle talks about “natural virtue” in the sense of the talents or abilities which one possesses from birth, he has in mind the notion of “mere nature,” but when he discusses the perfections which a virtuous individual enjoys by his or her nature, Aristotle has in mind the notion of nature as an “ethical ideal.” I would like to suggest an alternative solution to the problem of reconciling Aristotle’s different senses of nature in his Ethics. In Nicomachean Ethics V.7, Aristotle claims that political justice {to dikaion politikon) possesses a “natural” {phusikon) part and a “conventional” {nomikori) part. Aristotle claims that both nature and convention admit of variation, and his language suggests that the two are ultimately parts which need to be interwoven or combined. Scholars who have struggled with Aristotle’s apparently disparate senses of the idea of nature have assumed that nature is an ethical ideal which can be separated from and serve as a guide for that which is merely conventional. I argue that when Aristotle invokes what is “natural” as a norm, he does so under the assumption that the natural component of a norm is ultimately separable from its conventional part only in abstraction. Just like the syllable “BA” is not reducible to the letters “b” and “a,” but instead is a whole greater than its two parts, political justice is a composite unity of nature and convention which, in unifying the two parts, transforms them. (shrink)

In the 5th century BC, in Athens, Antiphon reflects on the relationship between physis and nómos in a way quite different from most sophists. Indeed, one of the particularities of sophist thought is to minimize physis so that thinking focus itself on nómos, on what man can, through thinking and debate, establish in regard to the common good and justice in the pólis. However, Antiphon takes up this relationship between nature and law to direct it to another path. In (...) an unusual way for a sophist, we see physis being emphasized at the expense of nómos. The comparison between the two concepts also serves as a backdrop for harsh criticisms of justice and laws. The objective of this article is, through the criticisms Antiphon makes to the system of the laws of the pólis, to think about the relationship established by the sophist between physis and nómos in order to find out if there is a new understanding of these concepts and to reflect the reason that led Antiphon to revisit them. (shrink)

A much-maligned feature of ancient and medieval political thought is its tendency to appeal to nature to establish norms for human communities. From Aristotle's claim that humans are "political animals" to Aquinas' invocation of "natural law," it may seem that pre-modern philosophers were all too ready to assume that whatever is natural is good, and that just political arrangements must somehow be natural. The papers in this collection show that this assumption is, at best, too crude. From very early, for (...) instance in the ancient sophists' contrast between nomos and physis, there was recognition that political arrangements may be precisely artificial, not natural, and it may be questioned whether even such supposed naturalists as Aristotle in fact adopt the quick inference from "natural" to "good." The papers in this volume trace the complex interrelations between nature and such concepts as law, legitimacy, and justice, covering a wide historical range stretching from Plato and the Sophists to Aristotle, Hellenistic philosophy, Cicero, the Neoplatonists Plotinus and Porphyry, ancient Christian thinkers, and philosophers of both the Islamic and Christian Middle Ages. (shrink)

"Gagarin demonstrates persuasively that Antiphon the logographer is identical with the Antiphon who made intellectual contributions on more abstract topics." —Mervin R. Dilts, Professor of Classics, New York University Antiphon was a fifth-century Athenian intellectual (ca. 480-411 BCE) who created the profession of speechwriting while serving as an influential and highly sought-out adviser to litigants in the Athenian courts. Three of his speeches are preserved, together with three sets of Tetralogies (four hypothetical paired speeches), whose authenticity is sometimes doubted. Fragments (...) also survive of intellectual treatises on subjects including justice, law, and nature (physis), which are often attributed to a separate Antiphon the Sophist. Were these two Antiphons really one and the same individual, endowed with a wide-ranging mind ready to tackle most of the diverse intellectual interests of his day? Through an analysis of all these writings, this book convincingly argues that they were composed by a single individual, Antiphon the Athenian. Michael Gagarin sets close readings of individual works within a wider discussion of the fifth-century Athenian intellectual climate and the philosophical ferment known as the sophistic movement. This enables him to demonstrate the overall coherence of Antiphon's interests and writings and to show how he was a pivotal figure between the sophists and the Attic orators of the fourth century. In addition, Gagarin's argument allows us to reassess the work of the sophists as a whole, so that they can now be seen as primarily interested in logos (speech, argument) and as precursors of fourth-century rhetoric, rather than in their usual role as foils for Plato. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sophistical Wisdom:Politikê Aretê and “Logosophia”Christopher Lyle JohnstoneThe pursuit of Wisdom is at the center of the Western intellectual tradition, its attainment the literal ideal and end of all philosophical inquiry. It is recognized by various religions and belief systems as the key to a meaningful, fulfilling, happy life. Yet for all this, its nature remains unclear and the means of its attainment uncertain. Is it one thing, or are (...) there different kinds of wisdom? How is it acquired? Can it be taught or communicated to others? How, if at all, do speech and language figure in the attainment and dissemination of wisdom?The relationship between wisdom and utterance, reflected in the connection between philosophy and rhetoric, has been a focus of intellectual interest in the West since at least the time of Heraclitus of Ephesus (ca. 500 BCE): Parmenides, Empedocles, Protagoras, Gorgias, Socrates, Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Augustine, Bacon, Vico—all have been concerned, either directly or indirectly, with the interrelation of speech or eloquence and what they view as the highest form of knowledge. Recent scholarship has pursued this relationship along several related lines of inquiry, albeit sometimes obliquely. Some investigators have examined the role of speech in the creation of all human knowledge.1 Others have concentrated more particularly on the role of rhetoric in the creation or exercise of wisdom.2 In an effort to illuminate the ancient foundations of these connections, several scholars have lately studied the link between language and thought in Greek philosophy and rhetoric.3My present interest centers on the linkages between wisdom and speech—between sophia and logos—in the teachings of those pivotal thinkers of the fifth-century Greek "Enlightenment," the Older Sophists. Although the doctrines of Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Archelaus, and the Atomists took up moral and political topics, presocratic thinkers generally had concentrated on the origins and mechanical workings of the physical world in which human beings live. As contemporaries of Protagoras and Gorgias, the Atomists—Leucippus and Democritus—are particularly noteworthy for having initiated inquiry into [End Page 265] the relationship between custom or law (nomos) and nature or objective reality (physis), which became a central concern for many of the Older Sophists.4 Such moral and political themes were taken up in earnest by the thinkers and teachers who resided in or were drawn to Athens in the fifth century BCE. Protagoras, Gorgias, Socrates, Antiphon, and others raised questions that were fundamentally political and moral: How should one live one's life? What are the values that should guide one's conduct? By what moral standards should our actions be judged, and how are these standards to be discovered? What legitimizes the laws that govern society? Are law and morality rooted in the nature of things, or are they merely matters of custom and convention? Such questions mark a shift in intellectual inquiry away from the sorts of naturalistic, metaphysical, and ontological problems that preoccupied presocratic thinkers and toward a primary concern with matters of praxis, politics, and morality.My aims in this essay are, first, to illuminate the conceptions of wisdom that can be reconstructed from our evidence for the teachings of the Older Sophists, and then to discern the role of speech in the attainment and exercise of this wisdom. The past half-century or so has witnessed a growing interest in the Sophists of fifth-century Athens. This interest is particularly noteworthy because it involves a determination to consider the Sophists on their own terms rather than through Plato's eyes, as had been customary in most nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sophistical studies. Though an early precedent was set by Grote's (1846) effort to challenge the Platonist bias in historical treatments of the Sophists, it was such scholars as Untersteiner (1949, 1954), Cornford (1950), Kerferd (1950, 1981), and Guthrie (1968, 1971) who inspired more recent revisionist histories of sophistical ideas.5 More recent studies have sought to illuminate the philosophical foundations of such ideas and their implications for the theory and practice of rhetoric. J. Poulakos (1983a, 1983b, 1984, 1990, 1995), Schiappa (1990, 1991, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999), de Romilly (1992), Consigny (2001), McComisky (2002), Gagarin (2002... (shrink)

