SCS-59: Greek and Roman Philosophy

Since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, international law in this area has been based on the relationship between Human Dignity, taken to be an inherent and inalienable quality of all humans equally; and lengthy lists of the Human Rights that, in some sense, are described as deriving from or dependent upon this Dignity.

Aristotle claims that Socrates founded ethical philosophy (Metaphysics 987b1; cf. Diogenes Laertius 1.14). But Plato and Xenophon present us a Socrates who esteemed the ethical wisdom of the traditional Seven Sages (σοφοί or σοφισταί) even as he disdained the activity of natural scientists. Xenophon’s Socrates is a student of the Sages who incorporates their maxims into his teaching. Plato’s Socrates, conversely, makes the Sages resemble himself. Both Plato and Xenophon, though, seek to establish Socrates within the tradition of earlier ethics.

Extending reevaluations of Stoic emotions to the therapeutic potential of disgust (e.g. Graver 2007; Berno and Gazzarri 2022; Graf 2023), I argue that anagnorisis in Seneca's Thyestes is achieved not through an Aristotelian model of cognitive detachment (Staley 2009; Mowbray 2012; cf. Schiesaro 2001) but through affective engagement with material elicitors of disgust.

My paper reinterprets the natural-law arguments employed by Cicero in Philippics 10 and 11. In these two speeches, delivered before the Senate in early 43, Cicero proposed sweeping military commands for his allies Brutus and Cassius respectively. On both occasions, Cicero’s opponents accused Brutus and Cassius of acting without senatorial authorisation and, in particular, with entering another governor’s province. Cicero defended them not by citing legal loopholes but by appealing to the superiority of natural law.