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ERIC BROWN
RESEARCH LIST
This page provides a full list of my currently or soon-to-be published work, with abstracts and some full drafts. I have divided the work into four categories: monographs, articles, surveys, and reviews.
MONOGRAPHS
(* = in progress)
1. Stoic Cosmopolitanism and the Political Life
Dissertation for the PhD in Philosophy, University of Chicago, 1997.
To order a copy of this dissertation, visit UMI's Online Dissertation Services and request number 9733909.
*2. Stoic Cosmopolitanism
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
Draft of Chapter One (pdf)
This manuscript contains eleven chapters. The first seven significantly revise pages 1-59 and 107-296 of "Stoic Cosmopolitanism and the Political Life." Chapter eight, which draws on the dissertation's discussion of Cicero (297-392), was presented in early versions to the Program in Classics, Philosophy, and Ancient Science, University of Pittsburgh (March 1997); the Fourteenth Annual Conference of the North American Society for Social Philosophy, Queen's University (July 1997); and the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy and the Society for the Study of Islamic Philosophy and Science, Binghamton University (October 1997). An early version of chapter nine was presented to the Third Biennial Chicago Conference on Ancient Philosophy: Roman Stoicism (April 2000). Early versions of chapter ten were presented to the Chicago Area Workshop in Ancient Philosophy (April 1999); the Berkeley Workshop in Ancient Philosophy (April 1999); and the Meeting of the North American Society for Social Philosophy at the Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, New Orleans (May 1999). An early version of chapter eleven was presented to the Work-in-Progress Session, Philosophy Department, Washington University (August 2000). I have also presented material from this manuscript under the title "Advising the Cosmopolis" to the philosophy department at Saint Louis University (2001), to the Symposium on Philosophy and Public Life in Ancient Greece and Rome at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland (2001), and to a meeting of the Society of Ancient Greek Philosophy at the Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (2002).
In this book, I undertake a full study of the Stoic beliefs that the world as a whole (the cosmos) is the only real city (polis) and that a person should live as a citizen of the cosmos. I find three kinds of Stoic "cosmopolitanism" lurking behind these claims. Sometimes living as a cosmopolite is just a metaphor for living in agreement with the cosmos. But the Stoics also believe that living in agreement with the cosmos requires ethical concern for all human beings, though they leave this requirement vague in order to allow it to have different import in different circumstances. Still, they do offer one specification of "cosmopolitan concern" that is of wide significance, for they hold that one should (if one can) choose a career so as to serve human beings as such, even if it requires moving abroad.
This last kind of Stoic cosmopolitanism has not been well appreciated, and it is quite relevant to current debates about general obligations to human beings and special obligations to compatriots. I consider the contribution made by four different Stoic theories by analyzing the fragments and testimonia for Chrysippus, Cicero's De Officiis, Seneca's letters and "dialogues," and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. I argue that Chrysippus and Marcus reject the idea of special obligations to compatriots as such--they are what I call "strict cosmopolitans"--while Cicero (in De Officiis) and Seneca try to articulate a moderate cosmopolitanism by reconciling special obligations to compatriots with general obligations to human beings as such. Moreover, I argue that Chrysippus and Marcus present a plausible case for strict cosmopolitanism and that the moderate cosmopolitanism of Cicero (in De Officiis) and Seneca runs into instructive problems.
*3. The Eudaimonist Alternative
I have drafted about half of this planned, eleven-chapter manuscript, drawing in part on separately published essays.
It has long been widely agreed that ancient Greek ethics is somehow a distinct alternative to modern moral philosophy, but this agreement is on the verge of collapse. First, attempts to articulate the Greek approach as "virtue ethics" are problematic in themselves and fail to show how the Greek view is different. Second, the old insistence that the Greeks are all "eudaimonists" has come under increasing fire. In this book, I argue that the Greeks faced an alternative themselves between two kinds of eudaimonism, and I maintain that one of these kinds of eudaimonism is a genuinely interesting alternative to modern moral philosophy. Both kinds can be expressed with the vague formula "Act always for the sake of your own flourishing." But only some Greeks understand this as a (broadly) consequentialist formula, calling for each of us to bring about his or her own flourishing. Most of the Greeks interpreted the formula differently. They held that each of us should always instantiate flourishing by acting in an excellent/virtuous way, and they understood excellent/virtuous action as action from a coherent set of psychological attitudes.