This edition of early Greek writings on social and political issues includes works by more than thirty authors. There is a particular emphasis on the sophists, with the inclusion of all of their significant surviving texts, and the works of Alcidamas, Antisthenes and the 'Old Oligarch' are also represented. In addition there are excerpts from early poets such as Homer, Hesiod and Solon, the three great tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, medical writers and presocratic (...) philosophers. Besides political theory, areas represented include early anthropology, sociology, ethics and rhetoric, and the wide range of issues discussed includes human nature, the origin of human society, the origin of law, the nature of justice, the forms of good government, the distribution of wealth, and the distribution of power among genders and social classes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 124.1 (2003) 150-153 [Access article in PDF] Lisa Kallet. Money and the Corrosion of Power in Thucydides: The Sicilian Expedition and Its Aftermath. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001. xiv + 347 pp. Cloth, $55. Jonathan J. Price. Thucydides and Internal War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. xii + 410 pp. Cloth, $70. These two new contributions to Thucydidean studies are similar (...) in scope and execution. Each pursues a thesis so well defined that dust jacket summaries do them justice. Kallet argues that "the second half of Thucydides' history contains a damning critique of Athens and its leaders for becoming corrupted by money and for failing to appropriately use their financial strength to support military power." Price contends that "Thucydides consciously viewed and presented the Peloponnesian War in terms of a condition of civil strife—or stasis, in Greek." Many, if not most students of Thucydides would find each of these propositions reasonable, and some might argue that book-length narratives are not needed to establish these basic theses one way or another.Nevertheless, Thucydides requires careful study, and each of these books contains strong analyses of many key sections and themes from the History. Both studies shed a great deal of light on Thucydidean historiography beyond their immediate topics. Thucydides, however, enjoys the mixed blessing of popularity among more learned policy makers who trot him out from to time as a founder of realist thinking. In such contexts, tendentious remarks from the Melian dialogue or similarly complex contexts appear as aphorisms, and Thucydides is reduced to a sound bite. Those who are students of Greek culture, political philosophy, international relations, or some related field can easily skim these books for their core arguments but would benefit from closer readings of the particular discussions within them, many of which exhibit considerable insight and originality.Kallet's book builds on the foundations of her earlier research on Money, Expense and Naval Power in Thucydides 1-5.24 (California, 1993). Kallet begins her new work with the Melian dialogue but largely skips over the remainder of Book 5 and concentrates here on Books 6-8. The introductory chapter on the Melian dialogue introduces a core theme, which the Sicilian narrative will extend: where proper strategy uses imperialism as an investment to acquire more tangible revenue or to maintain existing sources of income, the conquest of Melos as a display of power cannot possibly yield enough revenue to justify the initial expense. The Athenians pursue this adventure not because it will improve their financial base but because they wish to demonstrate their power for third parties to observe. The radical realism of the Melian dialogue thus becomes an exercise in traditional (and by Thucydides' standards, wasteful) display of wealth and power. Thus, even as Thucydides' Athenians see themselves as progressive thinkers untrammeled by illusion, they let their illusion of sophistication blind them to the regressive policy that they are actually pursuing. [End Page 150]The following four chapters comprise a fairly discrete monograph on the Sicilian expedition. The analyses of the speeches and major actions in this section of Thucydides constitute a significant contribution to our understanding of Thucydidean narrative. Kallet's discussion of the debate between Nikias and Alkibiades at the opening of Book 6 (31-48) traces issues of public/private, community/individual, and archaic/contemporary in a clear fashion that would make it a useful reading in an introductory class on Thucydides. She traces the language of display and seduction, articulating the means whereby the Athenians succumb to problematic strategic judgments.I particularly enjoyed chapter 2, which explores the relationship between the Ionian revolt in Herodotus and the Sicilian Expedition in Thucydides. I remain uncertain in my own mind as to how much Thucydides has Herodotus in particular in mind and the degree to which Herodotus and Thucydides shared cognitive models that were almost invisible elements of Greek ideology. Given the limited sample of Greek source materials, we may never achieve any certainty, but even... (shrink)

