In the Cypriot trilogy Isocrates does not intend to carry out only an oratorical exercise on his conception of the monarchic regime. These are speeches whose primary meaning was to carry out a diplomatic action whose intention was for Cyprus to support the Athenian hegemonic cause. They were written at the precise moment when Timotheus travelled through the Aegean Sea and the north of Greece in order to consolidate Athenian expansionism. In this way, he made a sequence of political speeches (...) in which he used his own philosophical notions adapting them, on the one hand, to the Cypriot political situation characterized by confrontations between the pro-Hellenic and pro-Persian factions and, on the other hand, to the strategic needs of Athens. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Eidos/idea in IsocratesRobert G. SullivanFor modern readers, the career and literary output of the Attic rhetorician Isocrates is uncomfortably situated at the boundary between what we conceive as technical rhetoric and professional philosophy. Much of this confusion may be due to Isocrates' famous description of his program as being a philosophia (Panegyricus 10, 47; Evagoras 8, 81; Panathenaicus 9; Against the Sophists 1, 11-18, 21; Antidosis 30, 42-50, 162, (...) 176, 181-92).1 Over the years, the issue has exercised a large number of scholars who have tried to specify what Isocrates meant by the term and what matters he considered to be within his purview.2 Recently, the idea has been advanced that Isocrates and Plato consciously struggled over the use of the term (Nehamas 1990, 4; Timmerman 1998, 145). In Nehamas's very useful formulation, Isocrates thought philosophy to be "the ability to speak well, which in turn reflects and is the product of thinking well and shrewdly about practical affairs" (1990, 4). Timmerman's review of the relevant literature shows how Isocrates' conflation of philosophia and hê tôn logôn paideia has hurt his reputation among modern disciplinary philosophers: "This confusion and resultant devaluation of Isocrates' philosophy is predicated on a platonically colored view of what constitutes philosophy" (1998, 147). More recently, others have made efforts to recover Isocrates for philosophy by concentrating on those parts of his program that are of interest to philosophers of our era.3As a result, there has been a long-standing critical misapprehension regarding how best to interpret his works. Simply put, a question arises as to whether we should interpret them as bei. (shrink)

The relation of Isocrates and Aristotle has mostly been defined by scholars as a competition or rivalry between them in a debate over the ends of rhetorical education. This essay investigates Isocrates-quotations in the Rhetoric of Aristotle and calls for a re-evaluation of the relation of Aristotle to Isocrates and to Demosthenes. Aristotle studied thoroughly the Isocratic speeches (especially Helena, Evagoras, Panegyricus, De pace, Antidosis, Philippus) and Isocrates is the only of the canon of ten Attic orators, who is quoted (...) regularly in the Rhetoric. For textual criticism the quotations of Aristotle should be used with caution, as Aristotle often quoted from memory, but his readings must not be excluded a priori. Aristotle recognizes the leading role of Isocrates as a master of literary prose in the development of rhetoric, particularly the epideictic speech. In Aristotle and the earlier Peripatetics Isocrates, who exerts influence on the ethos of the reader, has a prominent position, unlike Demosthenes, who is characterized by his ability to arouse emotions. In this judgement political reasons (promacedonian - antimacedonian) are also visible. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Art of Biography in Antiquity by Tomas HäggDan CurleyTomas Hägg. The Art of Biography in Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. xv + 496 pp. Cloth, $110.We know less about the genre of ancient biography than handbooks and brief surveys would have us believe. Genres by their nature invite definition, and historiographical perspectives on this genre in particular promote tidy classifications and clear lines of influence. Tomas (...) Hägg’s Art of Biography in Antiquity, which undertakes close readings of some eight-hundred years’ worth of biographical authors and texts, not only recognizes but also embraces ancient life-writing as a vast, polymorphous, versatile, and lacunary enterprise. For those of us who, like this reviewer, prefer to read the works of ancient biographers in literary terms, this is the book we have been wanting.Hägg’s “Prolegomena” are brief but cover the critical issues surrounding ancient biography (and, by way of comparison or contrast, modern biography). Chief among these are the question of the biographical genre itself, which Hägg acknowledges “is more subject matter than form” (3), and the welcome recuperation of biography as the product of “creative imagination” from its traditional status as a “sub-branch of historiography” (3). Hägg distinguishes historiography from historicity—namely, the biographer’s evaluation of, and approaches to, his sources—and he enumerates what might be considered biographical biases, from [End Page 713] the emphasis on public rather than private life, to transference between author and subject, to the inventive bridging of gaps, to the tension between cradle-to-grave chronology and characterization