The intellectual history of Humanity is part of a vast genealogy that stems from disputes between those advocating the excellence of ancient times and those arguing the superiority of the present. Thus, since antiquity we find the persistent recurrence of a Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, virulence that stresses the human and social experience, either praised, either rebuked in its development process. This paper discusses the process of development of the Quarrel of the Ancients (...) and the Moderns as a matrix from which it is possible to perceive, in sparse and seemingly random historical positions, a way that guide us to the path, full of crossings and intersections, of modern experience. Its aim is to define some cardinal points of the Quarrel’s own development that help us to better understand how the idea of “modernity” has evolved. (shrink)

In this editorial, we introduce the main themes discussed in this special issue and advocate for a more integrative history of knowledge across disciplinary boundaries through a reconsideration of the language of 'ancient' and 'modern'. We discuss how the essays collected in this special issue seek to go beyond the recurring metaphor of quarrel and competition between antiquity and modernity, and the related representations of key individuals and groups as ‘pioneers’ of modern approaches, in order to move towards a (...) more complex relationship of crossfertilization of 'ancient' and 'modern' knowledges. Each essay maintains that an appreciation of knowledge making as a fully embodied practice is vital for understanding the complex and sometimes contradictory role played by classical authors in the knowledge making of later periods. In different ways, all the essays demonstrate how ancient authors not only provided scholars in later ages (working in a range of disciplines) with a rich supply of evidence for their own works; more interestingly, perhaps, much of what has been viewed as innovation involved scholars drawing on ancient authors and techniques in new ways. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to show that the reopening of the “quarrel between the ancients and the moderns” proposed by Strauss is an invitation to rethink the format of social science of his time. In his interpretation, the triumph of positivism and historicism in the contemporary era directly influenced the consolidation of a kind of social science that was too technical and scientistic, far from its main object of research, the human life in society. As a (...) result, it was established a nihilistic social science, attached to methods and a theorizing vocabulary, incapable of dealing with the complexity of the human world. I intend to show, based on the criticism elaborated by Professor Strauss, which alternatives are presented to rescue social science through the revival of specific elements of classical political science. (shrink)