After an introductory chapter, I spend three chapters arguing that both kinds of eudaimonism are suggested in Plato's experimental and various Socratic dialogues, the consequentialist sort in the Protagoras and the coherentist sort in the Charmides and Euthydemus. I then spend five chapters demonstrating how coherentist eudaimonism is developed in Plato's Republic and in the Chrysippean Stoicism that lies behind Cicero, De Finibus III and IV. The last two chapters concern Epicurus' development of consequentialist eudaimonism. Throughout, I aim to articulate and motivate coherentist eudaimonism as an alternative to modern moral philosophy.
ARTICLES
(* = in progress)
1. A Defense of Plato's Argument for the Immortality of the Soul at Republic X 608c-611a
Apeiron 30,3 (1997): 211-238.
Reprinted in Essays on Plato's Psychology, ed. Ellen Wagner (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2001), 297-322.
Presented to the 'B' Caucus Seminar of the Classics Faculty at the University of Cambridge (1996).
This paper argues against the almost universal judgment that Plato's argument at Republic 608c-611a is fallacious. It consists of an analysis that demonstrates how the argument proceeds validly from premises that are inextricably bound to Plato's ethical theory (not his metaphysics), and it answers six criticisms most often lodged against the argument. There is also an appendix that offers two interpretations of the much more problematic argument at 611a for the claim that there is a finite number of souls continuously being reincarnated.
2. Socrates the Cosmopolitan
Stanford Agora: An Online Journal of Legal Perspectives 1 (2000): 74-87.
Ancient Stoics portrayed Socrates as a citizen of the world, and thus as an intellectual precursor to their own cosmopolitanism. In this paper, I argue that Plato's "Socratic" dialogues fully support this portrayal. Socrates rejects insofar as he can ordinary political action that benefits Athenians alone, and he cultivates an extraordinary sort of politics that aims to benefit people by examining them. This extraordinary politics, crucially, is offered to "anyone, whether Athenian or foreigner." Socrates does, it is true, remain in Athens, but he does not do so out of any obligation to serve the Athenians. Rather, he believes that Athens is the place where he can best serve human beings generally, since Athens allows a special degree of free speech.
3. Justice and Compulsion for Plato's Philosopher-Rulers
Ancient Philosophy 20 (2000): 1-17
Presented to the philosophy department at Washington University (1997) and to the Arizona Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy (1998)
It seems that those trained to be philosophers in the ideal city of the Republic forego their own good in order to do the just thing and rule the city, but this means that these people constitute an exception to the Republic's thesis that justice always pays. I argue that the two most promising attempts to defuse this problem fail to account adequately for Plato's claims that compulsion (ananke) must be applied to the philosophers. Then, I show how both justice and compulsion lead the philosophers to rule in such a way that they do not forego their own good. Finally, I comment on the significance of Plato's invocations of compulsion in this context.
4. Epicurus on the Value of Friendship (Sententia Vaticana 23)
Classical Philology 97 (2002): 68-80.
Presented to a meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy at the 1998 Convention of the American Philological Association
The only surviving manuscript of Epicurus' Sententiae Vaticanae, codex Vaticanus Graecus 1950, includes the following curious claim as number twenty-three (SV 23): "Every friendship is by itself a virtue (di' heauten arete), but it is chosen at the start for its benefit." Since initial publication in 1888, however, the overwhelming majority of editors and interpreters have opted for Usener's emendation of hairete for arete so that Epicurus is in natural Greek making the point that every friendship is choiceworthy per se. I argue that the emendation should be rejected on the grounds that this point singularly contradicts our independent evidence concerning Epicurus' view of friendship, and I propose two alternative possibilities. The first alternative accepts the manuscript and construes SV 23 to be saying that Epicurean friendship is a matter of virtue. The internalization of friendship and the limitation of friendship to the wise are both supported by indepedent evidence, and while the phrase di' heauten with only a substantive is odd, it is not unintelligibly odd. I suggest that it is better to attribute to Epicurus an awkward phrase making sound philosophical points than crystalline Greek manifesting substantive contradictions. But the evidence that SV 23 represents Epicurus' own words is itself weak, and this leads to a second alternative to the orthodox interpretation. Taking due notice of how other Epicureans adopted a different view of friendship and of how some of the other Sententiae Vaticanae seem to fit our evidence for other Epicureans better than for Epicurus, I argue that if we must emend SV 23, we ought also to assume that the sententia represents later Epicurean innovation. Between the two alternatives, I take no stand, as preference for one or the other is more likely to turn on temperament than on argument. But each, I argue, is superior to the received view that Epicurus baldly contradicts himself by allowing that every friendship is choiceworthy per se.
