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History and Philosophy

The Birth of Political Philosophy in Greece

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Jacqueline De Romilly

Extract

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All civilizations are necessarily concerned with political wisdom, with events, and with applicable rules of conduct. Clearly, all political wisdom is implicitly bound up with morality and metaphysics, but the originality of Greece consists of having, at a very early stage, made this relationship explicit, and of having sought a world-picture in which politics would be directly linked to a general philosophy: Plato and Aristotle are examples of this. In addition, once created, political philosophy was to maintain its place in almost all modern systems of thought, but the rediscovered emphasis of political thought assures it today of a prominent position in all countries where, for example, Marxists or liberals confront one another. The beginnings of such a mode of thought therefore deserve some attention.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 22 , Issue 88 , December 1974 , pp. 50 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 As is shown in the recent book by H.R. Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus. Philol. Monographs, 23, Cleveland, 1956 (p. 374).

2 The bibliography of this phrase and the regime suggested by it is very full. Among recent studies may be mentioned: A. Fuks, The Ancestral Constitu tion, Four Studies…, London 1953; G. Donini, La posizione di Tucidide verso il governo dei Cinquemila, Turin 1969; and very recently: G.M. Kirkwood, "Thucydides' Judgement on the Constitution of the Five Thousand," Journal of Philology, 1972, pp. 92-103.

3 To speak of influence by Protagoras, as do the text-books, is perhaps hazardous: cf. the discussion in H. Apfell, Die Verfassungsdebatte bei Herodotus, III, 80-82, Diss. Erlangen 1957 (p. 89), P. Brannen, "Herodotus and History: The Constitutional Debate," Tradition, 1963, pp. 427-438; and cf. K. von Fritz, Die griechische Geschichtssohreibung, I, Berlin 1967, pp. 309-318.

4 On the indirect nature of the influence of the Sophists, cf. my book on: La loi dans la pensée grecque des origines à Aristote, Paris, Les Belles-Lettres, 1971 (p. 267).

5 On the historical thoughts implied in Book III of the Laws, cf., among others, R. Weil, L' "Archéologie" de Platon, Paris, Klincksieck, 1959 (p. 170).

6 Cf. besides, N.I. Boussoulas, L'être et la composition des mixtes dans le Philèbe de Platon, Paris, P.U.F., 1952 (p. 203).

7 Cf. R. Weil, Aristote et l'histoire, Essai sur la "Politique," Paris, Klinck sieck, 1960 (p. 466).

8 Sir Ernest Baker's famous book, Greek Political Theory, Plato and his Predecessors (first published in 1918, but frequently reprinted since then) devotes 13 pages to what preceeded the Sophists; and before Plato he recognizes only the Sophists, then Socrates, and the lesser Socratics. In the area selected here for example, E. Ryffel, in his Metabole Politeion, Der Wandel der Staatsverfassungen, Berne 1949 (p. 270), keeps to Sophistry, Plato, Aristotle and Polybius.

9 This tendency is manifest both in those works which trace one idea or another chronologically and those on the history of values, such as those of A.W. Adkins, of which the most important is: Merit and Responsibility, A Study of Greek Values, Oxford 1960 (p. 380). B. Snell's famous work, Die Entdeckung des Geistes, (Hamburg 1948) has done much to encourage research, following, in its whole unity, the development of ideas and the evolution of the way in which man views his existence in the universe.

10 It is always a valuable experience to return to K. von Fritz's celebrated work, The Theory of the Mixed Constitutions, New York 1954 (p. 490). The numerous later discussions are lucidly summarized in F. Walbank's short work, Polybius, Sather Classical Lectures, 42, Univ. of California Press, 1972 (p. 201).