In this insightful and controversial book, the eminent philosopher Stanley Rosen takes a new look at the famous 'quarrel' that the moderns have with the ancients, analyzing and comparing ancient philosophers and modern Continental and analytical thinkers from Plato, Descartes, and Kant to Fichte, Nietzsche, and Rorty. He urges that we do not dismiss the classical heritage but appropriate it, for this appropriation is an indispensable step in the process of legitimizing our historical experience.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ancient and Modern HermeneuticsDavid HalliburtonAncient and Modern Hermeneutics, by Gerald L. Bruns; xii & 318 pp. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992, $37.50.Modern hermeneutics, Bruns explains, has mainly gone in two directions. One is toward the transcendental ground-swells of Husserl, who remains committed to idealities, as exemplified in geometry. The second direction, taken by Heidegger, Gadamer, and Bruns (not to mention Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, and the Pragmatists) hews (...) to the worldly rootedness of understanding; here each and all enjoy the capacity to comprehend—if not perfectly, at least perfectly well.Bruns divides his admirable opus into two large sections. Part One, on the Ancients, consists of essays on Socrates, Thucydides, the Hebrew Bible, allegory, the Jewish Midrash, and what may be broadly viewed as a correlative Islamaic text. He argues that Socrates’ ironic inclinations are not forensic ploys but manifestations of an authentic ontological disposition. (This ontological motif sounds throughout Bruns’s text.) Bruns’s Socrates has but to carry out the phusis that he himself is—in the undertow of which he cannot but be ironic even as, in being ironic, he cannot but be, like phusis, elusive and even impenetrable: “The point about Socrates is that we never know how to take him” (p. 32).Bruns handles ingeniously the problem of speeches that Thucydides “reported” but could not have heard. He argues that Thucydides provides a sort of simulacrum of the speeches. On this view, the historian does not attempt to report what the speakers actually said; instead he portrays implicitly the concrete historical situations (the modifiers are mine) in which orators orate: “the true author... would not be its original speaker nor its subsequent scribes but the situation that called for the speech to be made” (p. 58).In his challenging chapter on allegory, especially in Philo, Bruns approaches the former’s mystical commentary on the cherubim by problematizing familiar, restrictive distinctions. “In this case there can be no easy or gross distinction between the exoteric and the esoteric, the literal-minded and the wise....” To Philo “understanding is a form of recognition, of being turned toward and received into what before had been hidden or strange” (p. 102).Part Two, on the Moderns, treats of hermeneutic issues raised by Wordsworth [End Page 158] but even more paradigmatically by Luther; the tragic concept of experience; the question of tradition; radical hermeneutics; and the quarrel between philosophy and poetry. The journey ends in Bruns’s attempt to hypostatize an originary concept of freedom.To Bruns the liminal figure for modernity is Luther. It is a high hermeneutic moment that each of Luther’s students receives his own Bible with wide margins in which to copy the master’s—or conceivably his own—commentaries. Here Scripture is not merely grasped cognitively but is immediately, and, with full Deweyan and Diltheyan overtones, experienced. Luther for his part postulates that the text interprets itself. Concurring, and returning to the ontological motif noted above, Bruns proposes the one’s relation to a text “is ontological rather than simply exegetical. Luther’s distinction between law and gospel is a way of extending this ontological relation from the notion of a legal indictment to that of a spiritual one in which one’s self-understanding or self-identity is reconstituted by the text” (p. 146).Later Bruns deftly contrasts Hegel’s Umkehrung, the “movement toward enlightenment and the self-certainty of absolute consciousness” (p. 157), with Heidegger’s resolute refusal to appropriate or manipulate the world into which he, with everyone else, has been thrown. This attitude is somewhat akin to negative capability or wise passiveness—no English word or phrase gets it right—and requires a kind of letting-be, or letting-go. Bruns puts the matter about as well as one can, in short compass: “Thinking... is not reasoning or questioning but listening; its goal is not conceptual representation by Gelassenheit, or a letting go, releasement, and ‘openness to the mystery’” (p. 158).In his chapter on romantic hermeneutics, Bruns returns to Luther who, though stressing the empowerment of the individual reader, nonetheless regards the text as a vital force entering into and transforming the... (shrink)

Of Euclid’s lost manuscripts, few have elicited as much scholarly attention as the Porisms, of which a couple of brief summaries by late-Antiquity commentators are extant. Despite the lack of textual sources, attempts at restoring the content of this absent volume became numerous in early-modern Europe, following the diffusion of ancient mathematical manuscripts preserved in the Arabic world. Later, one similar attempt was that of French geometer Michel Chasles (1793–1880). This paper investigates the historiographical tenets and practices involved in Chasles’ (...) restoration of the porisms, as well as the philosophical and mathematical claims tentatively buttressed therewith. Echoes of the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, and of a long-standing debate on the authority and usefulness of the past, are shown to have decisively shaped Chasles’ enterprise—and, with it, his integration of mathematical and historical research. (shrink)

The thesis put forward by Luc Ferry in this book is the following: "If Heidegger's deconstruction of metaphysics and Strauss's critique of historicism are incontrovertible, and if, despite everything, we refuse to conclude that a 'return to the ancients' is in order... we must take up the challenge of showing how modernity may criticize itself and thus refrain from yielding to the wiles of metaphysics". It is a substantial thesis--not entirely original, but well-argued, with an interesting exegesis of Fichte's (...) theory of rights. (shrink)

Paul Oskar Kristeller famously argued that the modern ‘ system of the arts ’ did not emerge until the mid-eighteenth century, in the work of Charles Batteux. On this view, the modern conception of the fine arts had no parallel in the ancient world, the middle-ages or the modern period prior to Batteux. This paper argues that Kristeller was wrong. The ancient conception of the imitative arts completely overlaps with Batteux’s fine arts : poetry, painting, music, sculpture, and dance. Writers (...) from the sixteenth century on adopted the ancient conception of the imitative arts and anticipated the views of Batteux by 200 years. Batteux simply popularized the rubric ‘fine arts ’. (shrink)