5. Knowing the Whole: Comments on Mary Louise Gill, "Plato's Phaedrus and the Method of Hippocrates"
The Metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle, The Fifth Henle Conference in the History of Philosophy, Part II, ed. Scott Berman (The Modern Schoolman 80,4 [2003]), 315-323.
At Phaedrus 270c1-5, Socrates and Phaedrus agree that no one could know the nature of soul without "knowing the whole." Gill has argued better than anyone else that this should be understand as, "know the whole environment." That is, one must not only know what soul is in itself but also what it is in relation to other things in its environment. I argue for an alternative reading, according to which Socrates and Phaedrus agree that one must know the whole cosmos.
6. Minding the Gap in Plato's Republic
Philosophical Studies 117 (2004): 275-302.
Presented to A Conference on Ancient Philosophy and Science in Honor of Ian Mueller (2002), as a symposium to the Pacific Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association (2003), and to colloquia at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville (2003) and the University of Missouri-Columbia (2003). Selected for publication with the best of the papers presented at the 2003 Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association.
In Plato's Republic, Socrates attempts to show that it is always better to do what is just than to do what is unjust by showing that it is always better to have a just soul than to have an unjust soul. Most interpreters have thought that there is a gap here: why should we assume that the psychologically just are also practically just? The dominant response has been to suggest that Plato plugs the gap by appealing to the motivational power of the psychologically just person's knowledge. I argue that the gap-filling interpretation is badly undersupported by the text of the Republic and is contradicted by what Socrates says about the philosophers' decision to rule. I propose instead that there is never a gap in the Republic, for the entire work reflects two beliefs about the importance of early childhood education, first that those who are raised well do what justice requires, and second that those who are not raised well cannot be psychologically just. I tease out of the Republic the evidence for these two beliefs, which together entail that no one who is psychologically just is practically unjust, and I suggest how they should change our view of the Plato's ethics.
7. Plato on the Rule of Wisdom
in Spindel Conference 2004: Ancient Ethics and Politics, ed. Tim Roche (Southern Journal of Philosophy 43 s.v. [2005]), 84-96.
Presented to the Spindel Conference at the University of Memphis (2004).
Fred Miller maintains that Plato's Republic has a plausible criterion for political legitimacy in the claim that reason should rule. But Miller and others who perceive this claim do not clarify what it means. Plato does not mean that the rational, the reasonable, or the knowledgeable should rule. He means that rulers should have the personal virtue of wisdom that entails a full range of dispositions far outstripping mere reason or knowledge. This stronger commitment, I argue, is not terribly plausible for modern political philosophy.
8. Wishing for Fortune, Choosing Activity: Aristotle on External Goods and Happiness
Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 21 (2005): 57-81.
NB: The editors went to press without circulating proofs, and my article was printed without its notes. The full article, with its notes, will be published in volume 22 (2006). Until then, here is the full article available for downloading in PDF.
Presented to the work-in-progress session of the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program at Washington University (2003), and as a Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy at Holy Cross (2004).
I reexamine the question of how external goods relate to happiness in Book One of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. I take the established line that because happiness (as that for the sake of which one should do everything one does) is simply virtuous activity, external goods are pursued for the sake of happiness just because they are necessary for virtuous activity. I defend this line in two unusual ways. First, I concentrate on Aristotle's transitions in EN I 8-12 to reveal his intentions. Second, I offer a new account of his argument that some external goods are necessary for virtuous activity without being instruments for virtuous activity. The account turns on his distinction between wish and choice. On this account, which turns on Aristotle's distinction between wish and choice, we can only wish for certain external goods, because they are beyond our power to choose, but when we do not enjoy the objects of our wishes, our capacity to choose virtuous action is diminished.
