•  377
    Polus admires orators for the tyrannical power they have. However, Socrates argues that orators and tyrants lack power worth having: the ability to satisfy one's wishes or wants (boulēseis). He distinguishes wanting from thinking best, and grants that orators and tyrants do what they think best while denying that they do what they want. His account is often thought to involve two conflicting requirements: wants must be attributable to the wanter from their own perspective (to count as their desi…Read more
  •  682
    Socratic Methods
    In Nicholas D. Smith, Russell E. Jones & Ravi Sharma (eds.), The Bloomsbury Companion to Socrates, 2nd ed.. pp. 45-62. 2024.
    This selective and opinionated overview of English-language scholarship on the philosophical method(s) of Plato's Socrates discusses whether this Socrates has any expertise or method, how he examines others and why, and how he exhorts others to care about wisdom and the state of their soul.
  •  57
    What does Socrates mean by suggesting that no one can understand the nature of the soul "without the nature of the whole" (Phaedrus 270c)? I raise epistemological and metaphysical questions for Mary Louise Gill's proposal that he means us to consider the whole environment, and I make a case for the old-fashioned interpretation that he means us to consider the whole cosmos.
  •  600
    Wishing for Fortune, Choosing Activity: Aristotle on External Goods and Happiness
    Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 22 (1): 221-256. 2006.
    Aristotle's account of external goods in Nicomachean Ethics I 8-12 is often thought to amend his narrow claim that happiness is virtuous activity. I argue, to the contrary, that on Aristotle's account, external goods are necessary for happiness only because they are necessary for virtuous activity. My case innovates in three main respects: I offer a new map of EN I 8-12; I identify two mechanisms to explain why virtuous activity requires external goods, including a psychological need for exter…Read more
  •  27
    Socrates suggests that no one can know the nature of soul without knowing the nature of the whole. The whole what? Gill proposes "the whole environment" in which the soul is active. I criticize this and argue for the old-fashioned reading of "the whole world."
  •  654
    Plato on the Unity of the Political Arts (Statesman 258d-259d)
    Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 58 1-18. 2020.
    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 assume…Read more
  •  935
    Plato's Socrates and his Conception of Philosophy
    In David Ebrey & Richard Kraut (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Plato, 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press. pp. 117-145. 2022.
    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 beli…Read more
  •  256
    Cosmopolitanism
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2013.
    The word ‘cosmopolitan’, which derives from the Greek word kosmopolitês (‘citizen of the world’), has been used to describe a wide variety of important views in moral and socio political philosophy. The nebulous core shared by all cosmopolitan views is the idea that all human beings, regardless of their political affiliation, do (or at least can) belong to a single community, and that this community should be cultivated. Different versions of cosmopolitanism envision this community in different …Read more
  •  504
    Die Erfindung kosmopolitaner Politik durch die Stoiker
    In Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, Andreas Niederberger & Philipp Schink (eds.), Kosmopolitanismus: Zur Geschichte und Zukunft eines umstrittenen Ideals, Velbrück Wissenschaft. pp. 9-24. 2010.
    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.)
  •  2563
    The Unity of the Soul in Plato's Republic
    In Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan & Charles Brittain (eds.), Plato and the Divided Self, . pp. 53-73. 2012.
    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.
  •  20
    Hellenistic Cosmopolitanism
    In Sean D. Kirkland & Eric Sanday (eds.), A Companion to Ancient Philosophy, Northwestern University Press. pp. 549-558. 2018.
    This chapter surveys the origins and development in Greek philosophy of the thought that living well requires living as a citizen of the world.
  •  1
    Epicurus on the Value of Friendship (Sententia Vaticana 23)
    Classical Philology 97 (1): 68-80. 2002.
    The orthodox reading of Sententia Vaticana (SV) 23 emends the sentence and attributes to Epicurus the view that every friendship is choiceworthy for its own sake. I argue that this reading should be rejected, because it singularly contradicts all our evidence about Epicurus' view, according to which only pleasure is choiceworthy for its own sake. I defend the manuscript reading, that every friendship is in itself a virtue, and I argue that anyone who rejects the manuscript reading should attribu…Read more
  •  523
    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 commitme…Read more
  •  316
    Socrates in the Stoa
    In Sara Ahbel‐Rappe & Rachana Kamtekar (eds.), A Companion to Socrates, Blackwell. pp. 275-284. 2005.
    I show how the familiar Stoic paradoxes were developed by reflecting on Socrates.
  •  2870
    Aristotle's treatment of the choice between the political and contemplative lives (in EN I 5 and X 7-8) can seem awkward. To offer one explanation of this, I argue that when he invokes self-sufficience (autarkeia) as a criterion for this choice, he appeals to two different and incompatible specifications of "lacking nothing." On one specification, suitable to a human being living as a political animal and thus seeking to realize his end as an engaged citizen of a polis, a person lacks nothing by…Read more
  •  372
    Cynics
    In James Warren & Frisbee Sheffield (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Ancient Philosophy, Routledge. pp. 399-408. 2013.
