This chapter surveys the origins and development in Greek philosophy of the thought that living well requires living as a citizen of the world.

Analyzing ancient cosmopolitanism we can identify the various groups of interests behind contemporary globalization models. There are three directions in contemporary cosmopolitanism: egalitarian, libertarian, and mondialistic. Each of them is associated with a certain ancient school – the Cynics, Cyrenaics, Stoics. Each of these three lines has a definite social basis both in Antiquity and in the Age of Globalization. Cosmopolitanism is considered as a universal in time and space philosophical doctrine and ideological principia. Looking at (...) class='Hi'>cosmopolitanism through global-historical perspective, we can see its unchanged, permanent essence, which does not depend on concrete conditions. This article looks at ancient cosmopolitanism as a folded programme of globalization. Using the global-historical approach and the method of historical analogues the author reveals social and philosophical roots of contemporary cosmopolitanism in Antiquity. Some parallels between Hellenistic ethics and Confucian cosmopolitanism are drawn. The directions of ancient cosmopolitanism are compared to those of present. (shrink)

This essay considers how ancient Stoic cosmopolitanism – roughly, the claim all human beings are members of the same “cosmopolis”, or universal city, and so are entitled to moral concern in virtue of possessing reason – informs Stoic thinking about how we ought to treat non-human entities in the environment. First, I will present the Stoic justification for the thesis that there are only rational members of the cosmopolis – and so that moral concern does not extend to any (...) non-human part of the natural world – and explore the foundations of these views in Stoic physics. Next, I will show that, like other anthropocentric theories, Stoic cosmopolitanism allows for environmental preservation and protection of non-human entities, so long as these activities ultimately benefit human beings. However, because the Stoics include the appreciation of natural beauty as a component of the happy life, this justification is not as feeble as it might seem. Humans are naturally set up to contemplate the order and complexity of the universe, and so environmental degradation and species loss, in marring this harmonious system, frustrates the achievement of the human goal. After exploring these facets of Stoic philosophy, and assessing to what extent they might justify environmental conservation, I close with a critical appraisal of Stoic theory – specifically, of the claims that (i) only humans possess reason and (ii) only rational creatures are deserving of moral concern. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Interstate Arbitration in the Greek World, 337–90 B.C.Everett L. WheelerSheila L. Ager. Interstate Arbitration in the Greek World, 337–90 B.C.Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1996. xvii + 579 pp. Cloth, $70, £55 (foreign). (Hellenistic Culture and Society, 18)Sheila L. Ager's massive—and impressive—volume on Hellenistic interstate arbitration rides the new wave of scholarly interest in the politically fragmented but cosmopolitan Hellenistic period. (...) Cosmopolitanism in many periods (including the present post–Cold War era) has fostered political internationalism—schemes of world government, federal unions, and mechanisms for peaceful resolution of interstate conflicts. Although the Hellenistic age enjoyed little respite from war, some scholars have hailed Greek arbitration as a model for modern imitation.A brief survey of previous scholarship on arbitration will place Ager's work in perspective. Concepts of law and internationalism dominated earlier work. Some believed that arbitration as judicial practice could be studied without distinguishing public from private or internal from interstate cases: e.g., E. Sonne, De arbitris externis, quos Graeci adhibuerunt ad lites et intestinas et [End Page 642] peregrinas componendas, quaestiones epigraphicae (1888); E. de Ruggiero, L'arbitrato pubblico in relazione col privato presso i Romani (1893); A. Steinwenter, Die Streitbeendigung durch Urteil, Schiedsspruch und Vergleich nach griechischem Recht (1925). For internationalists establishment of a permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in 1899 elicited a flood of scholarly interest: Greek arbitration now had contemporary relevance: e.g., W.Westermann, CJ 2 (1906–7) 197–211; L. Matthaei, CQ 2 (1908) 241–64; A. Raeder, L'arbitraire internationale chez les Hellenes (1912), published by the Nobel Institute; M. Tod, International Arbitration amongst the Greeks (1913); cf. his Sidelights on Greek History (1932) 39–68. Victor Bérard (always "Berard" in Ager) remained a voice of cynicism crying in the wilderness (De Arbitro inter Liberas Graecorum Civitates, 1894): Greeks resorted to arbitration after exhaustion in war or accepted a settlement only until a later opportunity for reopening the case arose. Study of interstate arbitration, dormant after Tod, revived with Luigi Piccirilli's corpus of Greek cases ca. 740–338 B.C.: Gli arbitrati interstatali greci (Pisa [not Florence, as Ager 578], 1973). Seven years later, A. J. Marshall reassessed Roman arbitrations in the East and accommodation of Greek practice (ANRW II.13 [1980] 626–61), on which E. S. Gruen expanded: The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome (1984) 96–131.Certainly more cases of arbitration/mediation are now known. Ager's study includes 171 instances for 337–90 B.C., with an appendix of 40 cases from texts too fragmentary to judge their contents accurately or instances failing to meet her criteria for inclusion as arbitration/mediation. In comparison, Ruggiero assembled a Roman corpus of 65 cases (both public and private, 191 B.C.