The Gift of Philosophy: Between otium and negotium

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Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from the Latin are by Yelena Baraz.

Notes

1. My translation. “atque ille quidem princeps ingeni et doctrinae Plato tum denique fore beatas res publicas putavit, si aut docti et sapientes homines eas regere coepissent aut ii qui regerent omne suum studium in doctrina et sapientia conlocassent hanc coniunctionem videlicet potestatis et sapientiae saluti censuit civitatibus esse posse.” Cicero, Epistulae ad Fratrem Quintum 1.1.29–30. Abbreviations used below for most Latin texts are, following Baraz’s practice, from the Oxford Latin Dictionary; references to the Cicero’s Letters are in keeping with D.R. Shackleton Bailey, Cicero, Marcus Tullius: Letters to Atticus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965–70). See Peter White’s translation of commentary on the quoted passage in Cicero in Letters: Epistolary Relations in the Late Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 106.

2. My translation. “nec dubitamus multa esse quae et nos praeterierint. homines enim sumus et occupati officiis subsicivisque temporibus ista curamus, id est nocturnis, ne quis vestrum putet his cessatum horis. dies vobis inpendimus, cum somno valetudinem computamus, vel hoc solo praemio contenti, quod, dum ista, ut ait M. Varro, musinamur, pluribus horis vivimus. profecto enim vita vigilia est.” Pliny (the Elder), Naturalis Historia, Praefatio 4. Composed from AD 77 and left incomplete at the author’s death during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Latin text with English translation available at the Perseus Project at: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu; for the Latin with French translation, see Itinera Electronica: Du texte à l'hypertexte: at: http://agoraclass.fltr.ucl.ac.be/concordances/pline_hist_nat_praef/ligne05.cfm?numligne=1&mot=O.

3. Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 2.

4. “Neoliberalism” is a slippery term whose meanings are carefully explored by Taylor C. Boas and Jordan Gans-Morse in “Neoliberalism: From Liberal Philosophy to Anti-Liberal Slogan,” open access online: Springer-Link.com. Their first alternative meaning is most relevant here: “A first potential application of the term neoliberalism is as a reference to the unique characteristics that distinguish modern capitalism from previous models of development. One of the most striking features of the contemporary era has been the waning or disappearance of alternatives to the free market.” They go on to argue that, second, the term refers to “the perception that economic reforms in the developing world during the past three decades represent an even more fundamentalist application of liberal recipes than in classic bastions of laissez-faire such as the United States and the United Kingdom” (20). The issue for Nussbaum is that “liberal education” has become subjected to the logic of neoliberal economics, in which all ideas and values are reducible to exchange value, i.e., to money.

5. This is the interlocutor Stoic Philosopher Q. Aelius Tubero’s objection to Scipio Africanus’s failed attempt to define the “discipline” Cicero is looking for in the dialogue.

6. Michel Foucault, Les mots et les choses: une archéologie des sciences humaines [The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences] (Paris: Gallimard, 1966).

7. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).

8. Pliny was procurator under Vespasian for Transalpine Gaul, Africa, Spain, and Belgica. Beforehand he served in the military, particularly in Germany, where he became friends with Titus.

9. Based on Gérard Genette’s Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

10. Cicero: “sic enim commutatus est totus et scriptis meis quibusdam quae in manibus habebam et adsiduitate orationis et praeceptis ut tali animo in rem publican quali nos volumus futurus sit” (Att. 16.5.2; SB 410).

11. Cicero, Fam. 9.6.5; SB 181.

12. Cicero, Fam. 5.15.1–4; SB 252.

13. Cicero, Fam. 6.1.3; SB 242.

14. Cicero’s Consolatio has been lost for the most part to history, like Hortensius, and so its contents must be inferred or pieced together from other sources.

15. Cicero, Div. 2.3.

16. Cicero, Fam. 9.2.5; SB 177.

17. My translation. Eine Erklärung, wie sie einer Schrift in einer Vorrede nach der Gewohnheit vorausgeschickt wird—über den Zweck, den der Verfasser sich in ihr vorgesetzt, sowie über die Veranlassungen und das Verhältnis, worin er sie zu andern frühern oder gleichzeitigen Behandlungen desselben Gegenstandes zu stehen glaubt—scheint bei einer philosophischen Schrift nicht nur überflüssig, sondern um der Natur der Sache willen sogar unpassend und zweckwidrig zu sein. (G. W. F. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, 1807, at: http://www.zeno.org).

18. Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1981).

19. Philippa Smith, “‘A Self-Indulgent Misuse of Leisure and Writing’? How Not to Write Philosophy,” in Cicero the Philosopher, ed. J. G. F. Powell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 301–23.

20. See Martha Nussbaum, “Duties of Justice, Duties of Material Aid: Cicero’s Problematic Legacy,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 8.2 (2000): 176–206; and Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), for her fully developed cosmopolitan theory of justice.