So close, and yet so far. Photo by Irem Kurtsal Steen

ERIC BROWN Associate Professor of Philosophy Washington University in St. Louis home | RESEARCH | teaching | advising | fun?

If you want a bare list of work I've published, presented, and am working on, you can download a version of my curriculum vitae. Instead of a bare list, this page gives a thematic overview of my research, with some drafts included for downloading. I welcome comments and especially criticisms, but please do not quote the drafts included here without specific permission, as the published versions are or will be somewhat different.

Cosmopolitanism

Ancient Stoics claim that the world as a whole (the cosmos) is like a city (a polis) and that one should live as a citizen of the cosmos. I first became puzzled about these claims as a graduate student, when I was doing a directed study of Cicero's De Officiis one summer with Martha Nussbaum. I wrote an essay on the apparent tension between cosmopolitanism and patriotism in that book, which prompted Nussbaum to share with me the draft of an essay she was writing on Stoic cosmopolitanism. She encouraged me to investigate the Stoics' cosmopolitan claims for my dissertation, and I have been investigating them ever since.

I maintain that the Stoics' cosmopolitan claims have three layers of meaning. First, to live as a citizen of the cosmos is a metaphor for living a good human life. Traditionally, a Greek lives well by living up to the norms of his polis. Chrysippus argues that one should live up to the norms of nature by living in agreement with right reason, which is, as rational coherence, the same as the right reason that governs the cosmos. Later Stoics deflate this metaphor. On their view, citizenship in the cosmos is not earned by agreeing with right reason but is conferred automatically to all human beings, by virtue of our rational nature. Second, the Stoics maintain that living as a citizen of the cosmos is not a mere metaphor because it requires showing what I call "cosmopolitan concern," which is the thought that every human being is worthy of special ethical concern. Stoics differ among themselves about what sorts of feelings and actions cosmopolitan concern requires, and about whether these or those special people (friends, family, compatriots in a local community) deserve special concern beyond cosmopolitan concern. But third, the Stoics argue that cosmopolitan concern entails that one should work to benefit human beings as such, at least in some circumstances. The most interesting evidence for this cosmopolitan beneficence emerges in Stoic discussions of what career a person should take up. They favor political engagement because it can benefit more people, and they typically urge that one could emigrate to engage politically and benefit people more readily. But, again, the Stoics disagree among themselves on whether the consideration to benefit humans as such by a political career needs to be balanced against special considerations to benefit these particular humans because they are compatriots in a local community. I argue that the Stoic texts that urge special obligations to compatriots (Cicero's De Officiis and various works by Seneca) are problematic, and that the Stoic texts that take a stricter line on benefiting humans as such (fragments of Chrysippus, Marcus Aurelius' Meditations) are more promising than most current discussions of cosmopolitanism would seem to predict.

I present my case in:

Stoic Cosmopolitanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). (download a draft of chapter One [pdf])

I have also further explored a couple of Stoic cosmopolitanism's implications elsewhere:

"The Stoic Invention of Cosmopolitan Politics," in the Proceedings of the 2006 Frankfurt conference Cosmopolitan Politics (forthcoming). (download a draft [pdf])

"Cosmopolitans and Unmet Friends," for La philia dans la philosophie d'Aristote, ed. Pierre Destrée (Louvain: Peeters, forthcoming).

And I've tried to relate Stoic cosmopolitanism to some other currents of thought in the following:

"Socrates the Cosmopolitan," Stanford Agora: An Online Journal of Legal Perspectives 1 (2000): 74-87. (link)

(co-authored with Pauline Kleingeld) "Cosmopolitanism," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fall 2002 Edition, ed. Edward N. Zalta. Revised in the Winter 2006 Edition. (link to the current version)

"Hellenistic Cosmopolitanism," A Companion to Ancient Philosophy, ed. Mary Louise Gill and Pierre Pellegrin (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 549-558.

"The Emergence of Natural Law and the Cosmopolis," in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Political Thought, ed. Stephen Salkever (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 331-363.

"Cosmopolitanism" and "Justice," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, 7 vols., ed. Michael Gagarin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 2:307-208 and 4:164-166.

