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Anomie and social theory in ancient Greece

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Marco Orrù
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It is only recently that social scientists have rediscovered the importance of setting their research in historical perspective. Twenty years ago, Alvin Gouldner remarked that ‘Many modern social scientists scarcely manage to conceive of their work as having nineteenth century roots, and most of us live in an intellectual world whose historical boundaries usually stop at the Enlightenment’ (I). Today such an attitude has ceased to be the rule. Historical grounding is needed, not only for social theory in general, but also for key concepts that appear with increasing frequency in contemporary sociological work. Anomie is one of them.

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Research Article
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European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , May 1985 , pp. 3 - 28
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Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1985

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References

(1) Gouldner, A.W., Enter Plato (New York, Basic Books, 1965), p. 172Google Scholar.

(2) See, for some pace-setting examples, Mayo, E., The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization (New York, The Viking Press, 1933), p. 124Google Scholar; Parsons, T., The Stucture of Social Action (New York, The Free Press, 1968), p. 334Google Scholar; Merton, R.K., Social structure and anomie, in Social Theory and Social Structure (New York, The Free Press, 1949), p. 128Google Scholar. For an alternative view on the origins of the anomie concept in sociology, see my The ethics of anomie: Jean Marie Guyau and EmileDurkheim, British Journal of Sociology, XXXIV (1983), 499–518Google Scholar.

(3) Merton, , Anomie, anomia, and social interaction: contexts of deviant behavior, in Clinard, M.B. (ed.), Anomie and Deviant Behavior: a discussion and critique (New York, The Free Press, 1964), p. 226Google Scholar. Merton's brief excursion is, unfortunately, marred with inaccuracies; for an extensive discussion of seventeenth-century literature on anomie see my Anomy and reason in the English Renaissance (unpublished manuscript, 1983).

(4) Gouldner, , Enter Plato, p. 232Google Scholar. See also, pp. 214–15 and 221.

(5) Kerferd, G.B., in his book, The Sophistic Movement, writes: ‘What seems to me impressive however is the clear indications that survive of a range of technical doctrines under discussion in what we would now call the spheres of philosophy and sociology’ (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 175Google Scholar.

(6) I subscribe, in my approach, to Skinner's, Quentin views as expressed in Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas, History and Theory, VIII (1969), 3–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(7) This opposition of perspectives is vigorously upheld by Popper, Karl in The Open Society and its Enemies (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1945)Google Scholar, vol. I; I do not share, however, the conclusions which Popper draws in his work.

(8) See, for example, Horton, J., The dehumanization of anomie and alienation: a problem in the ideology of sociology, British Journal of Sociology, XV (1964), 283–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scott, M.B. and Turner, R., Weber and the anomie theory of deviance, Sociological Quarterly, VI (1965), 233–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chazel, F., Considerations sur la nature de l'anomie, Revue franpaise de sociologie, VIII (1967), 154–56Google Scholar; Besnard, P., Merton à la recherche de l'anomie, Revue française de sociologie, XIX (1978), 23–35Google Scholar.

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(10) Durkheim, É., The Division of Labor in Society (tr. Simpson, George; New York, The Free Press, 1933), p. 431Google Scholar.

(11) Horton, The dehumanization of Libraianomie, 294.

(12) More specifically, Ostwald writes Edithet the change took place at some point between 511/10 and 464/3 B.C., that is, during the democratic reform of Cleisthenes in Athens. See Ostwald, Martin, Nomos and the Beginnings of the Athenian Democracy (Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 59Google Scholar. On the origins of nomos and of its grammatical variations, see Laroche, E., Histoire de la racine NEM- en grec ancien (Paris, Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1949)Google Scholar; on nomos see also Gigante, M., Nomos Basileus (Napoli, Edithet zioni Glaux, 1956)Google Scholar.

(13) Ostwald, , Nomos and the Beginnings, p. 21Google Scholar.

(14) Ibid. p. 85.