The many difficulties the book contains are not due to its translator; Miss Freeman's well-marshalled English seldom leaves us in search of the intended sense. They are due rather to the complex character of the author's mind and to the exigencies of the thesis he is defending. One encounters flights of imagination in which lyrical transports alternate or combine with bold dialectical constructions offered as sober interpretations, and multiple quotations from ancient thinkers and modern critics, confusingly blended with our author's (...) own comments. Signor Untersteiner displays an ability like that of the anatomist Cuvier, and can reassemble the entire structure of a lost sophistic writing from a single bone. He exhumes from the works of many other writers--Thucydides, Plato, Theophrastus, Demosthenes, Sextus Empiricus, Cicero--major conceptions, chapters, or whole treatises, mistakenly incorporated there by later editors, or borrowed without acknowledgment; these and sundry anonymous writings on relevant themes he confidently assigns to this or that beneficiary among the sophists. As the inevitable consequence of this process other thinkers, notably Socrates and Plato, are sadly diminished. Socrates becomes, indeed, almost a superfluity, in whose absence the history of Greek thought would have remained unimpaired. Plato's works serve as happy hunting-grounds for supposed incorporations of sophistic insights; for the rest, he is shown as stone-and-gravel blind to the merits of these rival thinkers. Now, some discounting of Plato's satirical portrayal of the sophists may be admitted as legitimate and necessary. Untersteiner, however, has so far exceeded his allowance here as to reach the counter-absurdity, of which his interpretation of Thrasymachus in the ne plus ultra: to a proper reading, we are told, Thrasymachus is far from being a cynical denier of the claims of moral obligation. On the contrary, he is a broken-hearted idealist, and in calling justice "the advantage of the stronger" he is offering not his own conception of justice but, out of his bitter disillusion, describing what men in their tragic folly have made of that noble virtue. (shrink)

Each of us is a measure. The project of advocates of change in Plato’s Theaetetus as compared with sophistic thought -/- Summary -/- One of the most intriguing motives in Plato’s Theaetetus is its historical-based division of philosophy, which revolves around the concepts of rest (represented by Parmenides and his disciples) and change (represented by Protagoras, Homer, Empedocles, and Epicharmus). This unique approach gives an opportunity to reconstruct the views of marginalized trend of early Greek philosophy - so called „the (...) sophistic movement”. Paradoxically, previous research shows little interest in sophistic thought as a source of the standpoint of advocates of change („the secret doctrine”). The roots of „the secret doctrine” were investigated in the works of Heraclitus, Aristippus, and Antisthenes or those related to “neoheracliteanism”. However, researchers did not make any significant attempt to confront this concept with the contemporary research on the sophistic movement. The conviction that sophistry was primarily humanistically oriented was one of the main reasons why researches were opposed to the fact that „the secret doctrine” could represent a true expression of Protagoras’ views. This is why J. Burnet and F. M. Cornford in their seminal works assumed that “the secret doctrine” should be attributed to Plato, who simply combined a series of loose statements into one single project. In this work, we argue that the thesis which questions the parallels between the sophists’ interests and the philosophers of nature requires a significant revision. There is ample evidence to suggest that the philosophy of nature was a part of sophists’ research. This is supported by two main arguments. First, the tutors of sophists were philosophers of nature. Second, there are numerous sources that explicitly show sophists’ interest in the physical issues. These sources include anecdotal evidence about the fact that sophists wrote works On nature. There is also information confirming that they deliberated on detailed physical issues. The analogies between the concepts attributed to the advocates of change and our knowledge about sophists from other sources is very wide and contains most elements, which are included in the project of “changeable reality” presented in Theaetetus. The deliberations on the mechanism of perception, which are close to those of flux theory of perception in Theaetetus, are present in the sources referring to Gorgias of Leontinoi, the famous sophist and rhetorician. Also, the second element of “the secret doctrine” that is the metaphysics of flux matches up with what we know about the sophists’ views from other sources. On this basis, one can deduce that – contrary to the tradition which marginalized the role of sophistic considerations on the issue of being and non-being – it was one of the major subjects of sophistic research. Its main point was the criticism of the Eleatic conception of a single and unchangeable being, which also plays a key role in the doctrine of flux in Theaetetus. The epistemological theses which are presented in Theaetetus are borne out in sophistic sources. They include the definition of knowledge as perception, the „Man-measure” formula and a number of principles, which result from these foundational theses. Sophists’ empirical preferences resonate with the theses of the advocates of change in Theaetetus. Special attention that is given to the issues of differences among people, and even to cognitive differences in one person depending on the changeable states to which a person is subject, goes well together with what we know about reciprocal influence between the sophistry and medicine. The consequences of the epistemological conception present in Theaetetus have their equivalents in sophists’ works and other testimonies. An example of these consequences may be the abolition of truth and falsehood or the abolition of contradiction, which finds its expression in the thesis ouk estin antilegein. The analogies also concern reflections on the language itself. The project of the “new language” uses categories, which were developed by sophists. These include the antithesis of nomos and physis. The general intentions of this project reflect Protagoras’ ideas, at least to the extent to which they are known from the sources reporting his thoughts on language. Plato’s Theaetetus can thus be considered a veritable treasury of sophistic motifs. Even though the problem remains unsolved and one is still not able to unambiguously decide about the author of “the secret doctrine”, one can come to a certain conclusion – even if Plato synthesized various doctrines, he must have relied in his project mostly on the elements that he borrowed from sophists. Moreover, the value of reconstructing the project of the advocates of change in Theaetetus does not consist of mere enumeration of sophistic motifs. The dialogue is key to understanding the sophistic movement, whose separate doctrines – for the lack of sources and as a result of centuries-old disregard – are usually treated as rhetorical formulae that are interpreted in many ways and have no philosophical foundations. If it is really the case that the theses attributed to Protagoras in Theaetetus were actually a part or a derivative of Protagoras’ thought, or – speaking more conservatively – if they constitute a synthesis of sophistic thought done by Plato, they could represent philosophical foundations for the most important sophistic theses: the “Man-measure” formula, the ouk estin antilegein principle, the concept of language as a tool, the idea of the relativity of good and the whole practical sphere of sophists’ activity. Contrary to the views of many researchers, we are certain that the representatives of the sophistic movement did not limit themselves only to the application of practical rules, which determined the extent of their educational or rhetorical-political activity. They were capable of creating – indeed, they did create comprehensive projects that embraced the whole thematic scope subject to philosophical reflection. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Gorgias presents us with a mystery and an enigma: Who was Callicles? And, what was Plato trying to accomplish in this dialogue? While searching for the identity of Callicles, we gain a better understanding of Plato's purpose for this dialogue, which is to use justice as a means for staking out the boundaries of four types of rhetoric. This article argues that Plato uses the Gorgias to reveal the deficiencies of sophistic nomos-centered rhetorics and an unjust sophistic phusis-centered (...) rhetoric, opening the door for a “true” rhetoric that he articulates in the Phaedrus and a universal justice based on virtue that he describes in the Republic. (shrink)

