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Abstract
The ancient Greek philosophical discourse harbors an anthropology radically discontinuous with the framework of modernity. Rather than emphasizing the tension between the individual and community, and far from understanding the political on the ground of instinctual sacrifice (a constant from Hobbes, to Nietzsche, to Freud), Greek thought illuminates the interdependence of ethics and politics, and situates the human being in a cosmos in which the human is neither central nor prominent. In particular the reflection of philia, most notably in Plato and Aristotle, calls for the exploration of human potentiality with outstanding vigor and visionary audacity.
Notes
1. On the latter dimension of friendship, see Nicomachean Ethics 1159b27–1160a28. Aristotle devotes to friendship conspicuous segments of his ethico-political treatises, in particular the sustained discussion in Nicomachean Ethics Theta and Iota.
2. The essay will be published again posthumously, with the addition of Montaigne’s notes on his own manuscript, in 1595.
3. The word ‘hostage’, too, must be understood in light of the language of hospitality, hosting, and the host (hostis).
4. As Heraclitus is reported to have said (Diels-Kranz 123), physis (the force surfacing and coming to light) loves radical alterity: concealment. Indeed, emerging belongs to hiding.
5. The formula koina ta ton philon, attributed to Pythagoras, is dear to Plato. See Republic 424a, Lysis 207c, Phaedrus 279c, Laws 739c; but also Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Iota 1168b8; and Cicero, De Officiis I.51.
6. Empedocles sometimes associates Aphrodite (or an equivalent epithet, such as Kypris) and Philotes, e.g. Diels and Kranz, 17.24, 73.1, 75.3, 98.3. Also Venus in Lucretius’ De rerum natura. Hesiod mentions Philotes only once, as daughter of Night (Theogony 224).