"Socratic Lawfulness." (download a draft [pdf])

Eudaimonism

Ancient Greek philosophy, especially after Socrates, is first and last obsessed with the question of how one should live. I began taking the ancient Greeks more and more seriously because I thought that what they said about how one should live is more plausible and interesting than modern moral philosophy. So my research and teaching constantly return to the question of how Greek philosophical ethics compares to modern moral philosophy. In recent years, I have come to be dissatisfied with the standard answer to this question, and much of my research is now focused on redefining Greek ethics as an alternative to modern moral philosophy.

On the standard view, Greek ethics is "eudaimonist," according to which one should act always for the sake of one's own success or happiness (Greek eudaimonia). As this dictum is usually understood, one should act always so as to bring about one's own success. So eudaimonism is an egoistic version of consequentialism. Unfortunately, this construal encourages debates about whether this or that Greek really was a eudaimonist, and it discourages the thought that the Greeks have a plausible alternative to modern moral philosophy. But fortunately, it is a misconstrual of most Greek philosophers' views. Only a few Greeks, Epicurus being the plainest example, subscribed to consequentialist eudaimonism. Most, including Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics, followed Plato's Socrates and argued that one should act always to instantiate success, since success is nothing but excellent activity.

I have now drafted about half of a planned book, tentatively calling The Eudaimonist Alternative, whose first goal is to show that the ancients faced the alternative I just articulated and whose second goal is to illuminate how the Socratic version of eudaimonism is an interesting and viable alternative to modern moral philosophy. The book draws on some work I've done on Plato's Republic (see the section below) and on the following:

"Epicurus on the Value of Friendship (Sententia Vaticana 23)," Classical Philology 97 (2002): 68-80. (link to article at JSTOR)

"Wishing for Fortune, Choosing Activity: Aristotle on External Goods and Happiness," Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 22 (2006): 221-256. Due to an editorial error, this was originally published without its notes in vol. 21 (2005): 57-81.

"Socrates in the Stoa," in A Companion to Socrates, ed. Sara Ahbel-Rappe and Rachana Kamtekar (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2006), 275-284.

"Contemplative Withdrawal in the Hellenistic Age," Philosophical Studies 137 (2008): 79-89.

"Politics and Society," in The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism, ed. James Warren (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 179-196.

"Socrates the Stoic? Rethinking Protreptic, Eudaimonism, and the Role of the Socratic Dialogues." (download a draft [pdf])

(with Clerk Shaw) "Socrates and Coherent Desire (Gorgias 466b-468e)." (download a draft [pdf])

"Plato's Rejection of Protagorean Ethics." (download a draft [pdf])

"'Virtue Ethics' and the Problem of Advising Fools." (download a draft [pdf])

Ways of Life

Much of my work on cosmopolitanism and eudaimonism concerns the ancient literature dedicated to the choice of a career, which the philosophers agreed to be a choice between politics and private philosophy. This literature is enormously important to ancient ethics, and someone needs to write a good study of it, since the best available, Robert Joly's Genres de Vie, is riddled with errors. Many of the above-listed works already contain much of the necessary homework, including especially chapters seven through ten of Stoic Cosmopolitanism, and I've tackled the issue directly in these two essays:

"False Idles: The Politics of the 'Quiet Life,'" in A Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought, ed. Ryan Balot (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009), 485-500.

"Aristotle on the Choice of Lives: Two Concepts of Self-Sufficiency," Quel choix de vie? Études sur les rapports entre theōria et praxis chez Aristote, ed. Pierre Destrée (Louvain: Peeters, forthcoming). (download a draft [pdf])

Plato's Republic

I would've written a dissertation on the Republic if I had not been talked out of it by Chris Bobonich, who urged me to work in Hellenistic philosophy. I teach this book more than any other, and have taken on many projects in the attempt to get clearer about it:

"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.

Review of Robert Mayhew, Aristotle's Criticism of Plato's Republic, Bryn Mawr Classical Review 99.2.11 (1999). (link)

"Justice and Compulsion for Plato's Philosopher-Rulers," Ancient Philosophy 20 (2000): 1-17.

Review of Morag Buchan, Women in Plato's Political Theory, Ancient Philosophy 22 (2002): 189-193.

"Ethics and Politics in Plato's Republic," in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2003 Edition, ed. Edward N. Zalta. Revised version, archived in the Fall 2009 Edition, available here.

"Minding the Gap in Plato's Republic," Philosophical Studies 117 (2004): 275-302.

"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.