– A.D. 282/4); Raeder, 81 Greek cases (ca. 740–ca. 100 B.C.; Tod, 82 Greek cases (ca. 740–early first cent. B.C.); and Piccirilli, 61 Greek cases (ca. 740–338 B.C.), besides 19 cases from mythological sources. But numbers easily deceive (cf. Ager 19–20): new epigraphical discoveries alone would assure greater numbers. Moreover, whereas Ruggiero, Raeder, and Tod confined their catalogues to epigraphical texts, Piccirilli and Ager include literary testimonia and a broader definition of "arbitration":, a formal judicial procedure involving selection of third–party judges to evaluate publicly presented oral and written testimony; mediation (σύλλυσις), a third party's reconciliation of disputants; and, for Ager (xiv), even "voluntary compromise."Ager's volume, a revised dissertation (University of British Columbia), continues Piccirilli's corpus: thus its initial terminus is 337 B.C.; the concluding terminus, 90 B.C., is conceded to be arbitrary. The texts follow chronological order (as opposed to Tod's regional arrangement). Only interstate cases involving Greeks as either disputant or arbiter are included, and inconsistency for inclusion is confessed: not all cases are in her view historical (i.e., no. 93, Heraclea's attempted mediation between Rome and Antiochus III), and her generous definition of "arbitration" can involve subjectivity (e.g., no. 23 [Delphi]: dikastai in a very fragmentary text qualifies it as an arbitration document; cf... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Deep TherapyDiskin ClayThe Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, by Martha Nussbaum; xiv & 558 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994; $29.95For three decades now interest in Hellenistic philosophy has been gaining among philosophers both in England—and its philosophical colony the United States—and in Europe. The principal documents of the Hellenistic schools have now been made available in both scrupulously edited Greek and (...) Latin texts and fine English translations by A. A. Long and David Sedley in their The Hellenistic Philosophers (1987). Conditions are right for the latest assimilation of this philosophical culture, whose conventional dates are those of the Hellenistic age—from the death of Alexander of Macedon in 323 B.C. to the suicide of the last of his successors, Cleopatra VII of Egypt in 31 B.C., but which in fact extends through the second century A.D. In the fracturing of the autonomous Greek city state and the new empires and cosmopolitanism that grew up in its place, in the turning inward of ethical thought and the simultaneous turning outward of science, the Hellenistic age holds up a mirror to our own. Especially congenial to philosophers in this country and in England is the radical skepticism that reaches from Socrates in the fifth century to Sextus Empiricus in the second century A.D.Martha Nussbaum’s The Therapy of Desire is very much a book for this age. Her topic is the “compassionate medical philosophy” of three of [End Page 501] the Hellenistic schools, the Epicurean, the Skeptic, and the Stoic. In focusing sharply on therapy, she leaves to the side—and on the outside—the connections that made Epicurean and Stoic philosophy systematic. But her awareness of the psychiatric possibilities of modern philosophy and what Michel Foucault called a technique de soi provide the contemporary context for the project of this book, at a stage when Freudian psychology is preparing to make its exit at the end of its century. Medicine is the only science that enters this book’s field of vision. Its thirteen studies (some already familiar) concentrate on the practical and therapeutic aims of Hellenistic philosophy and what the author terms the therapy of the passions, particularly the passions of erotic love, anger, and aggression, and fear of the gods. In The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (1986), Nussbaum took the side of Aristotle against Plato. Here she takes the part of the Epicurean, Skeptic, and Stoic against the ethical theory of Aristotle, who is impressed to illustrate the practical turn in ethics which Nussbaum explores in Therapy. Plato is glimpsed on the horizon of this book “standing on the rim of the heavens” (p. 23). What links the intellectual program of both Fragility and Therapy is Nussbaum’s keen and sympathetic attention to poetry as a vehicle for philosophy or as a provocation to philosophical engagement. Four of the chapters of this study are devoted to poetry: three to Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura; one to Seneca’s Medea.The ethical project illustrated throughout these studies is formulated by Democritus, who first enunciated the claim: “medicine heals the sickness of bodies; but wisdom rids the soul of its sufferings” (DK 68B31). Each of the Hellenistic schools Nussbaum studies repeated this claim. Unexplored is the medical end of the analogy and the degree to which this much invoked analogy (whose terms are fused in our word psychiatry) conforms to actual medical practice, with its pathology, consultation, diagnosis, and treatment (therapeia). Nor is not clear from the Greek record that desires as opposed to the individual who harbors these desires are regarded as the object of therapy. The Hellenistic philosophers were clearly concerned with “extirpating” desires and disruptive passions, but the object of therapy was usually not desire but the individual who is disturbed by desire (as Philodemus, On Plain Speaking 84.11 Olivieri makes plain). But occasionally by extension the passions are described as the objects of therapy (as they are in Diogenes of Oenoanda, fr. 4.II.3 Smith).No one who has read Fragility will be taken aback by Nussbaum’s [End Page 502] invention of a... (shrink)

