False Idles: The Politics of the "Quiet Life"

The dominant Greek and Roman ideology held that the best human life required engaging in politics, on the grounds that the human good is shared, not private, and that the activities central to this shared good are those of traditional politics. This chapter surveys three ways in which philosophers challenged this ideology, defended a withdrawal from or transformation of traditional politics, and thus rethought what politics could be. Plato and Aristotle accept the ideology's two central commitments but insist that a few exceptional human beings could transcend the good of human activities. Epicurus argues that the human good is private, not shared. Socrates and some of his followers, including especially the Stoics, argue that the activities central to the shared human good are not those of traditional politics

Cynics

This overview attempts to explain how we can come to an account of Cynicism and what that account should look like. My account suggests that Cynics are identified by living like Diogenes of Sinope, and that Diogenes' way of life is characterized by distinctive twists on three Socratic commitments. The three Socratic commitments are that success in life depends on excellence of the soul; that this excellence and success are a special achievement, requiring hard work; and that this work requires deprecating mainstream values such as wealth, fame, and ordinary political power. Diogenes' construal of success emphasizes freedom and independence, and his construal of excellence emphasizes endurance and self-mastery. On his account, the work required to achieve these is strikingly unintellectual but difficult, and the deprecation of ordinary values is especially extreme. A few interpretive puzzles about Cynicism are tackled along the way, including whether Cynicism really counts as philosophy and whether Cynics are anti-social

Die Erfindung kosmopolitaner Politik durch die Stoiker

This lecture explores the political import of Chrysippus' account of why and how one should live as a citizen of the cosmos, and it makes a case for seeing this account as the invention of political cosmopolitanism. (The preprint uploaded here is the final English draft on which the German translation was based.

The Unity of the Soul in Plato's Republic

This essay argues that Plato in the Republic needs an account of why and how the three distinct parts of the soul are parts of one soul, and it draws on the Phaedrus and Gorgias to develop an account of compositional unity that fits what is said in the Republic

Plato on Well-Being

Plato's dialogues use several terms for the concept of well-being, which concept plays a central ethical role as the ultimate goal for action and a central political role as the proper aim for states. But the dialogues also reveal sharp debate about what human well-being is. I argue that they endorse a Socratic conception of well-being as virtuous activity, by considering and rejecting several alternatives, including an ordinary conception that lists a variety of goods, a Protagorean conception that identifies one's well-being with what appears one to be one's well-being, and hedonistic conceptions

Die Erfindung kosmopolitaner Politik durch die Stoiker

This lecture explores the political import of Chrysippus' account of why and how one should live as a citizen of the cosmos, and it makes a case for seeing this account as the invention of political cosmopolitanism. (The preprint uploaded here is the final English draft on which the German translation was based.

Plato on the Unity of the Political Arts (Statesman 258d-259d)

Plato argues that four political arts—politics, kingship, slaveholding, and household-management—are the same. His argument, which prompted Aristotle’s reply in Politics I, has been universally panned. The problem is that the argument clearly identifies household-management with slaveholding, and household-management with politics, but does not fully identify kingship with any of the others. I consider and reject three ways of saving the argument, and argue for a fourth. On my view, Plato assumes that politics is identical with kingship, just as he does elsewhere, but he begs no questions because the point of his argument is to identify the public arts of politics and kingship with the private arts of household-management and slaveholding. He does this successfully by answering three reasons why one might distinguish the private from the public arts. His argument leaves room for Aristotle to propose other reasons. One of them—involving differences among men and women and slaves—is unfortunate, but another is more promising. The Aristotelian can assume that political expertise is a matter of know-how gathered by experience of the particular actions which differ in the public and private arts. But Plato might well be right to reject this, and to insist that the essential difference between the expert and non-expert—the dividing line between good and bad rule—is not in experience but in their grasp of their goals

Plato's Socrates and his Conception of Philosophy

This is a study of Plato's use of the character Socrates to model what philosophy is. The study focuses on the Apology, and finds that philosophy there is the love of wisdom, where wisdom is expertise about how to live, of the sort that only gods can fully have, and where Socrates loves wisdom in three ways, first by honoring wisdom as the gods' possession, testing human claims to it, second by pursuing wisdom, examining himself as he examines others, to achieve a more well justified set of beliefs about how to live, and third by trying to live wisely, insofar as he can, which includes exhorting others to care about living wisely than anything else. The essay also includes some suggestions about how Plato criticizes and revises this model of philosophy outside the Apology