The occasion for this collection of four essays—by Vlastos, Ostwald, Callahan, and Solmsen—was Plato’s 2400th birthday in 1974. We note at once the book’s most disappointing and inexplicable flaw: it includes no example of North’s own fine classical scholarship and luminous understanding of the spirit of Platonic thought. Ostwald’s essay, ranging over much of the Platonic corpus, tills the well-plowed field of Plato’s contribution to the nomos-physis problem. His thesis is clear and familiar: Plato introduces new objects, eide, into nature, (...) the knowledge of which objects founds both the techne [[sic]] of the true king and justice. The science of such knowledge is the bulwark against Thrasymachus’s, Callicles', and Glaucon’s arguments concerning ‘natural law'. Ostwald seems unwilling, though, to grapple with the practical details of this techne [[sic]] in the political sphere. Rep. 546b-e and Polit. 310d ff. are programmatic, not substantive, and supply more puzzlement than answer. Callahan takes no smaller a topic than dialectic, myth, and history in Plato. His most interesting claim is that myth provides a setting for dialectic; each dialogue, he argues, is itself a myth, providing a locus wherein mythical topics, historical personages, and records of dialectical examinations can themselves be examined. Solmsen’s quite suggestive essay asks why Plato should investigate the physical world, which is intrinsically less than fully knowable, as well as being an insufficient source of guidance for man on issues of justice, moderation, and conduct. Though pointing out that physical bodies and their science must be of lesser rank than dialectic, Solmsen reminds us that not only did bodies provide a starting-point for mathematical demonstrations, and the incentive for solid geometry, but also that the planetary motions provided a taxis, an order, which was an image of an ordered cosmos, itself an image of an ordered eidetic realm. (shrink)

En palabras de la Dra. Ivana Costa, la argumentación que aquí se propone lleva a los lectores a descubrir en la teoría epicureísta de las pasiones el fundamento de la filosofía política epicúrea [...]. Pero el eje de esta teoría está, indudablemente, en la caracterización que hace Epicuro del placer; esto es, la determinación precisa de qué lugar le cabe [...] entre los bienes para la buena vida [y] qué credenciales tiene para ser considerado el bien supremo. Este fue uno (...) de los temas centrales del debate ético-político que plantearon las diferentes líneas filosóficas en Grecia entre fines del siglo V a.C. y comienzos del siglo IV a.C. [...] Epicuro intentaba demostrar [...] que la justicia, entendida como virtud individual, se identifica con el placer, a contracorriente de la communis opinio, que la concibe destinada al beneficio de los demás. Al identificar a la virtud de la justicia con la ataraxia, al concebirla como virtud que es también capaz de "tranquilizar" con eficacia a quien la posee y la practica (porque es precisamente su contrario, la injusticia, la que provoca la turbación del alma), la noción epicúrea de justicia queda unida también a su singular teoría del placer. Que no es mero disfrute personal sino actividad que extirpa las opiniones equivocadas y las sustituye por estados mentales verdaderos y adecuados. La investigación que da origen a este libro había mostrado, con sólidas herramientas de análisis de las fuentes y exhaustiva discusión de la literatura sobre el tema, que el concepto epicúreo de justicia no puede escindirse del entramado de la lógica, la física y la ética del maestro de Samos. [...] Se parte entonces de esa trama compleja y, con delicadeza y generosidad, la argumentación va deshilvanando los motivos que han llevado tradicionalmente a una interpretación convencionalista o naturalista de la filosofía epicúrea. Finalmente, señala que el profesor Navarro nos propone considerar el concepto de justicia subrayando la posición excéntrica que insinúa Epicuro respecto de la contraposición nómos-phýsis en la que se venía dirimiendo la cuestión desde finales del siglo V a.C. El análisis [...] abre a la posibilidad de una reconstrucción global de la filosofía política epicúrea [y] permite reformular, a partir del eje naturaleza-convención, tanto su teoría física, como su gnoseología [...]. En cuanto a los aspectos específicamente políticos de la filosofía de Epicuro, la argumentación va, de los comienzos de la asociación humana, al estatuto de las leyes, el progreso de la historia y el papel de la prólepsis como criterio de lo justo. (shrink)

In this original and rewarding combination of intellectual and political history, Ryan Balot offers a thorough historical and sociological interpretation of classical Athens centered on the notion of greed. Integrating ancient philosophy, poetry, and history, and drawing on modern political thought, the author demonstrates that the Athenian discourse on greed was an essential component of Greek social development and political history. Over time, the Athenians developed sophisticated psychological and political accounts of acquisitiveness and a correspondingly rich vocabulary to describe and (...) condemn it. Greed figures repeatedly as an object of criticism in authors as diverse as Solon, Thucydides, and Plato--all of whom addressed the social disruptions caused by it, as well as the inadequacy of lives focused on it. Because of its ethical significance, greed surfaced frequently in theoretical debates about democracy and oligarchy. Ultimately, critiques of greed--particularly the charge that it is unjust--were built into the robust accounts of justice formulated by many philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle. Such critiques of greed both reflected and were inextricably knitted into economic history and political events, including the coups of 411 and 404 B.C. Balot contrasts ancient Greek thought on distributive justice with later Western traditions, with implications for political and economic history well beyond the classical period. Because the belief that greed is good holds a dominant position in modern justifications of capitalism, this study provides a deep historical context within which such justifications can be reexamined and, perhaps, found wanting. (shrink)

