While most scholars took Cicero's Stoicism to be reflected in the content of his theories, this article tries to examine the 'how' rather than the 'what' of his statements. The article starts with the privileging of the verb in what the Stoics termed lekta, then considers how the term res publica fared in full lekta, pronounced by Cicero and his republican contemporaries (first and second sections). Then a Stoic theory of definition is analysed to elucidate an incorporeal quality of (...) the res publica and stresses the particularity of Cicero's theoretical achievement (third and fourth sections). Section V compares the uses to which the term res publica was put in the speech acts of republican and imperial days, while Section VI evaluates the implications of the findings for our contemporary theory of the state. (shrink)

Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

Françoise Dastur describes her efforts to practice history of philosophy in a non-historical fashion. She discusses her concept of the historical, and argues that the only true way to be of one's time is to be against one's time.

Based on Claudia Moatti’s Res publica. Histoire romaine de la chose publique, we strive to draw the outlines of what would be a historical science of antiquity that would isolate, in order to protect itself, the political representations that link us to Rome? The aim here is to study the political concepts used in ancient Rome by placing, at the fore, language and anthropology of the practices that we are trying to identify, in the background. This feature therefore seeks (...) to extend Claudia Moatti’s work by resuming the study of Res publica to perceive how it has been received by posterity. (shrink)

Diese Ausgabe des berühmten ciceronischen Werkes, das Dilthey eines der größten Kunstwerke in Prosa nannte, will dem Leser die Bedeutung und Selbständigkeit des Staatsdenkens Ciceros zugänglich machen. In einer Zeit, die Fragen des gesellschaftlichen Zusammenlebens ein besonderes Interesse entgegenbringt, ist es nicht unwesentlich, sich ein Denken gegenwärtig zu halten, das menschliche Existenz ganz im Gemeinwesen des Staats begründet sieht. Mit hellstem Bewusstsein hat Cicero, der selbst das höchste Amt des römischen Staatswesens bekleidet und dabei ein letztes Mal die Eintracht in (...) der Freiheit gerettet hat, Macht, Staat und Gemeinschaft erlebt. Seine Erkenntnisse hat er in seinem Werk über die res publica zu einem in sich konsequenten Gefüge von Lebensbegriffen verdichtet, die für das Leben jeder Gemeinschaft gültig sind. Unsere Ausgabe fügt die erhaltenen Stücke durch verbindenden Text aneinander, so dass ihre Lektüre das Ganze vor Augen stellt. Die Einführung gibt eine Analyse des Aufbaus. Eigennamen werden im Index alphabetisch geordnet und erklärt. (shrink)

Der Philosoph Wilhelm Dilthey nannte Ciceros "Der Staat" eines der größten Kunstwerke in Prosa. Cicero, der die höchsten Ämter im Staat innehatte und sich verzweifelt gegen den Untergang der Republik stemmte, verdichtet seine praktischen Erkenntnisse in diesem Werk zu einem Gefüge von Begriffen, das für das Leben jeder Gemeinschaft gültig ist. In Anlehnung an Platons "Politeia" legt Cicero in Form eines Dialoges die Vor- und Nachteile der unterschiedlichen Staatssysteme dar. Im Gegensatz zu Platon ist sein idealer Staat jedoch keine Fiktion, (...) sondern die römische Republik. Diese Ausgabe des berühmten ciceronischen Werkes, das Dilthey eines der größten Kunstwerke in Prosa nannte, will dem Leser die Bedeutung und Selbständigkeit des Staatsdenkens Ciceros zugänglich machen. In einer Zeit, die Fragen des gesellschaftlichen Zusammenlebens ein besonderes Interesse entgegenbringt, ist es nicht unwesentlich, sich ein Denken gegenwärtig zu halten, das menschliche Existenz ganz im Gemeinwesen des Staats begründet sieht. Mit hellstem Bewusstsein hat Cicero, der selbst das höchste Amt des römischen Staatswesens bekleidet und dabei ein letztes Mal die Eintracht in der Freiheit gerettet hat, Macht, Staat und Gemeinschaft erlebt. Seine Erkenntnisse hat er in seinem Werk über die res publica zu einem in sich konsequenten Gefüge von Lebensbegriffen verdichtet, die für das Leben jeder Gemeinschaft gültig sind. Unsere Ausgabe fügt die erhaltenen Stücke durch verbindenden Text aneinander, so dass ihre Lektüre das Ganze vor Augen stellt. Die Einführung gibt eine Analyse des Aufbaus. Eigennamen werden im Index alphabetisch geordnet und erklärt. (shrink)