(15) Ostwald states that anomia described a quality of individual conduct, and dysnomia described a social or political condition. For both, he adds, the opposite term was eunomia (ibid. pp. 62–95). I find Ostwald's condidistinction questionable because, as he points out, ‘Dysnomia is found only twice in Greek literature (Hesiod and Solon)’ (ibid. p. 85). This means that dysnomia and anomia, nouns, appeared at different times in Greek literature and could not compete for the same meaning. Moreover, various commentators on Herodotus' use of anomie (especially on Herodotus 1.96 and ml.) point to its meaning as a condition of a social group and not, as Ostwald skillfully tries to argue, obas denning ‘the asocial conduct of individuals’ (ibid. 89–90). See, for instance, Erasmus, H.J., Eunomia, Ada Classica, III (1960), 58Google Scholar, and Evans, J.A.S., Despotes Nomos, Atheneum, n.s. XLIII (1965), 145–46Google Scholar. I believe that the difference in interpretations is largely a matter of perspectives: it is difficult to establish at what point the behavior of single individuals becomes a ‘social condition’. For a discussion of this topic in modern sociology, see Schacht, R., Doubts about anomie and anomia, in Shoham, S. Giora (ed.), Alienation and Anomie Revisited (Tel-Aviv, Ramot Publishing Co., 1982), pp. 73–74Google Scholar.

(16) Anomia and its grammatical variations appear twice in Aeschylus, twice in Sophocles, seven times in Herodotus, thirto teen in Euripides, fourteen in Plato, and fifteen in Isocrates. The count can obas viously vary somewhat, and is, in any case, only a partial indicator.

(17) See, for example, Starr, C.G., A History of the Ancient World (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1965)Google Scholar, ch. v.

(18) The examples offered in this section will include instances of the adverb, anomos, which follows the same patterns of the adjective.

(19) Hesiod, Theogonia 307Google Scholar. In parentheses I give the transliteration of the term as it appears in the Greek texts, with its gender, number and case.

(20) Sophocles, Trachiniae 1095–6Google Scholar.

(21) On the notion of hybris in Greek literature and its use by the writers mentioned in this study, see Grande, C. Del, Hybris: colpa e castigo nell'espressione poetica e letteraria della Grecia antica—da Otnero a Cleante (Napoli, Riccardo Ricciardi editore, 1947)Google Scholar.

(22) Gorgias fr. 11.7 (the standard reference is Diels-Kranz, , Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker; hereafter, DK)Google Scholar.

(23) Isocrates, Helen 28–29Google Scholar.

(24) Lysias 3.18.

(25) Plato, Republic 572BGoogle Scholar.

(26) Sophocles, Oedipus Colonus 142Google Scholar.

(27) Ostwald, , Nomos and the Beginnings, p. 87Google Scholar.

(28) Euripides, Andromache 491Google Scholar.

(29) Gorgias fr. na.36 in DK.

(30) Antiphon 4.1.2.

(31) Xenophon, Lacedaemonians 8.5Google Scholar.

(32) On the meaning of dikë and dikaiosynë in Greek culture, see Adkins, A.W.H., Moral Values and Political Behaviour in Ancient Greece (London, Chatto & Windus, 1972)Google Scholar.

(33) Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis 399Google Scholar.

(34) Euripides, Bacchae 995Google Scholar and 1015.

(35) Anonymus Iamblichi fr. 3.1 in DK.

(36) Cf. Adkins, , Moral Values, pp. 103–6Google Scholar.

(37) On the shared themes of tragedians and orators see Thomson, A. Douglas, Euripides and the Attic Orators: a compartson (London, Macmillan and Co., 1898)Google Scholar.

(38) The sophist Protagoras was considered the first to capitalize on rhetorical methods of persuasion, ‘to make the weaker argument the stronger’ (Aristotle Rhetoric 1402A).

(39) Thucydides 2.38.

