Initially, at least, those who boldly assert the importance of classical political thought might be greeted with either skepticism or revulsion or both. Skepticism, because our contemporaries will naturally wonder whether the highly particular, remote, and often alien Greco-Roman political experience can shed light on modern political life and thought. How should scholars and citizens ‘‘locate’’ classical political thought within the contemporary world of technological progress, religious pluralism, universal human rights, and multiculturalism? Revulsion, because virtually all ancient Greek and Roman writers were politically intolerant, illiberal slave-owners who would have scoffed at the idea of universal human rights. They would have failed to understand why they should tolerate, much less respect, the diverse standards of different cultural traditions. What relationship do we now bear, or want to bear, to the highly particular ancient Mediterranean political world?1
Modern political thought can neither ignore nor simply embrace Greek and Roman political analysis. On the one hand, we study classical political thought in the shadow of early modern efforts to reject the claims of antiquity. The seventeenth century founders of modern liberalism, such as Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke, aspired to create an utterly new, even utopian, vision of political order and human freedom. Their sanguine attitudes toward modern progress were based as much on faith in scientific and technological advancement as on the creation of new and supposedly more realistic political ideals. As noble as their ambitions may have been, however, the goal of ‘‘routing the ancients,’’ of eliminating classical political thought from the theoretical road map of modernity, is not a wise option. Whatever their shortcomings or mistakes, the ancient thinkers captured central truths about political psychology and about the social character of human beings. Even now, the ancient thinkers offer us theoretical and imaginative opportunities to improve our political understanding. We can take advantage of these opportunities without endorsing every feature of the classical thinkers’ outlook.
On the other hand, the act of recovering ancient voices or ideas should not be enlisted in the conservative project of establishing orthodoxies that have no real place in the modern world. Political hierarchy, gender inequality, unreflective respect for certain traditions combined with neglect or contempt of others, and the antiindividualistic emphasis on ‘‘community’’ - these are not attractive possibilities for our time. At all events, such projects, if based on claims to the cultural authority of classical antiquity, represent only partial and incomplete recoveries ofclassical political thought. They do not do justice to the traditions of merciless self-criticism practiced by many of the authors of ancient Greek and Roman political texts (see below, ‘‘The Provocation to Self-Criticism’’).
Without lapsing into either form of extremism, this collection reflects upon the best ways to understand and perhaps reappropriate classical political thought. Our responses derive from the ethical commitment to making our academic work meaningful to inhabitants of the post-enlightenment nation-state. We hope to have addressed the issues in ways that people should care about. In accordance with this commitment, I asked contributors to adopt a self-consciously two-tiered outlook on the ancient material. At least as an initial goal, contributors have located ancient political ideas in their particular historical contexts. This emphasis on historical context grows out of the belief that ancient thinkers offered creative responses to political conventions that they regarded as useless, stultifying, or harmful. These
Responses were ‘‘local.’’ They were particularly meaningful, and perhaps unsettling, to contemporaries familiar with the urgent questions of ancient political life. Yet ancient political writers were not prisoners of particular historical contingencies. Nor did they understand themselves as unshakably entrenched in particular historical moments. Instead, both systematic philosophers and unsystematic thinkers typically regarded themselves as exponents of what they took to be a natural or unchanging order, an order that was not historically contingent but satisfied the basic requirements of our human nature. As the following essays amply illustrate, contributors to the present volume understand that the ancients’ ambitions in this regard are worthy of careful consideration and intellectual respect.
World History