To what extend can the universal be exposed to sped struggles and partial claimings ? Taking into account the fragmentation of the political fabric, without dropping the emancipation ideal, induces to begin a positive deconstruction of the universal, to make it come within the division framework, to understand it in its hegemonic singularity, within the particular that sustains it, that subverts it, but that also accepts to subvert itself in the strategy. The point is then to refuse any neutral and (...) direct understanding of the universal, and any hope of a simple, definite and dull subsumption of the particular within the universal. (shrink)

This volume presents new texts of Cicero's dialogues on political philosophy, De Re Publica and De Legibus, together with corrected versions of the editor's previously published editions of Cato Maior de Senectute and Laelius de Amicitia. The texts are based on a full reconsideration of the manuscript evidence and are presented in a clear and readable form.

Over the years of the printing of the Utopia by Thomas More, the paradigm of the bene ordinata res publica takes shape in Italian culture. It is a model both political and urbanistic, which is inspired by the neo-Platonic revival of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth century and concretized by the «new style» of Renaissance architects. The rationalization of the civitas, evident from the geometric definition of the urban plans, introduces a principle of order and measuring to which it is (...) assigned the task to re-form and harmonize the multiple instances of a real State – naturaliter unstable, corrupt, conflictual – within the form of an achievable eutopia. (shrink)

This paper argues that at Cicero, De re publica 6.17 the manuscript text unum globum should be kept instead of the conjecture summum globum. This conjecture is unanimously attributed to Fr. Boll (1910), but it was proposed already in 1790 by G. W. Maier. The use of unus in this context, in which the set of harmonic spheres of our cosmos is described, can be explained as an alternative to primus when referring to the first element of a sequence; (...) further instances in Cicero’s works support this interpretation. (shrink)

In the third book of Cicero's De re publica L. Furius Philus, one of the protagonists, is assigned the task of putting the case against justice. Among his arguments he makes the familiar claim that justice is a product of society, not of nature . If, he explains, justice and injustice were natural phenomena, they would be the same for all men, but in fact people hold very diverse views on what is just. This argument is supported by a (...) motley collection of exempla: the Egyptians worship Apis, a bull; while the Greeks and the Romans fill their temples with statues in human form, the Persians consider such practices to be sacrilege; various nations indulge in human sacrifice; the Cretans and Aetolians hold the view that brigandage is perfectly respectable; the Spartans used to claim as their own all the territory which their spears might touch; the Athenians used to take public oaths that all land which produced olives and grain belonged to them; the Gauls despised corn-growing and raided the fields of others instead. All these instances would be familiar to Cicero's audience. (shrink)

The background of the present study is Constant’s interpretation of modern freedom compared with the freedom-participation of the Ancients. In order to understand Tocqueville’s conception of political freedom one has first to explain what he meant by ‘égalité des conditions’ or ‘democracy’. What characterises the democratic era is the disappearance of distinctions of class and cast in and through a process of equalisation, which has long been at work and to which Tocqueville envisages no end. For Tocqueville, a passion for (...) equality animates modern Western societies. Hence his focus on mental mechanisms when he tries to answer the question that disturbs him: where might this passion lead us and more specifically what are the dangers to which freedom is exposed in democracy. The reason behind Tocqueville’s anxiety is his conviction that a subtle cooperation exists between individualism and administrative centralisation that leads to a new kind of despotism. This does not make him into a fatalist. He believes that it is possible to control this passion in such a manner that it becomes compatible with freedom. What we need is a resolve to safeguard freedom and a new political science that not only discovers the dangers that threaten freedom but at the same time exposes the means and remedies that democracy itself produces to control these tendencies. America is here the example.Political freedom existed there prior to the rise of equality, whereas in France freedom was first lost to absolutism, which in turn created a situation of equality that prepared the ground for despotism. Among the remedies that can safeguard freedom, the most important for Tocqueville is ‘l’esprit d’association’. In the closing part of the study, the discussion of the mediating role of this modern kind of ‘corps intermédiaires’ facilitates a comparison of Tocqueville’s conception of political freedom with that of Constant and Rousseau. (shrink)