The distinction between ancient and modern modes of historical thought is characterized by the growing complexity of the discipline of history in modernity. Consequently, the epistemological and methodological standard of ancient historiography is typically held as inferior against the modern ideal. This book serves to address this apparent deficit. Its scope is three-fold. Firstly, it aims at encountering ancient modes of historical and historiographical thought within the province of their own horizon. Secondly, this book considers the possibility of a dialogue (...) between ancient and modern philosophies of history concerning the influence of ancient historical thought on the development of modern philosophy of history and the utility of modern philosophy of history in the interpretation of ancient historiography. Thirdly, this book explores the continuities and discontinuities in historical method and thought from antiquity to modernity. Ultimately, this volume demonstrates the necessity of re-evaluating our assumptions about the relation of ancient and modern historical thought and lays the groundwork for a more fruitful dialogue in the future. (shrink)

This article revisits what has often been called the of Voltaire's historical work. It looks at the methodological and philosophical reasons for Voltaire's deliberate focus on modern history as opposed to ancient history, his refusal to in judging the past, and his extreme selectiveness in determining the relevance of past events to world history. Voltaire's historical practice is put in the context of the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns, and considered in a tradition of universal history (...) going back to Bossuet and leading up to nineteenth-century German historicism. Paradoxically, Voltaire is a major figure in the history of historiography not in spite of his presentism (as Ernst Cassirer and Peter Gay have argued), but because of it. (shrink)

Greco-Roman philosophers and historians frequently attempted to define the human being vis-á-vis other animals by isolating capacities, intellectual, physical, and emotional, judged unique to humans. The Stoic claim that only humans have a sense of shame because only humans are rational and therefore capable of emotions, which entail reasoning, was contradicted by other philosophers and naturalists who argued that some animal behaviors were analogous to behavior in humans that indicate shame. Ancient debates on both sides of the issue of animal (...) emotions are paralleled in current philosophy and cognitive ethology employing anecdotal and anthropomorphizing arguments that mirror classical examples. (shrink)

Interpreting the Enlightenment: on methods -- A map of the Enlightenment: whither France? -- The spirit of the moderns: from the new science to the Enlightenment -- Society, the subject of the modern story -- Quarrel in the Academy: the ancients strike back -- Humanism and Enlightenment: the classical style of the philosophes -- The philosophical spirit of the laws: politics and antiquity -- An ancient god: pagans and philosophers -- Post tenebras lux: Begriffsgeschichte or regime d'historicité? -- (...) Ancients and the Orient: translatio imperii -- Enlightened institutions (i): the royal academies versus the Republic of Letters -- Enlightened institutions (ii): universities, censorship, and public instruction -- Worldliness, politeness, and the importance of not being too radical -- From Enlightenment to Revolution: a shared history? -- France and the European Enlightenment -- Modern myths. (shrink)

Since at least as far back as the seventeenth century, the “Quarrel Between the Ancients and the Moderns” has figured on the philosopher’s agenda, in aesthetics and in natural philosophy as well as in ethics and in politics. In this last field, one of the most important stakes of the quarrel turns on the distinction which Benjamin Constant drew in 1819, between two different conceptions of liberty: that of the Ancients and that of the Moderns. The (...) problem of freedom lies at the very heart of all philosophical reflection: in metaphysics and in theology, as well as in ethics and in social and political philosophy. Being founded on a very strong affirmation of the preeminent value of individual freedom, liberalism has, for at least two centuries, been at the centre of the discussion both in modern political philosophy and in economics. Not only were its first rivals, namely anarchism, socialism and a reactionary mode of thought together with its nostalgia for a hierarchical society, defined against the background of liberalism; but the internal discussions within liberalism itself have not been any the less intense, as is realized when comparing its “solidarist” with its “proprietarist” or “libertarian” versions. Some liberals claim descent from Burke, others from Condorcet, some from Humboldt and others from the early Fichte. Liberalism can indeed be spelt out in different ways. One can anyway perceive in present-day objections to liberalism the reappearance of a good many classical philosophical theses. Thus the communitarian criticism of abstract universalism and of state neutrality reminds one of the Hegelian and romantic criticism of the Enlightenment; while some arguments advanced by “leftist” communitarians recall the Marxist criticisms aimed at the formal idealism inherent in the Declaration of the Rights of Man. (shrink)