The article attempts to think friendship in its relation to law and justice and provides some arguments for the importance of this concept in Derrida’s ethical, legal and political philosophy. It draws on early texts such as Of grammatology and reads them in conjunction with later texts such as The animal that therefore I am. The relation of friendship to law and justice is explored by means of Derrida’s notion of “degenerescence” understood as the necessity or law of indeterminateness that (...) cuts across, both limiting and de-limiting, all laws, types and generic partitions, for instance, juridical (natural and positive right), humanistic (human and animal), anthropological (sexual difference), philosophical (physis and nomos). Drawing on Derrida’s readings of “sexual difference” in Heidegger and the latter’s evocation of “the voice of the friend” in Being and time, the article addresses the theme of Geschlecht and articulates the exigency to think sexual difference beyond duality together with the exigency to rethink law and right otherwise than on the ground of nativity and “natural fact” and in terms of what Derrida calls “a friendship prior to friendships” at the origin of all law and socius. (shrink)

The physis and nomos controversy first emerged in ancient Greek thought. This article explores Castoriadis' reactivation of the issues concerned; in particular, his radicalization of Aristotle's conception of physis and nomos. It suggests that nomos appears as multifaceted in his work. However, three key variations may be identified: empirical nomos, normative nomos and generic nomos. Empirical nomos signifies the human creation of laws. It challenges the notion, long held in western philosophy, that Being = being determined. Although all laws are (...) by humans created and thus in one sense autonomous, Castoriadis further distinguishes normatively between those societies which embrace their self-creating and self-transformative capacity and those which obscure it. Normative nomos, then, refers to the autonomous or heteronomous institution of society. The third sense of nomos refers to the creation of form. In this generic sense, it is argued that the debate shifts from the human to the non-human realm; that nomos also manifests itself in the realm of physis. (shrink)

Benner, Erica. Machiavelli’s Ethics. Princeton, 2009. 527p bibl index afp; ISBN 9780691141763, $75.00; ISBN 9780691141770 pbk, $35.00.

Reviewed in CHOICE, April 2010

This major new study of Machiavelli’s moral and political philosophy by Benner (Yale) argues that most readings of Machiavelli suffer from a failure to appreciate his debt to Greek sources, particularly the Socratic tradition of moral and political philosophy. Benner argues that when read in the light of his Greek sources, Machiavelli appears as much less the immoralist or sophist (...) he often is taken for and instead as a serious moral philosopher very much concerned with the republican ideals of justice and the rule of law. The author does not ignore Machiavelli’s more infamous dicta, but argues that a careful reading shows that they are expressions of views he ultimately rejects. Particularly noteworthy here is her careful attention to Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories.
Benner’s reading of Machiavelli is far too complex and subtle for such a brief summary. Her research is meticulous and her arguments finely honed. This important contribution to both Machiavelli studies and the history of political philosophy will be indispensable for scholars.
Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and faculty/researchers. — B. T. Harding

Endorsements:

"Machiavelli's Ethics is a superb scholarly book. Erica Benner does truly impressive work in analyzing Machiavelli's views on the most fundamental ethical issues--including necessity and virtue, justice and injustice, and ends and means. She shows, with very solid evidence, that Machiavelli did in fact worry a lot about justice and that he put it at the core of his republican theory."--Maurizio Viroli, author of Niccolò's Smile: A Biography of Machiavelli

"Machiavelli's Ethics is excellent--learned, subtle, highly original, and a constant pleasure to read. And, since it is really a study of Machiavelli's thought in its entirety, it is also the first book of its kind. Its originality lies in taking seriously the claim by some sixteenth- and seventeenth-century readers--notably Bacon, Spinoza, and Alberico Gentili--that Machiavelli was essentially a moral and political philosopher. Erica Benner does a brilliant job of resurrecting this neglected Machiavelli."--Giulia Sissa, University of California, Los Angeles


About the book, from the publisher:
Machiavelli's Ethics challenges the most entrenched understandings of Machiavelli, arguing that he was a moral and political philosopher who consistently favored the rule of law over that of men, that he had a coherent theory of justice, and that he did not defend the "Machiavellian" maxim that the ends justify the means. By carefully reconstructing the principled foundations of his political theory, Erica Benner gives the most complete account yet of Machiavelli's thought. She argues that his difficult and puzzling style of writing owes far more to ancient Greek sources than is usually recognized, as does his chief aim: to teach readers not how to produce deceptive political appearances and rhetoric, but how to see through them. Drawing on a close reading of Greek authors--including Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, and Plutarch--Benner identifies a powerful and neglected key to understanding Machiavelli.