9. Aristotle on the Choice of Lives: Two Concepts of Self-Sufficiency
in Quel choix de vie? Études sur les rapports entre theôria et praxis chez Aristote, ed. Pierre Destrée (Louvain: Peeters, forthcoming)
Draft available for downloading in PDF
(Comments and criticisms welcome, but please do not quote or cite without permission.)
Presented to the Chicago Area Ancient Philosophy Workshop (1996), and to the philosophy departments of the University of California at Santa Barbara (1997) and Washington University (1997). A related paper was presented to the philosophy department at the University of Missouri-St. Louis (2001).
This paper considers the apparent tension introduced by Nicomachean Ethics X 7-8 on its own, historical terms. To most scholars, the question is, has Aristotle changed his conception of the chief good, eudaimonia? But in antiquity, the question was, is the political life or the philosophical life best? Focusing on Aristotle's treatment of the latter question, I argue that he is torn between the political and philosophical lives at least in part because of an ambiguity in the concept of self-sufficiency. On the one hand, we want to have enough of human goods, and for this, the political life is best. On the other hand, we want to be independently sufficient, and for this the philosophical life is best. Indecision about two concepts of self-sufficiency, I argue, leads Aristotle to indecision on the traditional question about lives, but Aristotle is torn over how to construe self-sufficiency for good reasons.
*10. Cosmopolitans and Unmet Friends
for a volume of essays on Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VIII-IX, ed. Pierre Destrée
Presented to the conference of "New Voices in Ancient Philosophy" at the University of Cambridge (2005)
Two of Aristotle's endoxa concerning friendship are the fellow-citizens in a good polis are friends and that friends live and interact together. These claims, together with some unremarkable facts about the ancient world, entail that a polis must be limited in size and population. But the Stoics maintain that the cosmos as a whole is a model polis. In this essay, I show how the Stoics reject the claim that friends must live and interact together while doing justice to the intuitions that underlie it. I contrast their conception of cosmopolitan friendship with Aristotle's underdeveloped notion of philanthropia.
*11. Advising the Cosmopolis
to be published in the proceedings of the 2006 Frankfurt conference on cosmopolitanism
Draft available for downloading in PDF
(Comments and criticisms welcome, but please do not quote or cite without permission.)
Presented to the Philosophy Department at St. Louis University (2001), the Symposium on Philosophy and Public Life in Greece and Rome in Jyväskylä, Finland, (2001), and the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Meeting at the Central Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (2002), and to be presented to the conference on cosmopolitanism at the University of Frankfurt (2006).
I extract from Chrysippus and Seneca the central argument that Stoics use to reconcile their apparently otherworldly cosmopolitanism with their commitment to real political action. In future drafts, I plan to spend more time discussing the work in this project that the Stoics have to do to reconceive political action.
*12. Socrates the Stoic? Rethinking Protreptic, Eudaimonism, and the Role of the Socratic Dialogues
Draft available for downloading in PDF
(Comments and criticisms welcome, but please do not quote or cite without permission.)
Presented to the Ninth Annual Arizona Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy (2004) and to the Philosophy Department at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (2005), and to be presented to the Philosophy Department at Temple University (2006).
In Plato's Euthydemus, Socrates appears to endorse the Stoic thesis that wisdom is the only good. Some "Stoicizing" scholars accept the appearances, but other "denying" scholars insist that this is an anachronistic account of Socrates. The deniers believe that the context of Socrates' remarks provides a qualification, so that he says only that wisdom is the only independent or unconditional good. In this paper, I take the deniers' reasons seriously, and build the case that Socrates' commitment to the Stoic thesis in fact pervades the whole of the Euthydemus. This case calls for rethinking the nature of protreptic argument, the character of Socrates' "eudaimonism," and the role of Plato's Socratic dialogues.
*13. Socrates and Coherent Desire (Gorgias 466b-468e)
(with Clerk Shaw)
In his conversation with Polus at Gorgias 466b-468e, Socrates makes astonishing claims about belief and desire. He claims that he knows better than Polus what Polus believes, and he claims that orators who have the power to put to death whomever they like do not have the ability to do what they want. We argue that similar considerations underwrite both claims. A person believes that p if and only if he would endorse 'p' on full reflection, where all his commitments had been made optimally coherent, and a person does what she wants if and only if she does what she what endorse as good on full reflection, where all her commitments had been made optimally coherent.