This essay considers the tradition of criticism against Athenian democracy, in both ancient and modern times. Often this critical tradition has been seen to adduce greater interest than the very democratic experience from which it arose; in this it has been aided, in part, by the asserted absence of an ancient theory of democracy. Yet there are significant traces of a democratic theory in the ancient sources, which ought to serve both as a theoretical and ideological riposte to the critics. (...) Some of the modern objections to classical Athenian democracy take up the argument of the ancient critics and display an anti-democratic orientation. Others, however, are motivated by a certain sensibility, grown out of liberalism and the legal state, as well as the emancipation of women and the abolition of slavery. Nevertheless, these objections are sometimes lacking in historical perspective. If we reassess Athenian democracy, it may yet be seen to constitute a useful point of reference, at a time when the current model of democracy finds its legitimacy questioned.2. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Ancient Quarrel Revisited:Literary Theory and the Return to EthicsJoseph G. KronickThe modern quarrel between theory and practice, like the ancient one between philosophy and poetry, is at once a practical one—at its heart is the question how we should live—and a pedagogical one—who or what is the proper teacher of virtue? Today, the quarrel is between theory and literature rather than between philosophy and poetry, (...) a change that has not been beneficial. The modern complaint against the abstractions of theory reflects a diminution in the quality of the argument. For the ancient Greeks, to ask about the virtuous life was to inquire into what it is to be human, for aretê, which is typically translated as "virtue," but is understood to mean "excellence" or "goodness," meant acting in accordance with what it is to be fully human. 1 The notion that "real issues," as one prominent theorist argues, belong to the realm of action and epistemological and ontological questions to the abstract realm of theory is a simplification of the more serious question of the relation of particulars to universals. It reverses the Platonic and Aristotelian hierarchy that makes thinking the highest form of activity. But something else is going on in this call to action: in denigrating thinking as abstract, it elevates doxa, opinion, in its place. Under the regime of doxa, two things occur: philosophy and poetry are looked upon as useless because utility becomes the criteria for measuring value, and singularity is looked upon with disdain, if it is, indeed, acknowledged at all, because to the extent the world as it appears is common to us all, doxa is not distinct or individual but uniform or the same. Philosophy and poetry share not only the stigma of being deemed useless, but they are dismissed as odd, singular, not common.This essay is concerned with the status of the singular in philosophy [End Page 436] and poetry. The ancient quarrel has not been settled, which may indeed be a good thing because the quarrel keeps alive the question, who is to speak for that which cannot be spoken of, the singular? Silence may be the appropriate response, yet to preserve the experience of that which resists language is the task of philosophy and poetry, hence the quarrel. A long tradition has it that the philosopher seeks universals, while the poet offers particular images of virtue, but at the heart of this argument over ethics is the question of how to account for the singular or unique. To do so, I turn to Socrates, whose singularity remains unaccounted for to this day.Socrates may be said to embody the very problem of the relation between philosophy and literature, for he left us no writings and exists for us primarily through the writings of Plato. Yet there is widespread acceptance of Plato's portrait of him, particularly as to Socrates' method, the elenchus, and his principle of the priority of definitions. However, Socrates' insistence upon the priority of definition is not an example of the philosopher elevating theory over experience but a practical issue involving the care of the self. Furthermore, in ancient Greece, moral and philosophical questions concerning the soul were as much the provenance of poetry as they were of philosophy. The search for truth is a practical matter concerning the conduct of life, but the Platonic philosopher wishes to give a rational account, or logos, that would link conduct to knowledge, whereas the poet's examples are bound to their representations. Nevertheless, to presume that Socrates was seeking a definition of virtue on the grounds that possession of the definition would translate into a good life is an absurdity, for he could never have sought after the knowledge of virtue if his mode of life depended upon the definition rather than on his character. 2The error is to accuse Socrates of placing abstract knowledge before virtuous conduct. When Socrates asks for a definition of the beautiful, for instance, he does not reject the answer, "the beautiful is a beautiful woman," because it confuses a particular with a universal (when compared to the beauty of the gods, the woman is... (shrink)