The theory of reflexive modernization plausibly advocates postnational cosmopolitanism. As the nation state is eroding today, we are becoming citizens of a ‘global risk society’ whose unity and cohesion is generated by the risk that is threatening us world-wide. By the same token, this world risk society is no longer unified in any political sense. There is no world state; its very idea is even rejected. In this sense, the cosmopolitanism argued for in the theory of reflexive modernization (...) proves predominantly to be an extrapolation of civil society on a global scale, while, strictly speaking, having no cosmo‘political’ counterpart. Building on Marcel Gauchet’s political philosophy, the article questions the cosmopolitanism-beyond-the-political position of the theory of reflexive modernization. To do so, it goes substantially into Gauchet’s view of the representational role of the political as an essential dimension in society formation. (shrink)

The Cambridge Histories of philosophy, extending from Thales to the seventeenth century, are not a formal series. Nevertheless, they have a distinctive character: authoritative accounts that combine general coverage of a period with the individual contributions of their authors and indicate scholarly controversies. This volume is a worthy continuation of the tradition.

Katherine Clarke explores three authors who wrote about the rise of the Roman Empire - Polybius, Posidonius, and Strabo. She examines the overlap between geography and history in their work, and considers how pre-existing traditions were used but transformed in order to describe the new world of Rome.

The philosophers and scholars of the Hellenistic world laid the foundations upon which the Western tradition based analytical grammar, linguistics, philosophy of language, and other disciplines probing the nature and origin of human communication. Building on the pioneering work of Plato and Aristotle, these thinkers developed a wide range of theories about the nature and origin of language which reflected broader philosophical commitments. In this collection of nine essays, a team of distinguished scholars examines the philosophies of language developed (...) by, among others, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, the Stoics, and Lucretius. They probe the early thinkers' philosophical adequacy and their impact on later theorists. With discussions ranging from the Stoics on the origin of language to the theories of language in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the collection will be of interest to students of philosophy and of language in the classical period and beyond. (shrink)

More than a century after the first appearance of Norden’s classic commentary on Aeneid VI in 1903 the time has come to see to what extent the new discoveries of Orphic materials and new insights in the ways Virgil worked enrich and/or correct our understanding of that text. We will therefore take a fresh look at Virgil’s underworld, but limit our comments to those passages where perhaps something new can be contributed. This means that we will especially concentrate on the (...) Orphic, the Eleusinian, and the, if usually neglected, Hellenistic-Jewish backgrounds of Aeneas’s descent. Yet a Roman poet hardly could totally avoid his own Roman tradition or the contemporary world, and, in a few instances, we will comment on these aspects as well. As Norden observed, Virgil had divided his picture of the underworld into six parts, and we will follow these in our argument.Plus d’un siècle après la publication, en 1903, du commentaire classique de Norden sur le livre six de l’Énéide, il est temps de considérer à quel point les nouvelles découvertes de matériel orphique et les nouvelles idées sur la manière de travailler de Virgile enrichissent et/ou corrigent la compréhension de ce texte. Il s’agit dès lors de porter un regard neuf sur l’au-delà de Virgile, mais en limitant nos commentaires aux passages sur lesquels il est possible d’apporter quelque chose de nouveau. Ce sont les éléments orphiques et éleusiniens, tout autant que l’arrière-plan hellénistique juif – souvent négligé – sur lesquels l’analyse se concentre. En outre, un poète romain pouvait difficilement négliger totalement sa propre tradition romaine ou le monde contemporain, et, à quelques reprises, ces aspects seront également commentés. Comme Norden l’a observé, Virgile a réparti l’image de l’au-delà en six parties, et c’est son parcours que notre analyse épouse. (shrink)