"The Unity of the Soul in Plato's Republic," in Plato and the Divided Self, ed. Rachel Barney, Tad Brennan, and Charles Brittain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). (download a draft [pdf])

"Eudaimonia in Plato's Republic." (download a draft [pdf])

Other Research

I am very lucky that so much of my job involves reading, thinking, writing, and discussing philosophy. (Meetings and administrative work and such take much more than a small amount of time, but they still come to much less than 50%.) But most of my philosophical engagement is directed at matters other than the topics described above; it is, instead, directed at fulfilling some other responsibility of my job.

First, and most obviously, I read, think, write, and discuss to prepare for classes, lead classes, and critique student work. Only some of this work overlaps with the topics above. When it does not, it nevertheless sometimes leads to a new large topic of inquiry or to a smaller matter that might be worth airing outside the classroom. Here is an effort that I first lectured in class and then wrote up more formally for conferences:

"Plato on the Unity of Politics (Statesman 258e-259c)." (download a draft [pdf])

There is also the professional responsibility to referee for journals and presses. (I figure that refereeing one article for every time that I have caused a referee's services to be engaged is obligatory.) Often, I can restrict these duties to work that is related to cosmopolitanism, eudaimonism, or Plato's Republic, but the work is not always directly helpful.

In addition, I feel a professional responsibility to write the occasional short encyclopedia entry and to review about one book per year, since I benefit from reading others' work in these modes. Again, some of this work I can keep close to my primary topics of research, but some of it attracts my interest because it forces me to do more research on important background to my primary pursuits. Here are some fruits of background research:

Review of Lawrence C. Becker, A New Stoicism, Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (1999): 162-164.

Review of 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.

Review of 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.

Review of Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, Classical Philology 98 (2003): 97-102. (link to article at JSTOR)

Review of Thanassis Samaras, Plato on Democracy, Classical Review n.s. 54 (2004): 71-72.

"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.

Review of Gretchen Reydams-Schils, The Roman Stoics: Self, Responsibility, and Affection, Journal of the History of Philosophy 45 (2007): 490-491.

There are also reading groups. I have been in several that involve students and faculty from WUSTL and the St. Louis area, and I think of this work as partly a responsibility (pedagogical and collegial), partly a boon (because I often find myself learning valuable things for my teaching and research), and partly sheer fun. Since 1997, I have convened one of them, the St. Louis Area Group Reading Ancient Philosophy (SLAGRAP). We've read mostly from Plato's corpus: the Alcibiades I, Clitophon, Gorgias, Menexenus, Philebus, Sophist, Statesman, and Theaetetus. But we've also read Aristotle's Politics I; some fragments of Empedocles; and Stobaeus' excerpts from treatises on marriage by a Stoic Antipater (either Antipater of Tarsus or Antipater of Tyre). In Fall 2009, we started reading Plato's Cratylus. If you are interested in joining SLAGRAP, email me.

Sometimes one is lucky enough to get an attractive invitation to think harder about something one wasn't planning to think harder about. Here are just a few examples:

"Knowing the Whole: Comments on Mary Louise Gill, 'Plato's Phaedrus and the Method of Hippocrates,'" in 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.

"On Harte on Plato on Parts and Wholes." (download a draft [pdf])

"Even More Aporetic Reflections on Philebus 48a-50b: Comments on Mitchell Miller, 'The Pleasures of the Comic and of Socratic Inquiry: Aporetic Reflections on Philebus 48a-50b.'" (download a draft [pdf])

"Cynics." forthcoming in The Routledge Companion to Ancient Philosophy, ed. F. Sheffield and J. Warren. (download a draft [pdf])

Finally, reading and writing and discussing lead to still more reading and writing and discussing. It does not take too much curiosity to turn from one philosophical question to a dozen others, and it does not take too much ambition to want to see how the answers to all these questions might fit together. So I find it easy to assent to what Wilfrid Sellars says on the first page of "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man:"

The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term. Under 'things in the broadest sense' I include such radically different items as not only 'cabbages and kings', but numbers and duties, possibilities and finger snaps, aesthetic experience and death. To achieve success in philosophy would be, to use a contemporary turn of phrase, to 'know one's way around' with respect to all these things, not in that unreflective way in which the centipede of the story knew its way around before it faced the question, 'how do I walk?', but in that reflective way which means that no intellectual holds are barred.

last updated 26 September 2011 ©1997-2009, Eric Alan Brown problems? questions? comments? please email me.