This important new interpretation is based on the most comprehensive study of Machiavelli's writings to date, including a detailed examination of all of his major works: The Prince, The Discourses, The Art of War, and Florentine Histories. It helps explain why readers such as Bacon and Rousseau could see Machiavelli as a fellow moral philosopher, and how they could view The Prince as an ethical and republican text. By identifying a rigorous structure of principles behind Machiavelli's historical examples, the book should also open up fresh debates about his relationship to later philosophers, including Rousseau, Hobbes, and Kant.
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Before going any further, something should be said about the word "natural" that appears in my title. Miller distinguishes two ways in which rights can be called natural, and holds that Aristotle recognizes natural rights in one sense but not the other. First, "natural" can be contrasted with "conventional," "legal," and "customary." This is the familiar distinction the Greeks made between physis and nomos. Aristotle makes use of the distinction when he contrasts natural and legal justice. According to Miller, Aristotle (...) has a theory of natural rights in the sense that he has a theory of natural justice that serves as the basis for his recognition of rights. It is naturally and not merely legally just that certain people be treated in certain ways; they have a valid claim, based on natural justice, to such treatment, and this claim is valid whether or not it is recognized by a legal system. On the other hand, the term "natural right" can also be used in a second way, to designate a right that is possessed in a state of nature, that is, at a time prior to the existence of political communities. Miller holds that Aristotle does not recognize natural rights of this sort, but as he points out, this would not prevent Aristotle from recognizing natural rights in the first sense. The natural rights Miller finds in Aristotle are not possessed by all people at all times; rather, his thesis is that when the polis does come into existence, Aristotelian natural justice requires that political systems be structured in ways that recognize the rights of certain human beings. More specifically, when the polis arises, certain people have a natural right to hold various political offices and to own property. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular RuleJennifer T. RobertsJosiah Ober. Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. xvi + 417 pp. Cloth, $35, £24.95.Making sound political decisions requires hard thinking. Most people do not want to think very hard, and some lack the capacity to do so. Many make decisions on the basis of narrow self-interest, and (...) most lack vision. Given that this is so, it is not surprising that Athenian democracy has come in for a good deal of criticism. What is striking about this criticism, however, is its origins in the writings of Athens' own intellectuals. In this carefully argued and beautifully written book Josiah Ober explores in depth the critiques of democracy in several texts of the fifth and fourth centuries. His theses are several and extend from the centrality of the democracy debate in Athenian intellectual life to the interactive relationship between Greek history and contemporary political writing: the obvious contrast between the bloodthirstiness of the Thirty and the restraint shown by the restored democracy, he contends, mandated that analysis of democracy and its flaws become increasingly sophisticated and in some cases downright labyrinthine. The core of the book, however, is not what Ober sees as sociological analyses of Athenian democracy--the early work of the so-called Old Oligarch and the late work of Aristotle--but rather those critiques that focused, he suggests, on the Athenians' preoccupation with words, and on their efficacy as Austinian "speech acts." It is the middle chapters, tied together by the thread of this preoccupation, that are the most ingenious.Since the logos/ergon relationship is, I would suggest, more nuanced in Thucydides' work than in that of the other authors Ober examines, I leave discussion of it for last and begin with the chapter on Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae. This chapter offers an exciting reading of the play, one in which the potentially trendy Austinian speech-act theory proves an excellent tool of analysis. Like most readers of the play, Ober sees Aristophanes raising the question whether "the attributes essential for the exercise of citizenship" were "unique to Athenian biological males" (135); what is distinctive about his approach is the emphasis on questions that the playwright raises about the relationship of speech to reality. Can words create equality? This is the question, Ober argues, to which Aristophanes is directing his democratic audience's attention. Are there limits to the sociopolitical realities that the Assembly can enact? Does saying make it so? To what extent are notions of male and female fixed by nonverbal physis, and to what degree are they social constructions made by spoken (and [End Page 479] then written) psephismata? Could a decree of the Assembly create female participatory citizens in the way it could create a state of war? (Questions, of course, do not presuppose answers, and in this respect Aristophanes remains maddening to classicists trying to reconstruct the political views of this important thinker on the Athenian scene.)Moving ahead to Plato, Ober explores the word/fact nexus in the Apology, Crito, Gorgias, and the Republic. Gorgias, of course, is the locus classicus for Plato's attack on democracy and rhetoric, which the philosopher represents as a package deal. It is there that Socrates gets Gorgias to concede that rhetoric works its magic on the ignorant more easily than on those who know, and that on the subject of medicine, for example, the most persuasive orator will be he who has studied not medicine but the art of speaking, and similarly with the other arts: there is no need to know pragmata as long as one has discovered a mechane for persuasion (i.e., appearance can substitute for reality). Socrates thus forces Gorgias into a position which we the readers recognize as untenable but poor Gorgias does not. When Socrates concludes that rhetoric must then consist of the blind leading the blind, Gorgias rejoices in the ease and efficiency of it all: how pleasant to skip all the drudgery of learning one art after another, when all one really needs to know is the art of persuasion! (459A-C, passim... (shrink)

Plato’s Protagoras is famous for Protagoras’s defense of the public practice of sophistry and his great myth, which contains his account of the origins of political life, as well as for Hippias’s rejection of the tyranny of nomos in the name of the natural kinship of the wise. What is perplexing is that Socrates makes no explicit response to these arguments. This essay argues that Socrates’s indirect response is actually contained in his otherwise unmotivated interpretation of the poem of Simonides, (...) where his description of “laconic philosophy” is in fact an indirect description of his own philosophical practice. While the sophists reject nomos without recognizing their own dependence on its stabilizing force, Socrates argues that genuine philosophers, recognizing at once the necessity as well as the defectiveness of nomos, must “unwillingly praise” convention and only present their criticisms indirectly. Socrates’s interpretation of Simonides, then, points the way to his own understanding of the tension between, but also the interdependence of, nomos and physis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life by Sylvia BerrymanElizabeth C. Shaw and Staff*BERRYMAN, Sylvia. Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. vii + 220 pp. Cloth, $70.00—Berryman’s goals in Aristotle on the Sources of the Ethical Life are threefold: to establish that Aristotle practiced what contemporary philosophers call metaethics; to refute the idea that Aristotle justified those ethics by recourse (...) to human nature, understood as an “external point” for “establishing substantial ethical truths from a value-neutral perspective”; and to demonstrate that, for Aristotle, the source and justification for ethical demands is human practical reason.Locating the source of normativity in practical reason does not mean that there are no “standards of truth other than human beings as a species.” Positioning Aristotle against both “Archimedean” naturalisms as well as relativisms and subjectivisms, Berryman sees Aristotle’s appeals to nature as delimiting “the kinds of normative positions that could guide practical reason,” and practical reason as responsive to biological constraints. Still, nature is no fulcrum. It does not mandate the contents of the life we should live. All of this together makes Berryman’s Aristotle a “constitutive constructivist,” which is to say, a nonskeptical, cognitivist nonfoundationalist.Chapter 1’s “Introduction” sets the stage for the book’s metaethical project. Chapters 2 and 3 argue against two versions of the claim that “Aristotle was not reflective on the sources and justifications for his ethical views.” Chapter 2 places “Aristotle in the Ethics Wars” of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, challenging the historicist view that “the kind of metaethical reflection about the sources of normativity” that preoccupies modern philosophy in response to “‘disenchantment’ of the modern world picture” would not have been available to Aristotle. Chapter 3, “Nature and the Sources of Normativity,” positions itself against scholars who maintain that Aristotle was complacent about the values of his own society and/or “too philosophically naïve to even reflect on the sources and justifications of ethical claims.” Inhabiting Aristotle’s social and intellectual milieu, it shows how the epistemological questions, commitments to materialist-scientific worldviews, as well as challenges to divine authority posed by fifth-century sophists, Plato, and fourth-century [End Page 381] hedonists meant that “a philosopher in Aristotle’s position could hardly avoid being reflective on questions of the status of ethics.”After establishing in chapter 3 that Aristotle could have grounded ethical claims in his natural philosophy, chapters 4 through 6 make the case that he did not. Exploring the philosophical work done by Aristotle’s appeals to nature, chapter 4, “Is Aristotle an Archimedean Naturalist?”, focuses on the apparent directionality of human development as well as references to “natural justice” and “natural virtue” in Aristotle’s ethical writings, while chapter 5, “Naturalism in Aristotle’s Politics,” scrutinizes the “naturalness of the polis” and “natural slavery” in Politics 1. Finding “only very minimal appeal to human nature” in the ethical treatises, Berryman sees Aristotle’s recourse to nature in Politics 1 as “the main anomaly” for which her refutation of Archimedean naturalism must account. Based on internal evidence in the Politics and comparison with Aristotle’s biological writings, Berryman concludes that Aristotle wrote the Politics before he “developed his more detailed biological theories.” Rather than evidence of naturalism, Aristotle’s appeals to nature in Politics 1, Berryman argues, are an early reflection of the “nomos-phusis distinction found in sophistic controversies” and a “kind of rhetorical move” based on thorough “prejudice and not reasoned inference.” Concluding “The Case Against a Naturalist Reading,” chapter 6 sets the stage for Berryman’s resourcing of Aristotle’s metaethics away from nature by exploring the inadequacies of the instrumental and theoretical rule-guiding reasoning implicit in naturalist accounts of Aristotelian practical reason.Chapters 7 and 8 offer the book’s positive account. After elaborating Aristotle’s rejection of “metaphysical abstractions” as action-guiding, chapter 7, “Aristotle’s Metaethics,” recovers from the Eudemian Ethics human agency as the source of normativity in Aristotle. Action “carries with it an implicit commitment to the norms of practical reasoning,” and “Aristotle’s insight,” Berryman writes, “is the metaethical recognition that the practical... (shrink)