While the concept of hospitality involves paradoxes, Kant’s theory of cosmopolitanism partly overcomes them by transforming the ethical requirement of hospitality into a condition for realizing any right. Because exchange, commerce (commercium), and the mutual recognition of freedoms are at the basis of any political association, as they are on a larger scale of any coexistence of political communities, they constitute the primary relationship on which the duty of hospitality is based. Therefore, the Kantian theory of cosmopolitanism is (...) a theory of the institutionalization of hospitality. Nevertheless, while the institutionalization of moral requirements generally implies a loss of their critical force, Kant offers a legal theory of hospitality that reinforces its critical and political dimension. Beyond Kant, hospitality can be developed as justifying protests from citizens against any policy pursued by their governments when the latter contravenes the principle of reciprocity through practices of domination both at the domestic and international levels. Linked to a sense of justice on a global scale, hospitality opens a reflection on the obligations and responsibilities that members of society have when their rulers pursue imperial agendas. Kant’s cosmopolitanism can thus be developed as a critical cosmopolitanism or a critical politics of hospitality. (shrink)

The paper considers Martha Nussbaum's motivation for departing from her earlier cosmopolitan position in favour of now promoting a globally sensitive patriotism. Her reasons for endorsing patriotism will be shown as exemplary for related argumentations by other authors, especially insofar as love of country as a motivating force for civic duty is understood as in tension or even as incompatible with cosmopolitan aspirations. The motivation for turning to patriotism as articulated by Nussbaum and others will be demonstrated to rely on (...) misleading understandings of love of country as a possessive emotion. Relying on Alice Crary's critique, it will be argued that sound moral judgement with regard to the patria as well as from a cosmopolitan stance is equally tied to our sensitivities and equally requires their education. Furthermore, I will discuss Axel Honneth's notion of solidarity, a form of love inflected by justice, as a possible alternative for conceptualising the social bonding patriotic attachment is supposed to provide. However, a critical patriotism ultimately needs to transgress this inward-directed focus and take into account how a country is seen by non-citizens, the historical relationships and the obligations that arise in terms of historical justice in relation to other countries. If we take patriotism in this outward-looking perspective seriously, we also come to understand why it would be a mistake to skip patriotism altogether. Rather than constructing cosmopolitanism and patriotism as mutually exclusive opposites, critical cosmopolitanism and critical patriotism can be shown to have different but complementary and mutually corrective functions. (shrink)

The essay critically reviews two recent contributions to the debate on global justice made by Darrel Moellendorf and Thomas Pogge respectively. Given both authors’ acknowledgement of the substantial contributions which liberal economic practice currently makes to ever-increasing levels of global deprivation and injustice, can we continue to assume with confidence that liberal morality is capable of providing the solution? It is a central claim of the essay that both authors are able to sustain this optimistic assumption only because of their (...) abstraction of liberal morality from its statist political and competitive economic settings. Were these settings to be taken into account, some liberal values might be shown to be less universalisable than they are routinely assumed to be. In that case, we should not argue, implausibly, for the extension of these values to the global context, but should focus on their critical revision in the context of mature liberal societies’ domestic politics. (shrink)

Rousseau tries to show that civic patriotism is compatible with genuine moral cosmopolitanism as well as republican cosmopolitanism (the compatibility thesis). I try to clarify these concepts, and distinguish them from other types of cosmopolitanism, such as moral, cultural, economic, and epistemological cosmopolitanisms. Rousseau winds up with a form of rooted cosmopolitanism that tries to strike a balance between republican patriotism and republican as well as thin moral cosmopolitanism, offering a synthesis through education. A careful (...) reading of Émile shows that this is a book about the formation of a moral and cognitive cosmopolitan who avoids the deformations of a commercial society influenced by processes of globalisation. (shrink)