Le chien, dit-on, est le meilleur ami de l’homme. En est-il de même de la femme? Que fait le chien dans la construction sociale du genre? Le livre d’Aaron Skabelund aborde cette question à travers une étude des rôles joués par le chien symbolique et les chiens réels dans le Japon contemporain depuis l’ère Meiji, notamment dans le contexte impérial. S’il ne traite pas de la question du genre de façon systématique, le problème de l’identité nationale, intimement lié à celui (...) de la masculinité,... (shrink)

Modernity and What Has Been Lost comes out of a conference held at the Jagiellonian University in Krakw̤, Poland, on June 4-5, 2009 that sought to identify Leo Strauss's intellectual background in re: the repudiation of a modern idea of homogenous, universal state (considered as an illegitimate synthesis of Jerusalem and Athens, i.e., the claims of Reason and Revelation). The world we live in, molded by science and historical relativism, may be described as hostile to human dignity or perfection, or (...) abhorrent to those who love the search for wisdom. Straussian teaching consisted in the steady effort to reopen "the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns," and refers to the esoteric way of writing practiced by the most profound thinkers of the past which has been apparently forgotten in the last three centuries. Strauss binds the concept of natural right with the question of maintenance of conditions for philosophizing, and it probably seems to him that such defense of philosophy is the highest task in our times. However, one must be well aware that philosophizing always means a perilous way of life. Indeed, it may be destructive of the city (polis) itself as far as the city exists due to some crucial beliefs the philosopher might put in doubt. Reflecting on those issues, Strauss engaged in several highly important debates with his contemporaries, in an open way with, e.g., Carl Schmitt, Karl Lw̲ith and Alexandre Kojv̈e, and more tacitly with Martin Heidegger"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

This debate, I shall argue, has everything to do with Aristotle. Aristotle raises the charge of epiphenomenalism himself against a theory that seems to have close affinities to his own, and he offers what has the makings of an emergentist response. This leads to controversy within his own school. We find opponents ranged on both sides, starting with his own pupils, several of whom are stout defenders of epiphenomenalism, and culminating in the developed emergentism of later commentators. Aristotle’s theory and (...) the debate that ensued are thus quite relevant to contemporary discussions. But first we need to get clear on terms. (shrink)

This paper addresses the relationship of ancients to moderns by focusing on the “quarrel” between art and philosophy that has led to two articulations of the endof art—one in antiquity, another in modernity: Plato, who expelled the poets from his city on account of art’s irrationality, and Hegel, for whom art was no more the necessary vehicle for truth. Following Giorgio Agamben’s cue in The Man Without Content, I opt for a symptomatic reading of Plato’s condemnation of art, (...) by foregrounding his ambivalence toward poetry. I conclude that, whereas Hegel found poetry wanting, Plato understood poetry’s truth to be tragically excessive. (shrink)

Western democracy is now at a critical juncture. Some worry that power has been wrested from the people and placed in the hands of a small political elite. Others argue that the democratic system gives too much power to a populace that is largely ill-informed and easily swayed by demagogues. This classic study of democratic principles is thus now more relevant than ever. A renowned historian of antiquity and political philosophy, Sir M.I. Finley offers a comparative analysis of Greek and (...) modern conceptions of democracy. As he puts the ancient Greeks in dialogue with their contemporary counterparts, Finley tackles some of the most pressing issues of our day, including public apathy, partisanship, consensus politics, distrust of professional politicians, and the limits of free speech. Including three lectures that Finley delivered at Rutgers University, plus two additional essays that further illuminate his thinking, _Democracy Ancient and Modern _explores the dramatic differences between the close-knit civil society of the ancient Greeks and our own atomized mass societies. By mapping out democracy’s past and its present manifestations, this book helps us plot a course for democracy’s future. (shrink)

If we want to be autonomous, what do we want? The author shows that contemporary value-neutral and metaphysically economical conceptions of autonomy, such as that of Harry Frankfurt, face a serious problem. Drawing on Plato, Augustine, and Kant, this book provides a sketch of how "ancient" and "modern" can be reconciled to solve it. But at what expense? It turns out that the dominant modern ideal of autonomy cannot do without a costly metaphysics if it is to be coherent.

