The centrepiece of Cicero's De re publica is a discussion of justice. This discussion, which evokes the theme of the Platonic dialogue after which it was named, consists of a set of three speeches. It begins with a speech opposing justice, placed in the mouth of L. Furius Philus and alleged by him to be modelled on the second of a pair of speeches for and against justice delivered in Rome in 155 B.C. by the Greek Academic philosopher Carneades. Philus' (...) speech lays the dialectical foundation for the two subsequent speeches, a defence of justice as the prerequisite for government by C. Laelius, and an explanation of its role in various forms of government by Scipio Aemilianus. (shrink)

Teases out from assumptions underlying Polybius's constitutional theory an otherwise unknown subjectivist, agent-relative utilitarian theory of well-being. In contrast to other ancient theories, other-concern is assumed to be rooted in nonrational human nature and without moral value. Moral concepts arise within a social community from rational reflection on personal experience and lead to socially constructed moral values and political institutions that promote cooperative over competitive behaviors. The assumptions meet Arcesilaus's skeptical objections to dogmatic ethics. Polybius, some of whose political associates (...) studied under Arcesilaus, may have derived his theory from current antiskeptical justifications of normative ethics and politics. (shrink)

Twenty-five years ago Paul Wilpert called for a thorough re-examination of our knowledge of the content of Aristotle's lost workDe Philosophia. Expressing his reservations about the validity of our current reconstruction of the work, he wrote: ‘On the basis of attested fragments, we form for ourselves a picture of the content of a lost writing, and this picture in turn serves to interpret new fragments as echoes of that writing. So our joy over the swift growth of our collection of (...) fragments is clouded by the thought that we are not thereby really nearing the original character of the work, but we are entangling ourselves ever more tightly in a picture we ourselves have created.’ As a corrective Wilpert called for a critical retracing of our steps since 1830 to establish a more secure reconstruction of this important lost work.Since then there have been numerous, searching analyses of the ideas and fragments ofDe Philosophia, but at least one venerable old theory has escaped critical reappraisal: namely, the theory that inDe PhilosophiaAristotle discussed his doctrine of a fifth element, i.e. his belief that the heavenly bodies are composed of an element distinct from the four earthly elements, earth, water, air, and fire. This theory has become so widely accepted that it has virtually become a fact. When support is needed, most modern authors simply cite one or both of the two modern authorities on the early Aristotle, namely W. Jaeger and E. Bignone. The more meticulous restate the traditional evidence with complete confidence that this evidence proves their case. If Wilpert's hope for a firmly grounded reconstruction of theDe Philosophiais ever to be achieved, one of the importantdesideratatoday is a critical re-examination of the evidence for the fifth element in this work. (shrink)