This book, first published in 2000, is a general and comprehensive treatment of the political thought of ancient Greece and Rome. It begins with Homer and ends in late antiquity with Christian and pagan reflections on divine and human order. In between come studies of Plato, Aristotle and a host of other major and minor thinkers - poets, historians, philosophers - whose individuality is brought out by extensive quotation. The international team of distinguished scholars assembled by the editors includes historians of law, politics, culture and religion, and also philosophers. Some chapters focus mostly on the ancient context of the ideas they are examining, while others explore these ideas as systems of thought which resonate with modern or perennial concerns. This clearly written volume will long remain an accessible and authoritative guide to Greek and Roman thinking about government and community.

The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought

L'A. defend la these selon laquelle Socrate admet l'existence de desirs non rationnels qui obligent l'agent moral a faire preuve de moderation ou de maitrise de soi dans ses choix. Loin de ne reconnaitre que le bien comme objet du desir, l'ethique socratique developpe une conception de la vertu plus proche de celle de Kant que de celle d'Aristote et Platon

Socrates' Kantian Conception of Virtue

Introduction Acknowledgements 1. Apology of Socratic studies 2. Motivational intellectualism 3. The 'prudential paradox' 4. Wrongdoing and damage to the soul 5. Educating the appetites and passions 6. Virtue intellectualism 7. Socrates and his intellectual heirs: Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics Appendix. Is Plato's Gorgias consistent with the other early or Socratic dialogues? Bibliography of works cited Index of passages General index.

Socratic Moral Psychology

Terminology Much of our political terminology is Greek in etymology: aristocracy, democracy, monarchy, oligarchy, plutocracy, tyranny, to take just the most obvious examples, besides politics itself and its derivatives. Most of the remainder – citizen, constitution, dictatorship, people, republic and state – have an alternative ancient derivation, from the Latin. It is the ancient Greeks, though, who more typically function as ‘our’ ancestors in the political sphere, ideologically, mythologically and symbolically. It is they, above all, who are soberly credited with having ‘discovered’ or ‘invented’ not only city-republican forms but also politics in the strong sense: that is, communal decision-making effected in public after substantive discussion by or before voters deemed relevantly equal, and on issues of principle as well as purely technical, operational matters. Yet whether it was in fact the Greeks – rather than the Phoenicians, say, or Etruscans – who first discovered or invented politics in this sense, it is unarguable that their politics and ours differ sharply from each other, both theoretically and practically. This is partly, but not only nor primarily, because they mainly operated within the framework of the polis, with a radically different conception of the nature of the citizen, and on a very much smaller and more intimately personal scale (the average polis of the Classical period is thought to have numbered no more than 500 to 2,000 adult male citizens; fifth-century Athens’ figure of 40,000 or more was hugely exceptional). The chief source of difference, however, is that for both practical and theoretical reasons they enriched or supplemented politics with practical ethics (as we might put it).

Greek political thought: the historical context

L'A. defend la these selon laquelle le passage du «Pratagoras» de Platon ou Socrate affirme la solidite de la connaissance (351b-357e) doit etre compris non pas dans le sens d'un corollaire direct entre le rejet de l'akrasia synchronique et la doctrine de l'erreur involontaire (G. Vlastos), mais dans le sens d'une theorie de la stabilite de la connaissance fondee sur une conception diachronique de l'akrasia de la croyance

Socrates on the Strength of Knowledge: Protagoras 351B-357E

Desire and Power in Socrates: The Argument of Gorgias 466A-468E that Orators and Tyrants Have No Power in the City

Rejetant l'objection aristotelicienne concernant la stabilite de la connaissance et de la croyance vraie, l'A. souligne la validite de la psychologie socratique de l'action, fondee sur la possibilite d'une akrasia de la croyance diachronique et sur l'impossibilite d'une akrasia de la connaissance diachronique

Terry Penner

Papers

Desire and Power in Socrates: The Argument of Gorgias 466A-468E that Orators and Tyrants Have No Power in the City

Knowledge vs true belief in the socratic psychology of action