This article stages a dialogue between cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism in order to think through what is at stake in demands that universities should produce graduates who are sensitive to social diversity and attuned to the contemporary realities of globalisation. The argument is that, although ‘graduate attributes’ are no doubt an effective management tool in a massified higher education system, they can also be used to focus attention on what dispositions it is reasonable and desirable to expect graduates to develop. (...) The arguments about cosmopolitanism of Jeremy Waldron and Martha Nussbaum are considered. (shrink)

The theory of reflexive modernization plausibly advocates postnational cosmopolitanism. As the nation state is eroding today, we are becoming citizens of a ‘global risk society’ whose unity and cohesion is generated by the risk that is threatening us world-wide. By the same token, this world risk society is no longer unified in any political sense. There is no world state; its very idea is even rejected. In this sense, the cosmopolitanism argued for in the theory of reflexive modernization (...) proves predominantly to be an extrapolation of civil society on a global scale, while, strictly speaking, having no cosmo‘political’ counterpart. Building on Marcel Gauchet’s political philosophy, the article questions the cosmopolitanism-beyond-the-political position of the theory of reflexive modernization. To do so, it goes substantially into Gauchet’s view of the representational role of the political as an essential dimension in society formation. (shrink)

This paper considers the Hellenistic poets' attitude towards pre-Trojan war myths; in particular, it examines the Hellenistic reception of six narratives from the Cypria: the marriage of Peleus and Thetis; the duel between the Dioscuri and Idas and Lynceus; the story of Telephus; the love affair between Achilles and Deidameia; the abandonment of Philoctetes on Lemnos; and the involvement of the Achaeans with the priest Anius and his daughters, the Oenotropae. Furthermore, it is argued that the reception of (...) these stories from the Cypria may be seen as a metaliterary comment upon epic poetry, firstly because narratives from the Epic Cycle are adapted to fit epic subgenres, such as the elegy, the epyllion, the hymn and the idyll, and secondly because the neoteric versions of these narratives put particular emphasis on certain motifs, types of hero and narrative techniques which are typical of Hellenistic poetics. (shrink)

The treatise On the Nature of the Universe, attributed to the Pythagorean Ocellus, has frequently been the subject of scholarly attention due to its engagement with Aristotle’s theory of elemental transformation or its role in the late Hellenistic debate on the eternity of the universe. In this paper, I argue that its author endorses a peculiar conception of matter: prime matter is an unqualified body, only potentially perceptible. Ps.-Ocellus draws this doctrine from Stoicism but reworks it for his purposes (...) outside the framework of Stoic corporealism. The author presents it as an antecedent to both Plato’s receptacle and Aristotle’s prime matter. As it turns out, the doctrine was meant to address some of the challenges posed by an incorporeal material principle. (shrink)