in the moment. Brevity courts controversy, and Hägg cautions that “no systematic treatment of biographic theory and practice is intended” (1). Yet his prolegomena lay out clear guideposts for the case studies of later chapters, which make a more or less chronological exploration of the genre.Chapter 1, even as it postulates Xenophon as the most important (or, at least, the most prolific) proto-biographer, discusses a range of fifth-and fourth-century b.c.e. texts and the ways in which they are—and, just as often, are not— biographies: Ion of Chios, Epidemiai; Plato, Apology and Phaedo; Xenophon, Memorabilia; Isocrates, Evagoras; Xenophon, again, Agesilaus and Cyropaedia. It is no small task to trace the development of a genre given a vexed chronology, the differing purposes of these texts, and uncertainty as to how much influence their authors exerted upon one another. The Epidemiai offers a sympotic anecdote about Sophocles (preserved in Ath. 13.603e–4d) that illuminates the tragedian’s character. The Apology and the Phaedo together display and interpret the life of Socrates as “an ethical unity” (19), the former a retrospective defense of the philosopher’s career, the latter ending with a scenic description of his death. The Memorabilia, in turn, paints a “consistent, pregnant picture” (27) of Socrates’ persona with its serial anecdotes. The Evagoras confirms its own status as written encomium (graphein) and introduces what would become standard topoi, such as its subject’s genealogy, childhood, and methods of ruling. Likewise, the Agesilaus, which emphasizes writing to an even greater degree and dichotomizes the Spartan king’s deeds and their underlying virtues. The Cyropaedia, therefore, is a pinnacle of proto-biography, extending from Cyrus’ childhood to his fictional, idealized death. Although Hägg reads each work on its own terms, and avoids an overly simplistic taxonomy, his emphasis on the unbiographical qualities of his case studies is at times counterproductive. Furthermore, he tends to conclude his discussions with considerations of “the biographical,” as if the preceding analyses—frequently engaged with the aforementioned topoi—have had little bearing. This said, chapter 1 describes a genre developing along lines that later biographers, and their readers, would have recognized.Chapter 2, a survey of Hellenistic biographers, is on firmer (albeit more fragmentary) ground, perhaps because the texts of this era regularly have bios in their titles and therefore help to establish “an unmistakably biographical form” (67). Hägg considers examples from the three traditional sub-categories of Hellenistic “professional biography” (97), namely, the philosophic, the literary, and the political: Aristoxenus’ Pythagoras and Socrates; Satyrus’ Life of Euripides... (shrink)

Les contributions réunies dans le présent recueil ont, pour la plupart, fait l’objet de communications à l’occasion de deux Journées d’étude organisées l’une à l’Université de Rouen Haute-Normandie par l’ « Équipe de recherche sur les aires culturelles » (ERIAC), l’autre à l’Université de Rennes I par « Philosophie des normes », respectivement les 23 et 25 janvier 2008. Leur ensemble ne donne pas une cartographie complète, même dans les grandes lignes, de la conception aristotélicienne de la rationalité sous ses (...) divers visages : la pratique scientifique d’Aristote et sa conception de la physique, par exemple, ne sont pas considérées ici, pas plus que la contribution décisive du Stagirite à l’histoire de la philosophie première, ontologie ou théologie. La forme achevée du recueil reflète l’esprit dans lequel ont été envisagées les deux Journées dans le prolongement desquelles il s’inscrit et lors desquelles ont été privilégiés les aspects publics et éthiques de la rationalité telle qu’a pu la concevoir celui qui, comme auteur dudit Organon et héritier de la dialectique socratique et platonicienne, est tout d’abord le fondateur de ce que nous appelons « logique », dont il envisage aussi, dans les Seconds analytiques, les prolongements scientifiques (didactiques et démonstratifs). L’ouvrage, qui traite à plusieurs reprises de l’influence d’Aristote, comporte ainsi trois sections : « De la dialectique à la science », « Art oratoire et poésie », « La rationalité éthique ». Ont été réunies, dans la première section, des contributions de Jean-Baptiste Gourinat (« Dialogue et dialectique : la place de la dialectique dans l’organon d’Aristote »), Pierre Joray (« Principe de contradiction et ecthèse dans la syllogistique d’Aristote »), Franck Varenne (« Le rapport entre science et logique chez Aristote vu à travers la critique de Dewey ») ; d’Annie Hourcade (« Le conseil dans la Rhétorique d’Aristote »), Jean-Pierre Cléro (« La Rhétorique d’Aristote et les penseurs des passions du xviiie siècle »), Michele Corradi (« Aristote et la réflexion de Protagoras sur les noms »), Maddalena Vallozza (« Entre poésie et histoire. Aristote, Poétique 1451 a 36-b 11, et l’Évagoras d’Isocrate ») dans la seconde ; dans la troisième, de David Lefebvre (« Avoir un èthos et être philotoioutos. Sur le sens de la notion d’èthos dans les Éthiques d’Aristote »), Michel Narcy (« La phronèsis entre Platon et Aristote »), René Lefebvre (« Syllogisme de l’action et délibération : deux formes de l’alternative pratique chez Aristote ») Marco Zingano (« Décisions morales et interdictions absolues chez Aristote »). (shrink)