While many commentators have remarked on Nietzsche’s admiration for the Greek historian Thucydides, most reduce the affinity between the two thinkers to their common commitments to “political realism” or “scientific naturalism.” At the same time, some of these same commentators have sought to minimize or dismiss Nietzsche’s enthusiasm for the Greek sophists. We do not deny the importance of realism or naturalism, but we suggest that, for Nietzsche, realism and naturalism are rooted in a rejection of moral absolutism and (...) its leading advocates, Socrates and Plato. Through careful exegesis of crucial sections from Daybreak, we show that, as early as 1880 (if not earlier), Nietzsche regarded the agonistic, anti-absolutist stance of the sophist Protagoras as an indispensable model both for Thucydides’s history and for his own philosophy. (shrink)

The challenge from the sophists with whom Plato is confronted is: Who can prove that the just man without power is happy whereas the unjust man with power is not? This challenge concerns the basic issue of politics: the relationship between justice and happiness. Will the unjust man gain the exceptional happiness of the strong by abusing his power and by injustice? The gist of Plato’s reply is to speak not of justice but of intrinsic justice, i.e., the strength (...) of virtue which, in his account, is the fundamental good of man. Nevertheless, many contend that intrinsic justice is actually injustice, for the division of power in the state is undemocratic while in the soul, the suppression of desire by the reason. Plato’s advocacy of hierarchical, elite political system has enraged democrats, while his idea of philosopher king has enraged the aristocrats as well. So, who will appreciate Plato’s effort? (shrink)

In this paper, I oppose the now-dominant view that Thrasymachus offers a definition of justice in Book I of the Republic. This way of interpretation Thrasymachus does not pay sufficient attention to the methodological assumptions he makes during his disagreement with Socrates. To better understand Socrates’ antagonist, it is crucial to remember that he was, in fact, a sophist. I argue that what the character Thrasymachus is doing in Book I is importantly akin to a certain genre of sophistic arguments (...) from the 5th century. In his discussion with Socrates, Thrasymachus attempts a genealogical unmasking of justice, which he hopes will change the action-guiding beliefs of his audience. Although my discussion is primarily about the methodology or structure of Thrasymachus’ argument, I conclude by offering a brief discussion of its substance, as well. (shrink)

The paper challenges the traditional assumption that the fragments of ‘Anonymus Iamblichi’ 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 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. (shrink)

Superficially, citizenship appears relatively simple: a legal status denoting political membership. However, critical citizenship studies scholars suggest that citizenship is first and foremost a political practice. When non-citizens, such as irregularised migrants, constitute themselves as citizens through their actions, irrespective of legal status, these practices of citizenship have transformational potential because they are extra-legal. Yet, there is an ambivalence here: rights-claiming migrants tend to frame their key demands within the terms of the law often by calling for the regularisation of (...) their status. This article addresses this ambivalence by adopting a ‘deconstructive method’ to investigate the legal dimensions of citizenship as sites of theoretical and political intervention. It is argued that practices of rights-claiming by irregularised migrants are important to grasp because they mobilise the paradoxes inherent to the fact that universal rights are enshrined in the constitutional texts of modern citizenship in order to generate new legal meanings and horizons of justice. This hypothesis is explored through a series of illustrative examples of rights-claiming taking place within and beyond the formal confines of legal orders. In so doing, the article sets out a novel conceptual framework for analysing how migrants’ claims to justice strategically negotiate citizenship in its legal form. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Band umfasst Beitrage zu einem zentralen Thema bei Platon: 'Physis' kann bei Platon im naturwissenschaftlichen Sinne als physische, biologische, materielle Natur oder im ubertragenen Sinne als eigenes Wesen, etwa hinsichtlich Seele, Kosmos oder Gottlichem, verstanden werden. So werden in diesem Band medizinische, biologische und kosmologische Ansatze ebenso wie ontologische, epistemologische und padagogische Themen zu Platons 'Physis'-Konzept fokussiert. Die zeitgenossische Nomos-Physis-Diskussion Platons mit den Sophisten sowie seine sprach- und kulturphilosophischen Uberlegungen spielen hier eine wichtige Rolle. Die anspruchsvolle literarische Gestaltung (...) der Platonischen Dialoge ist fur die genannten Fragestellungen hochst relevant, ebenso die Auseinandersetzung spaterer platonischer Philosophen mit Platons Physis-Konzept. Mit Beitragen von:Michele Abbate, Christian Brockmann, Ramon Cornavaca, Diego De Brasi, Pantelis Golitsis, Julia Knauss, Dietmar Koch, Mai Oki-Suga, Irmgard Mannlein-Robert, Oliver Primavesi, Mario Regali, Carlos Steel, Angela Ulacco. (shrink)