In Hellenistic philosophy, one can find contrasting evaluations of the argumentative use of merely conceivable states of affairs. On the one hand, Epicureans discard any proposal that has no plausibility from the point of view of someone in possession of the relevant expertise. On the other hand, Sceptics regularly invoke views which one might conceivably hold, irrespective of the view’s epistemic credentials or whether or not it has or has ever had actual proponents. Since thought experiments often introduce scenarios (...) involving merely conceivable but non-actual states of affairs, the positions of Epicureans and Sceptics regarding conceivability can be transposed into different attitudes towards the method of thought experiments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period, 330 B.C.-A.D. 400Terry L. PapillonStanley E. Porter, ed. Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period, 330 B.C.-A.D. 400. Leiden, New York, and Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1997. xvi 1 901 pp. Cloth, Gld. 430, US $253.This massive collection of essays by various authorities will serve as a good basic introduction to the nature and history of classical (...) rhetoric, even for those working outside the Hellenistic period.Its intentions are several: to provide (1) “a comprehensive and wide-ranging introduction to classical rhetoric as it was practiced in the Hellenistic period,” (2) “a thorough introduction to the standard categories of thought, terminology, and theoretical writing on the subject, along with its history and development,” (3) “an assessment of the use of classical rhetorical categories in a representative selection of literary genres and a number of specific writers of the Hellenistic period,” (4) “relevant examples of each term defined and analyzed,” and (5) “areas warranting further research” (xiii–xiv). It has four intended audiences: scholars working with the New Testament, and with Hellenistic classical, and patristic authors. It succeeds in attaining the five stated goals, and will be useful for the four stated audiences. This is especially true for the first audience, New Testament scholars. It will serve a fifth audience well too: it would be a useful book for graduate students, both in classical and in New Testament studies, since it offers clear presentations of issues and future work, points well to other bibliography, and is so broad in scope as to be a concise literary history of classical and biblical literatures.The book is broken into three larger parts. Part I, “Rhetoric Defined,” includes six chapters of introduction to and overview of the five parts of rhetoric. Kennedy’s two chapters (“Historical Survey of Rhetoric” and “The Genres of Rhetoric”) display his typically clear, magisterial, and thorough presentation of the background material. The next four chapters, on the five parts of rhetoric, serve as preparation for the rest of the book. They are of mixed quality. Wuellner’s chapter on arrangement (3), placed before the chapter on invention, is overly difficult, idiosyncratic, and less helpful than it could be, especially when it follows on Kennedy’s clear and controlled prose. Heath’s chapter on invention (4) is a stimulating change of pace. Rather than offering just a straight discussion of the history of invention (though the discussion of its history is thorough), he works through all aspects of the topic with an actual case before him, the response of Antenor during the Trojan War to the Greek request for the return of Helen. He discusses almost every aspect of invention, with thorough reference to the ancient theorists, as he grapples with the actual situation. This provides a good sense of what an orator would actually go through in the composition process. Rowe’s chapter on style (5) follows the four virtues with an emphasis on examples of ornamentation. He begins with the assertion that “at least three reasons account for its [the four virtues’] influence” (121): it provides a “rich nomenclature,” it offers precepts that “apply to any verbal expression,” [End Page 308] not only that used to persuade, and it provides “criteria for judging style that are sufficiently flexible to allow for changing tastes and requirements.”Part II, “Rhetoric in Practice,” treats various genres in ten chapters: the epistle (J. T. Reed), philosophical prose (D. M. Schenkeveld), historical prose (S. Rebenich), poetry and rhetoric (R. Webb), biography (R. A. Burridge), oratory and declamation (D. H. Berry and M. Heath), homily and panegyrical sermon (F. Siegert), the rhetoric of romance (R. F. Hock), apocalyptic and prophetic literature (J. M. Knight), and drama and rhetoric (R. Scodel). These serve as a useful, if uninspiring, survey of several genres in the Hellenistic period, with appropriate reference to important classical antecedents and post-Hellenistic developments. These essays are, in essence, a brief survey of classical and biblical literature. They are thorough and give the appropriate background information with abundant bibliography for further study.Their most useful function is to provide a backdrop for... (shrink)

In the following reflection Claudio Corradetti and Allen Wood engage in a controversy concerning the possibilities and the limits of textual interpretation. Should an interpreter still be authorized to call an author’s interpretation the logical stretch of text beyond its black printed letters? The authors offer two different standpoints on what can still be defined as textual interpretation. Whereas for Allen Wood a clear-cut separation must be kept between what a text shows and what an interpreter argues starting from the (...) text, for Claudio Corradetti such distinction remains internal to textual exegesis in so far as the interpreter’s conclusions follow a logical pattern of jus tification starting from evidential hints. (shrink)

Casablanca announces its critical engagement with cosmopolitanism in the first of two three-way interactions among Captain Renault, the chief French colonial administrator in Casablanca; Major Strasser, a visiting Nazi commander; and Rick Blaine, the owner/operator of Rick’s Café Américain, a popular nightclub and backroom casino in the city:What is your nationality?I am a drunkard.That makes Rick a citizen of the world.Throughout the film, it is the principle function of the Renault character to describe and comment upon Rick’s disposition in (...) respect to matters both political and personal, often drawing illuminating parallels between the two.1 “Rick,” Renault continues, seeking to assure the suspicious Nazis that .. (shrink)

Ancient Greek thought saw the birth, in so-called Western philosophy, of the study now known as moral psychology. In its broadest sense, moral psychology encompasses the study of those aspects of human psychology relevant to our moral lives—desire, emotion, ethical knowledge, practical moral reasoning, and moral imagination—and their role in apprehending or responding to sources of value. This volume draws together contributions from leading international scholars in ancient philosophy, exploring central issues in the moral psychology of Plato, Aristotle, and the (...) Hellenistic schools. Through a series of papers and responses, these contributions challenge and develop interpretations of ancient views on topics from Socratic intellectualism to the nature of appetitive desires, from the role of pleasure and pain in virtue, to our capacities for memory, anticipation and choice, and their role in a flourishing human life. (shrink)