Durante la última década del siglo XX y los primeros años del nuevo milenio, las instituciones públicas y/o de gobierno han pasado por un proceso de ajuste y cambio debido al arribo de las técnicas gerenciales provenientes del sector privado conocidas como Nueva Gestión Pública. Dichas técnicas han generado, por un lado, una modificación sustantiva en la forma de organizar, estructurar y operar los servicios públicos y, por otro, algunos cambios en la conducta de los servidores públicos pero desviándose de (...) la esencia de servicio público original. Ante este panorama, éste artículo se plantea reflexionar sobre si hay alguna alternativa a esta situación. (shrink)

Environmental ethics should be understood as a radical project that challenges the limits of contemporary ethical and political expression, a limit historically defined by the concept of the citizen. This dominant model of public being, frequently justified in terms of a formal or procedural rationally, facilitates an exclusionary ethos that fails to properly represent our concerns for the non-human world. It tends to regard emotionally mediated concerns for others as a source of irrational and subjective distortions in an otherwise rationally (...) ordered ethicopolitical community. In doing so it underestimates the important role played by 'structures of feeling', those culturally variable patterns of emotionally mediated responses, that provide the (shifting) grounds for all ethical experience, motivation, communication and interpretation. An alternative model of political expression more suitable to an environmental ethic, the denizen, is suggested. (shrink)

During the last decade of the XXth and the early years of the new millennium, public and/or governmental institutions have undergone a process of adjustment and change with the introduction of the management techniques stem from the private sector known as New Public Management. These techniques have generated, on the one hand, a substantive change in the way to organize, build and operate public services and, on the other hand, some changes in the behaviour of public servants but deviating from (...) the original essence of public service. Faced with this situation, this article seeks to consider whether there is any alternative to this situation. (shrink)

Dos son los objetivos fundamentales de estas páginas. En primer lugar, analizar la postura de Unamuno ante el avance de la democracia en la Europa de principios de siglo. Esta posición que en apariencia se muestra contradictoria, adquirirá sentido pleno al distinguir entre democracia liberal y no liberal. Y en segundo lugar, rastrear las principales aportaciones que su pensamiento político puede ofrecer hoy en día a la teoría política en general y la teoría de la democracia en particular.

el presente trabajo analiza la relación existente entre los conceptos polis y res publica. El primer concepto desarrollado por Aristóteles en sus obras Ética Nicomáquea y Política; el segundo, expuesto por Tomás de Aquino en Comentario a la Ética de Aristóteles, Comentario a la política de Aristóteles y La monarquía, al rey de Chipre. El objetivo de este artículo es responder a la pregunta ¿cuáles son las diferencias y similitudes entre el concepto de polis en Aristóteles y el de (...) res publica en Tomás de Aquino?Para dar respuesta a este planteamiento se estructuran tres acápites: inicialmente, se profundiza en el concepto de polis; luego, se ahonda en la res publica tomista y, finalmente, se presentan los puntos en común y las diferencias entre ambos términos. (shrink)

his paper offers a fresh interpretation of the role played by the Dream of Scipio in Cicero’s De re publica. It explores Cicero’s key distinction between the cosmic and the local levels of statesmanship and the problems he sees with localism, and it details fully for the first time the importance that Cicero attached to the virtue of magnitudo animi (“greatness of soul”). The paper makes the case that in De re publica Cicero promotes his own innovative cosmic (...) model of politics, in which magnitudo animi is developed through an educational process situated in the traditional Roman mos maiorum. (shrink)

How did Romans perceive the changing relationships among leaders, the people, and the public sphere as their commonwealth (res publica) fell under the control of an emperor? This paper examines Ovid’s uses of the Latin adjective publicus, ‘public, common, open’, to explore strands of implicitly ‘republican’ political thought behind his poetic corpus. Ovid first celebrates Augustus’ material benefactions as common goods for private consumption; then dramatises the tragic consequences of arbitrary domination; and finally, from exile, treats the emperor himself (...) as a public property, subject to his people’s spectatorship and sovereignty of judgment. A final section draws on Ovid’s thinking on privacy, publicity, and information access to explore themes related to America’s ‘imperial presidency’, from the Founders’ emphasis on a free press to the recent interplay of secrecy, celebrity, and ‘sunshine’ laws. (shrink)