    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 d…Read more
  •  331
    Plato on Well-Being
    In Guy Fletcher (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Well-Being, Routledge. pp. 9-19. 2015.
    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 …Read more
  •  2
    Stoic Cosmopolitanism and the Political Life
    Dissertation, The University of Chicago. 1997.
    Resurgent nationalisms and disputes over educational curricula have brought to the fore an old debate between cosmopolitans and patriots. The cosmopolitans emphasize our moral obligations to all human beings, while the patriots argue that our greatest moral obligations lie closer to hand, within our political community. My dissertation concerns the roots of this debate by focusing on the first philosophers in the West to devise an ethical theory which is fully committed to the strictly cosmopoli…Read more
  •  293
    The emergence of natural law and the cosmopolis
    In Stephen Salkever (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Political Thought, Cambridge University Press. pp. 331-363. 2009.
    Two prominent metaphors in Greek and Roman political philosophy are surveyed here, with a view to determining their possible meanings and the plausibility of the claims advanced by those possible meanings.
  • Book Reviews (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (4): 671. 1999.
  •  345
    Justice and Compulsion for Plato’s Philosopher–Rulers
    Ancient Philosophy 20 (1): 1-17. 2000.
    By considering carefully Socrates' invocations of 'compulsion' in Plato's Republic, I seek to explain how both justice and compulsion are crucial to the philosophers' decision to rule in Kallipolis, so that this decision does not contradict Socrates' central thesis that it is always in one's interests to act justly. On my account, the compulsion is provided by a law, made by the city's lawgivers, that requires people raised to be philosophers take turns ruling. Justice by itself does not require…Read more
  • A New Stoicism (review) (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (1): 162-164. 1999.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A New Stoicism by Lawrence C. BeckerEric BrownLawrence C. Becker. A New Stoicism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. Pp. vii + 216. Cloth, $ 29.95.As the title suggests, A New Stoicism is not primarily a work in the history of philosophy but an appropriation for current purposes. Becker boldly identifies himself as a stoic (sic) and seeks to “outline a contemporary version of stoic ethics” (6). While disdaining …Read more
  •  1257
    Socrates the Cosmopolitan
    Stanford Agora: An Online Journal of Legal Perspectives 1 (1): 74-87. 2000.
    I argue that the Stoics were right to portray Socrates as a cosmopolitan, because this portrait is fully consistent with the Socrates of Plato's Socratic dialogues. His rejection of ordinary political engagement in favor of an extraordinary way of doing the political work of improving others lives by examining them is also the rejection of locally engaged politics in favor of benefiting human beings as such. It is less clear whether his cosmopolitanism is moderate (admitting special obligations …Read more
  •  782
    Contemplative withdrawal in the Hellenistic age
    Philosophical Studies 137 (1): 79-89. 2008.
    I reject the traditional picture of philosophical withdrawal in the Hellenistic Age by showing how both Epicureans and Stoics oppose, in different ways, the Platonic and Aristotelian assumption that contemplative activity is the greatest good for a human being. Chrysippus the Stoic agrees with Plato and Aristotle that the greatest good for a human being is virtuous activity, but he denies that contemplation exercises virtue. Epicurus more thoroughly rejects the assumption that the greatest good …Read more
  •  18
    Topics in Stoic Philosophy, and: Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy (review) (review)
    Journal of the History of Philosophy 38 (3): 432-434. 2000.
    Review of Ierodiakonou (ed.), Topics in Stoic Philosophy, and Bobzien, Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy
  •  258
    Plato's ethics and politics in the republic
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2008.
    Plato's Republic centers on a simple question: is it always better to be just than unjust? The puzzles in Book One prepare for this question, and Glaucon and Adeimantus make it explicit at the beginning of Book Two. To answer the question, Socrates takes a long way around, sketching an account of a good city on the grounds that a good city would be just and that defining justice as a virtue of a city would help to define justice as a virtue of a human being. Socrates is finally close to answerin…Read more
  •  173
    Despite the bad press, Plato has a valid argument for immortality from three premises: (1) if the natural evil of a thing cannot destroy it, then it is indestructible; (2) the natural evil of the soul is vice; and (3) vice cannot destroy the soul. These premises are contestable, of course, but Plato has some good reasons for advancing them.
  •  98
    I defend the Stoicizing view that Socrates in the Euthydemus really means what he says when he says that wisdom is the only good for a human being. By taking the deniers' case seriously and extending my Stoicizing interpretation to the Euthydemus as a whole, I aim to show how the dialogue calls into question three prominent assumptions that the deniers make, assumptions that reach far beyond the Euthydemus and that are made by more than just the deniers. First, the deniers misread Socrates' argu…Read more