Philosophers and doctors from the period immediately after Aristotle down to the second century CE were particularly focussed on the close relationships of soul and body; such relationships are particularly intimate when the soul is understood to be a material entity, as it was by Epicureans and Stoics; but even Aristotelians and Platonists shared the conviction that body and soul interact in ways that affect the well-being of the living human being. These philosophers were interested in the nature of the (...) soul, its structure, and its powers. They were also interested in the place of the soul within a general account of the world. This leads to important questions about the proper methods by which we should investigate the nature of the soul and the appropriate relationships among natural philosophy, medicine, and psychology. This volume, part of the Symposium Hellenisticum series, features ten scholars addressing different aspects of this topic. (shrink)

In view of recent articles citing the Stoics as a defence or refutation of cosmopolitanism it is legitimate to ask whether the Stoics did in fact have an argument for cosmopolitanism which may be useful to contemporary political philosophers. I begin by discussing an interpretation of Stoic views on cosmopolitanism by Martha Nussbaum and A.A. Long and show that the arguments they attribute to the Stoics are not tenable in the light of present day philosophy. I then (...) argue that the Stoics did offer a very different argument for cosmopolitanism which is both more interesting and more plausible in that it draws on a conception of human nature similar to Aristotles and contemporary virtue ethics. Lastly I consider an objection made to their particular brand of cosmopolitanism by Martha Nussbaum, namely that a Stoic cosmopolitan life is devoid of personal affiliation and therefore unbearably lonely. I argue that this objection is in fact unfounded. (shrink)

Contrary to the hegelian thought that harmonizing eudaimonism was manifested most fully in the Classical period of Greek ethics, it is in fact the Hellenistic period after Aristotle that shows the most forthright attempts to produce ethical views that do not generate conflicts between rational aims. This is partly the result of the Hellenistic attempts to generate positions that, unlike the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle, possess a high degree of systematic coherence. Epicurean hedonism is a case in (...) point, as is Stoic ethics, which goes a considerable way toward eliminating the very idea of a distinction between what is good for oneself and what is good in a global, non‐self‐referential way. (shrink)

In response to varied processes of globalization, the cosmopolitan perspective has rightly insisted that discussion of global ethics ought to be taken seriously. This article agrees with cosmopolitan theorists in calling for the implementation of a perspective that can address the other outside of narrow communal determinations. Yet it also advances a critique of their reliance on legalist instruments such as human rights, contending that the bestowal of human rights does not necessarily or directly lead to an ethics of inclusiveness. (...) While the attribution of universal humanity to all may appear as an appropriate means of extending ethical regardedness to all others, this does not immediately follow from such a legalist gesture. Any attempts to articulate a truly global ethics must begin by questioning the distinct communal sensibilities which, by the very fact of their distinctiveness, always already contain within them a ‘xenophobic’ element that cannot be transcended solely by the bestowal of human rights or other such instruments. This article, therefore, discusses a different kind of ‘cosmopolitan’ disposition, one which is based on the recovery of an ethical selfhood that understands itself as an opening to otherness. For this task, it explores the phenomenological analyses of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and specifically his examination of how communication can be cultivated through hearing and silence. (shrink)

Hegel's often-echoed verdict on the apolitical character of philosophy in the Hellenistic age is challenged in this collection of essays, originally presented at the sixth meeting of the Symposium Hellenisticum. An international team of leading scholars reveals a vigorous intellectual scene of great diversity: analyses of political leadership and the Roman constitution in Aristotelian terms; Cynic repudiation of the polis - but accommodation with its rulers; Stoic and Epicurean theories of justice as the foundation of society; Cicero's moral critique (...) of the traditional political pursuit of glory. The volume as a whole offers a comprehensive guide to the main currents of social and political philosophy in a period of increasing interest to classicists, philosophers and cultural and intellectual historians. (shrink)

India in Early Greek Literature. Klaus Karttunen. Studia Orientalia 65, Helsinki 1989. vi, 295 pp. FIM 150. ISBN 951-9380-10-8. India and the Hellenistic World. Klaus Karttunen. Studia Orientalia 83, Helsinki 1997. x, 439 pp. FIM 200. ISBN 951-9380-35-3.