*14. Stoic Psychopathology
Draft available for downloading in PDF
(Comments and criticisms welcome, but please do not quote or cite without permission.)
Presented at the 2006 Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association.
I locate four unanswered questions about the Stoic account of passions, and I argue for answers to these questions in part by conceiving of Stoic passions as defects from the psychological norm, as the Stoics understood it, that is, as failures of psychological coherence.
*15. Contemplative Withdrawal in the Hellenistic Age
To be presented at the 2007 Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association.
On the traditional story, philosophical ethics in the Hellenistic Age withdrew to focus on their inner selves, since the polis-centered life was not available in the wake of Alexander's conquest. I argue that this is almost exactly wrong. Before Alexander, Plato and Aristotle claim that the best human life is devoted to withdrawn contemplation, because contemplation has greater intrinsic value than any other activity a human can choose. But in the Hellenistic Age, Stoics reject this root-and-branch, and Epicureans demote contemplative activity to one among many instrumental means toward happiness.
*16. Cicero, the Stoic Cosmopolis, and Roman Imperialism
To be presented to the conference on cosmopolitanism at the University of Dundee, Scotland (2006)
I plan to discuss the connections Cicero saw between the Stoic idea of the cosmopolis and the Roman empire, and I will briefly contrast this with later Roman Stoics' more orthodox conception of cosmopolitanism.
SURVEYS
(* = in progress)
1. Cosmopolitanism (co-authored with Pauline Kleingeld)
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, 2002.
2. Ethics and Politics in Plato's Republic
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, 2003.
3. Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, and Panaetius of Rhodes
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd ed., ed. Donald Borchert (New York: Macmillan, 2006), 3:261-263, 5:705-707, and 7:78-80.
4. Socrates in the Stoa
A Companion to Socrates, ed. Rachana Kamtekar and Sara Rappe (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 275-284.
To exhibit and explain the Stoics' debt to Socrates and their conception of him, I focus on six Stoic paradoxes that Cicero associates with Socrates and two others that modern scholars attribute to both Socrates and the Stoics, and I show how these eight paradoxes are easily derived from reflection on basic features of Socrates' widely reported way of life. To bolster my case, I argue that even the Stoics' clearest departures from Socrates' life were motivated by deep reflection on what he had done.
5. Hellenistic Cosmopolitanism
A Companion to Ancient Philosophy, ed. Mary Louise Gill and Pierre Pellegrin (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 549-558.
In this essay, I report what people used to mean by calling the ethics of Epicureans and Stoics cosmopolitan, I argue against that traditional view, and I lay out a more concrete and accurate sense of cosmopolitanism that marks the ethics of these great Hellenistic schools. (This article summarizes some of the findings in my book Stoic Cosmopolitanism.)
*6. False Idles: The Politics of Withdrawal in Greek and Roman Antiquity
for A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, ed. Ryan Balot (Oxford: Blackwell, forthcoming).
*7. The Emergence of Natural Law and the Cosmopolis
for The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Political Thought, ed. Stephen Salkever (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
*8. Politics and Society
for The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, ed. James Warren (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
REVIEWS
(* = in progress)
1. Lawrence C. Becker, A New Stoicism
Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (1999): 162-164.
2. Robert Mayhew, Aristotle's Criticism of Plato's Republic
Bryn Mawr Classical Review 99.2.11 (1999).
3. Adolf Friedrich Bonhöffer, The Ethics of the Stoic Epictetus: An English Translation, trans. William O. Stephens, and Epictetus, Discourses Book 1, trans. with commentary by Robert F. Dobbin.
Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (1999): 671-673.
4. Katerina Ierodiakonou, ed., Topics in Stoic Philosophy, and Susanne Bobzien, Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy.
Journal of the History of Philosophy 38 (2000): 430-432.
5. Morag Buchan, Women in Plato's Political Theory
Ancient Philosophy 22 (2002): 189-193.
6. Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation
Classical Philology 98 (2003): 97-102.
7. Thanassis Samaras, Plato on Democracy.
Classical Review n.s. 54 (2004): 71-72.
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last updated 4 August 2006 problems? questions? comments? please email me. |
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