Author: Nederman, Cary
Title: Socio-Political Naturalism and the History of Republican Thought: Cicero contra Aristotle
Review/Collection: "The European Legacy", 26, 1
Editor: Taylor & Francis
Year edition: 2021
Pages: 1-21
Keywords: Philosophie - Filosofia - Philosophy, Politique - Politica - Politics
Description: [Nederman, Cary] [Abstract] Recent scholarship on republicanism often looks back to Aristotle as the Greco-Roman epitome of the history of republican theory. This article contends that Aristotle offers a poor model in comparison with the premiere political philosopher of the Roman Republic, Marcus Tullius Cicero. The argument concentrates on the implications of the respective conceptions of Aristotle and Cicero of the origins of social and political association rooted in human nature. Cicero’s theory of the natural foundations of society has generally been ignored or trivialized by scholars who presume it to be merely a weak imitation of Aristotle’s. This article demonstrates that the Ciceronian account of the naturalistic grounding of human social engagement differs from Aristotelian naturalism in a way that brings into question major approaches to the history of republicanism and also has implications for contemporary republican theory.
Works:
Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10848770.2020.1800915
Author initials: Nederman 2021
Title: Socio-Political Naturalism and the History of Republican Thought: Cicero contra Aristotle
Review/Collection: "The European Legacy", 26, 1
Editor: Taylor & Francis
Year edition: 2021
Pages: 1-21
Keywords: Philosophie - Filosofia - Philosophy, Politique - Politica - Politics
Description: [Nederman, Cary] [Abstract] Recent scholarship on republicanism often looks back to Aristotle as the Greco-Roman epitome of the history of republican theory. This article contends that Aristotle offers a poor model in comparison with the premiere political philosopher of the Roman Republic, Marcus Tullius Cicero. The argument concentrates on the implications of the respective conceptions of Aristotle and Cicero of the origins of social and political association rooted in human nature. Cicero’s theory of the natural foundations of society has generally been ignored or trivialized by scholars who presume it to be merely a weak imitation of Aristotle’s. This article demonstrates that the Ciceronian account of the naturalistic grounding of human social engagement differs from Aristotelian naturalism in a way that brings into question major approaches to the history of republicanism and also has implications for contemporary republican theory.
Works:
Link: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10848770.2020.1800915
Author initials: Nederman 2021