This volume asks how and why the concept of nature has changed its meaning in modernity and whether a rearticulation of premodern ideas about nature is possible. Building on the work of Voegelin, Strauss, Lonergan, Finnis, and others, the book compares and contrasts classical, medieval, and modern conceptions of nature.

Is rationality a well-defined human universal such that ideas and behaviour can everywhere be judged by a single set of criteria? Or are the rational and the irrational simply cultural constructs? This study provides an alternative to both options. The universalist thesis underestimates the variety found in sound human reasonings exemplified across time and space and often displays a marked Eurocentric bias. The extreme relativist faces the danger of concluding that we are all locked into mutually unintelligible universes. These problems (...) are worse when certain concepts, often inherited from ancient Greek thought, especially binaries such as nature and culture, or the literal and the metaphorical, are not examined critically. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, from philosophy to cognitive science, this book explores what both ancient societies and modern ones can teach us concerning the heterogeneity of what can be called rational. (shrink)

Richard Sorabji presents a brilliant exploration of the history of our understanding of the self, which has remained elusive and mysterious throughout the spectacular development of human knowledge of the outside world. He ranges from ancient to contemporary thought, Western and Eastern, to reveal and assess the insights of a remarkable variety of thinkers. On this basis he rejects the common idea that the self is an illusion, and develops his own original conception of the self as essential to our (...) ownership of our experience and our apprehension of the world. (shrink)

Being a subject and being conscious of being one are different realities. According to Hegel, the difference is not only conceptual, but also influences people's experience of the world and of one another. This book aims to explain some basic aspects of Hegel's conception of subjectivity with particular regard to the difference he saw in ancient and modern ways of thinking about and acting as individuals, persons and moral subjects.

This article undertakes to explain the importance of discourse in the modern philosophy of law. It conceptualises discourse as a step to the comprehensive truth of a phenomenon, which does not exist in most forms of modern methods. Therefore, modern philosophy of law must be sought through a vigorous application of the method of discourse in deducing the diversity of truth-seeking in modern legal doctrine and the application of law in contemporary society. In this article, the author endeavours to systemise (...) that discourse is capable of comprehending a single absolute fact in legal doctrine and law, which is necessary to produce the exact procedures in society. Thus, discourse unfolds the relationship between the known and the unknown into a philosophical principle. It is then conceivable that discourse by its deduction creates societal forms and substances for the investigator to understand the true form and nature of law in society. Keywords: discourse, philosophy of law, law, ethics, and integrity. (shrink)

Modern thought is sometimes presented as introducing a “turn to the subject” absent from ancient and medieval thought, although the schools of thought associated with Bernard Lonergan, Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, and the new natural law theory often find subjectivity already operative in the older forms. In this volume, sixteen leading scholars examine the turn to the subject in modern philosophy and consider its historical antecedents in ancient and medieval thought.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate into the ethical significance of friendship, beginning with its origins in ancient Greek philosophy. The first part is dedicated to an interpretation of Plato’s understanding of friendship as a way towards the good. The second part focuses on how Aristotle takes up the thread after Plato and elaborates on the potential of friendship to enhance the good between virtuous people. In the final parts, the paper uncovers Friedrich Nietzsche’s posthumous thoughts on “an (...) ethics of friendship”, which he traces back to ancient Greek philosophy, and it offers a concluding critical commentary on three modern thinkers, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, who reflect, each in their own way, on the human good in an on-going dialogue with the ancient Greek philosophy of friendship. (shrink)

