Democracy, Justice, and Equality in Ancient Greece: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives

324 Pages·2018·3.34 MB·English

by  Georgios Anagnostopoulos

Philosophical Studies Series
Georgios Anagnostopoulos 
Gerasimos Santas Editors
Democracy,
Justice, and
Equality in
Ancient Greece
Historical and Philosophical
Perspectives
Philosophical Studies Series
Volume 132
Editor-in-Chief
Luciano Floridi, University of Oxford, Oxford Internet Institute, United Kingdom
Mariarosaria Taddeo, University of Oxford, Oxford Internet Institute,
United Kingdom
Executive Editorial Board
Patrick Allo, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Massimo Durante, Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy
Phyllis Illari, University College London, United Kingdom
Shannon Vallor, Santa Clara University
Board of Consulting Editors
Lynne Rudder Baker, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Stewart Cohen, Arizona State University, Tempe
Radu Bogdan, Tulane University
Marian David, University of Notre Dame
John M. Fischer, University of California at Riverside
Keith Lehrer, University of Arizona, Tucson
Denise Meyerson, Macquarie University
François Recanati, Institut Jean-Nicod, EHESS, Paris
Mark Sainsbury, University of Texas at Austin
Barry Smith, State University of New York at Buffalo
Nicholas D. Smith, Lewis & Clark College
Linda Zagzebski, University of Oklahoma
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6459
Georgios Anagnostopoulos • Gerasimos Santas
Editors
Democracy, Justice, and
Equality in Ancient Greece
Historical and Philosophical Perspectives
Editors
Georgios Anagnostopoulos Gerasimos Santas
Department of Philosophy Department of Philosophy
University of California, San Diego University of California, Irvine
La Jolla, CA, USA Irvine, CA, USA
ISSN 0921-8599 ISSN 2542-8349 (electronic)
Philosophical Studies Series
ISBN 978-3-319-96312-9 ISBN 978-3-319-96313-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96313-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018956133
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Preface
The idea of editing a collection of essays on the issues explored in the present
volume was conceived by the editors while co-teaching a graduate seminar on
political justice and political equality and inequality in Plato and Aristotle. Both of
these great authors studied and raised critical questions about the basis of the
political egalitarianism of the ancient Greek participatory democracies, an
egalitarianism that was much stronger than that of modern representative
democracies. They also wondered about the economic inequalities that existed in
the democracies of their time alongside the absolute political equalities in those
democracies. Both thinkers sought to discover or invent what they thought were
better constitutions and political communities—even ideal constitutions or cities, be
they best possible or second-best possible. In the process of doing so, they had to
deal with questions of distributive justice: how and on what basis to distribute—
equally or unequally—political offices and socioeconomic goods, and how to
address the problems of faction, political disunity, and civic instability. Our
realization that the presence of inequalities in democracies today is still strong led
to the idea of a collection of essays, by historians and philosophers, on ancient
Greek democracy, justice, and equality, in the hope that some valuable lessons about
equality and inequality in contemporary democracies could be learned from the
democratic experiment in ancient Greek cities.
As a first step, we organized a 2-day conference in 2015, in which historians and
philosophers debated vigorously these themes and questions. We thank all the
scholars who made presentations or participated in the discussions, including Paula
Gottlieb, Monte Johnson, David Keyt, Deborah Modrak, Josiah Ober, Terry Penner,
Christof Rapp, Christopher Rowe, Nicholas Smith, Claire Taylor, Robert Wallace,
and Charles Young. We also thank Dorothea Frede, Catherine McKeen, and Fred
Miller who, although unable to attend the conference, contributed to the project by
submitting papers to this volume. Our idea of this collection could not have been
realized without the contributions of all these scholars. We are most grateful to them
for accepting our invitation to be a part of the project and for responding promptly
to our many requests. It has been a pleasure working with all of them. We also want
to thank Mr. Brian Tracz for his invaluable assistance in the copy editing of all the
v
vi Preface
papers in this volume. Lastly, we wish to thank Solomon George, Stephen O’Reilly,
and Dr. Mariarosaria Taddeo from Springer for all their help in the various stages of
the publication of the volume.
La Jolla, CA, USA Georgios Anagnostopoulos
Irvine, CA, USA Gerasimos Santas
Contents
1 Introduction ............................................................................................. 1
Georgios Anagnostopoulos and Gerasimos Santas
2 Institutions, Growth, and Inequality in Ancient Greece ..................... 15
Josiah Ober
3 Economic Inequality, Poverty, and Democracy in Athens .................. 39
Claire Taylor
4 Plato on Equality and Democracy ......................................................... 63
Christopher J. Rowe
5 Inequality, Intention, and Ignorance: Socrates on Punishment
and the Human Good.............................................................................. 83
Terry Penner
6 Like-Mindedness: Plato’s Solution to the Problem of Faction ........... 139
Catherine McKeen and Nicholas D. Smith
7 Plato on Inequalities, Justice, and Democracy ..................................... 161
Gerasimos Santas
8 Justice, Distribution of Resources, and (In)Equalities
in Aristotle’s Ideal Constitution ............................................................. 179
Georgios Anagnostopoulos
9 Aristotle on Freedom and Equality ....................................................... 225
David Keyt
10 Virtue, Equality, and Inequality in Aristotle’s Politics ........................ 243
Deborah K. W. Modrak
11 Aristotle on Inequality of Wealth .......................................................... 257
Paula Gottlieb
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viii Contents
12 Aristotle on Democracy and the Marketplace ...................................... 269
Fred D. Miller Jr.
13 Equal But Not Equal: Plato and Aristotle on Women as Citizens ...... 287
Dorothea Frede
Index ................................................................................................................. 307
Contributors
Georgios Anagnostopoulos Department of Philosophy, University of California,
San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA
Dorothea Frede University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Paula Gottlieb University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
David Keyt University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
Catherine McKeen Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, North Adams, MA,
USA
Fred D. Miller Jr University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
Deborah K. W. Modrak University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA
Josiah Ober Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA
Terry Penner University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
Christopher J. Rowe Durham University, Durham, UK
Gerasimos Santas Department of Philosophy, University of California, Irvine,
Irvine, CA, USA
Nicholas D. Smith Lewis and Clark College, Portland, OR, USA
Claire Taylor University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
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