Thucydides and Aristophanes, austere historian and ribald comic playwright, lived in an Athens that had, since Themistocles, been moving from a regime of ancestral piety towards a secular empire. Thucydides suggests an agreement between his understanding and that of the pious Nicias — over and against this move. Aristophanes too is a vigorous proponent of peace, and the conclusions of many of his plays appear to suggest or encourage a conservative disposition towards ancestral piety or the rule of ancestral, divine (...) law.While these first impressions are not entirely misleading, a careful examination of the two thinkers’works, with attention to Nicias and the question of the gods, suggests a more complicated and revealing picture. Neither thinker is in agreement with Nicias, who proves to be representative of a fundamental human delusion. Each, however, sees that delusion as inescapable for political life, and so makes his appeal to more serious readers inconspicuously. (shrink)

Thucydides and Aristophanes, austere historian and ribald comic playwright, lived in an Athens that had, since Themistocles, been moving from a regime of ancestral piety towards a secular empire. Thucydides suggests an agreement between his understanding and that of the pious Nicias — over and against this move. Aristophanes too is a vigorous proponent of peace, and the conclusions of many of his plays appear to suggest or encourage a conservative disposition towards ancestral piety or the rule of ancestral, divine (...) law.While these first impressions are not entirely misleading, a careful examination of the two thinkers’works, with attention to Nicias and the question of the gods, suggests a more complicated and revealing picture. Neither thinker is in agreement with Nicias, who proves to be representative of a fundamental human delusion. Each, however, sees that delusion as inescapable for political life, and so makes his appeal to more serious readers inconspicuously. (shrink)

The problem of the relationship between warmaking and the health of the city constitutes an important part of the Platonic corpus. In the Platonic dialogue Alcibiades I, considered in antiquity one of Plato's most important works, Socrates leads Alcibiades to agree that there ought to be a close link between justice and decisions about war. In light of this, Alcibiades’ actual advice to the city regarding the Peace of Nicias, as portrayed by Thucydides in History of the Peloponnesian War, is (...) put in stark relief within the dialogue. Plato's dialogue about Alcibiades can thus be seen as offering an alternative and morally critical account of how Alcibiades could have used his talents and rhetorical skills in addressing the city on the issue of war. More broadly, it reminds us of the difference between true statesmanship focused on the common good, and political or military rule engaged in for personal benefit or ambition. (shrink)

Contemporary Western thinkers recognise the destructive effects of long-standing attitudes of mastery over nature and the dualistic and hierarchical thinking that informs them. Heraclitus’ metaphysical position is ideal for reframing these traditional stances for several reasons: first, Heraclitus’ concept of identity is dynamic and relies on a sophisticated understanding of opposites that recognises ambiguity; secondly, his philosophical position produces a model of truth as multiple rather than univocal; and finally, in Heraclitus’ self-making kosmos, human beings are not separate from the (...) processes of physis but inextricably entangled in them. Heraclitus’ philosophy offers relevant avenues for reimagining contemporary philosophical issues, particularly theories of identity, the multiplicity of truth, and the proper ethical human relation to nature. (shrink)

This book offers a new way of looking at the 5th century BCE Sophists, rejecting the bad reputation they have had since antiquity and presenting them as individuals rather than a "movement", each with his own speciality and personality as revealed through the scant surviving evidence. It provides an account of the Sophists of this period that explains the historical and social developments that led to their prominence and popularity, demonstrating the reasons for their importance and for their (...) seeming disappearance in the 4th century BCE. Restricted to discussion of the few Sophists for whom there are surviving quotations or other texts, The Sophists avoids generalizations often found in other books. It contains accurate translations of most of the surviving material, which forms the securest possible basis for understanding the Sophists as individuals in their various roles, not only as educators but also as ambassadors and pioneers in other fields. After a general introduction, the following chapters present each of the Sophists individually, followed by three chapters which present topics treated by more than one Sophist, such as Logos, Definition and the Nomos-Phusis contrast. The final three chapters reveal the way three important intellectuals of the fourth century (Plato, his rival Isocrates and Aristotle) dealt with the Sophists. An appendix contains several longer passages or works in their entirety in translation, allowing readers to have access to the original source materials and develop their own interpretations. This thorough treatment of the fifth-century Sophists is of interest to scholars working on the subject and on ancient Greek philosophy more broadly, while also being accessible to undergraduate students and the general public interested in the topic. (shrink)

Sophistics is the paradigm of a discourse that does things with words. It is not pure rhetoric, as Plato wants us to believe, but it provides an alternative to the philosophical mainstream. A sophistic history of philosophy questions the orthodox philosophical history of philosophy: that of ontology and truth in itself. In this book, we discover unusual Presocratics, wreaking havoc with the fetish of true and false. Their logoi perform politics and perform reality. Their sophistic practice can shed crucial light (...) on contemporary events, such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, where, to quote Desmond Tutu, "words, language, and rhetoric do things," creating things like the new "rainbow people." Transitional justice requires a consistent and sustainable relativism: not Truth, but truth for, and enough of the truth for there to be a community. Philosophy itself is about words before it is about concepts. Language manifests itself in reality only as multiplicity; different languages perform different types of worlds; and difficulties of translation are but symptoms of these differences. This desacralized untranslatability undermines and deconstructs the Heideggerian statement that there is a historical language of philosophy that is Greek by essence and today is German. Sophistical Practice constitutes a major contribution to the debate among philosophical pluralism, unitarism, and pragmatism. It will change how we discuss such words as city, truth, and politics. Philologically and philosophically rethinking the sophistical gesture, relying on performance and translation, it proposes a new paradigm for the human sciences. (shrink)