Comparatively under-valued in the past, cats today enjoy privileged status as domestic pets, following a long process of reassessment that started in the eighteenth century. This article shows how the first book in French devoted to the species, Les Chats (1727) by François-Auguste de Paradis de Moncrif, contributed to this change. Previously, the cat was seen as a feminine and frivolous creature, but the “historiogriffe”, (historian of claws as Voltaire called him), took it as a historical subject, combining two models (...) of masculinity, the erudite and the courtly, which had been kept apart in the Quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns. His erudition allowed him to criticize cat-phobia by referring to Oriental custom, but also to quote many admirers of cats of both sexes in high French society. Moncrif thus succeeded in bringing together a learned emotional community of cat-lovers, male and female, to show that it was perfectly justified and reasonable to be fond of a cat. (shrink)

Though the notion of the free, or self-governed community, originated in ancient Greece, the Greek polis seems to pose a problem for the modern post-Hobbesian concept of sovereignty. For the latter presupposes that of the State, that is an agency which monopolizes the use of violence, as an instrument by which sovereignty is constituted. Yet, the polis was not a State but rather what the anthropologists call a stateless community. The latter is characterized by the absence of ‘government’, that is (...) of an agency which has separated itself from the rest of social life and which monopolizes the use of violence. In stateless societies the ability to use force is more or less evenly distributed among armed or potentially armed members of the community. Being stateless, then, in what sense can we say that the polis was sovereign? On the practical level the Greek polis had a very limited ability to control and direct legislation. The decentralised nature of Greek society and the absence of coercive apparatuses meant that the laws had to be identical with the customs of the community or else that decisions had to be shared by a wide consensus, which imposed a severe limitation on the ability of the poleis to change their laws or initiate changes in the community. On the theoretical level, the absence of a State was complementary to the absence of the notion of sovereign, whether it is a person or an institution or a body which was above the law and a source of the law. Thus Greek ‘republicanism’ was different from the modern one in as much as it did not have the notion of ‘the people’ as a constituting element and Greek ‘rule of law’ lacked the modern notion of a positive open legislation. (shrink)

The sixteenth-century reckoning with extra-European peoples and cultures occurred at precisely the same moment that humanists were increasingly preoccupied with the daily life, material culture, and lived religion of classical antiquity. Leading figures in sixteenth-century antiquarianism took an abiding interest in ethnographic accounts of contemporary peoples and even produced such accounts. This article examines how sixteenth-century readers and scholars placed bodies of literature on ancient and modern customs in dialogue with one another. While scholars have long appreciated that ethnographic and (...) travel writing were deeply mediated by the study of antiquity, that mediation cut both ways. This article addresses the question of how ethnographic descriptions of modern peoples shaped sixteenth-century understandings of the customs and lived religion of antiquity. The writings of merchants and humanists testify to the ways in which the practices of ethnographic writing helped to shape travellers’ and readers’ appreciation of the cultural alterity of classical antiquity. (shrink)

I argue that comparisons of Stoic virtue to stochastic skills — now standard in the secondary literature on Stoicism — are based on a misreading of the sources and distort the Stoic position in two respects. In paradigmatic stochastic skills such as archery, medicine, or navigation the value of the skill’s external end justifies the existence and practice of the skill and constitutes an appropriate focus of rational motivation. Neither claim applies to virtue as the Stoics understand it. The stochastic (...) model of virtue almost certainly originated with Carneades and should be distinguished clearly from the Stoic account. Doing so clarifies the Stoic position and shows that it anticipates what Thomas Hurka calls a modern view of value. (shrink)

Anne Conway was an extraordinary figure in a remarkable age. Her mastery of the intricate doctrines of the Lurianic Kabbalah, her authorship of a treatise criticising the philosophy of Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza, and her scandalous conversion to the despised sect of Quakers indicate a strength of character and independence of mind wholly unexpected (and unwanted) in a woman at the time. Translated for the first time into modern English, her Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy is the (...) most interesting and original philosophical work written by a woman in the seventeenth century. Her radical and unorthodox ideas are important not only because they anticipated the more tolerant, ecumenical, and optimistic philosophy of the Enlightenment, but also because of their influence on Leibniz. This fully annotated edition includes an introduction which places Conway in her historical and philosophical contexts, together with a chronology of her life and a bibliography. (shrink)