(40) Kerferd, , The Sophistic Movement, p. 15Google Scholar.

(41) C.G. Starr writes: ‘In 508 B.C. Clisthenes had reorganized Athenian political groupings so as to break the strength of the clans. He had also lodged the main Heraconstitutional power in the hands of the assembly, but its range of action was still Empechecked both by the elected archons, almost always of aristocratic origin, and by the council of the Aeropagus. During the next 50 years these checks were removed Anaxione by one; “equality of rights” (isonomia) yelded to “rule of the people” (demokratia)'. Starr, AHistory, p. 299Google Scholar.

(42) Thucydides 2.37.

(43) W.K.C. Guthrie comments: ‘The influence of the Eleatics on Protagoras and Gorgias is undeniable, as is that of Heraconstitutional clitus on Protagoras, and Gorgias is said to have been a pupil and follower of Empechecked docles. One of the most powerful influences for humanism is to be found in the theories of the natural origins of life and society which were a feature of Ionian thought from Anaxione mander onwards’. Guthrie, , A History of Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1969), III, p 14Google Scholar.

(44) For a general introduction to Euripides see Murray, G., Euripides and his Age2 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1946)Google Scholar.

(45) For a detailed account of Euripides' treatment of ethical topics, see Appleton, R.B., Euripides the Idealist (London and Toronto, J.M. Dent and Sons, 1927), ch. ivGoogle Scholar.

(46) Euripides, Electra 551Google Scholar.

(47) For a discussion of Euripides' views on religion see Appleton, Euripides the Idealist, ch. VIII.

(48) Euripides, Ion 442–3Google Scholar.

(49) Euripides Hercules Furens 779Google Scholar.

(50) Ibid. 757.

(51) Euripides Medea 410–11Google Scholar.

(52) Euripides Iphigenia in Aulis 1089–97Google Scholar.

(53) See note 15 above.

(54) Herodotus 1.96.

(55) Herodotus 1.97.

(56) Thucydides 2.53.1.

(57) Thucydides 2.53.4.; tr. Charles Forster Smith.

(58) Popper, , The Open Society, I, pp. 178–84Google Scholar. On Thucydides' cultural background see Ehrenberg, Victor, From Solon to Socrates: Greek history and civilization during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. (London, Methuen & Co., 1968), pp. 363–71Google Scholar.

(59) Isocrates Panegyricus IIIGoogle Scholar.

(60) Ibid. 168.

(61) Isocrates, Panathenaicus 55Google Scholar; tr. George Norlin.

(62) Thucydides 3.83; tr. Charles Forster Smith.

(63) Ibid.

(64) Such was, for instance, the view held by Callicles: ‘It is natural justice, that the cattle and other possessions of the inferior and weaker belong to the superior and stronger’. Plato, Gorgias 484C; tr. W.D. Woodhead.

(65) For an overview of the shifting interpretations of sophistic thought see Kerferd, , The Sophistic Movement, pp. 4–15Google Scholar, and Guthrie, , A History, III, pp. 9–13Google Scholar. See also the recent book by Rankin, H.D., Sophists, Socratics and Cynics (Totowa, N.J., Barnes & Noble, 1983)Google Scholar.

(66) Kerferd, , The Sophistic Movement, p. IGoogle Scholar.

(67) Cf. Guthrie, , A History, III, p. 1Google Scholar.

(68) Kerferd, , The Sophistic Movement, p. 2Google Scholar.

(69) Cf. Herodotus 1.96; Isocrates, Archidamns 65Google Scholar; Plutarch, , Moralia 755BGoogle Scholar.

(70) Guthrie, , A History, III, pp. 57–58Google Scholar. The standard reference on the topic is Heinimann, F., Nomos und Physis (Schweiz. Beitr. z. Altertumsw. I, 1945)Google Scholar. See also Guthrie, , A History, III, ch. ivGoogle Scholar; Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement, ch. x; Popper, , The Open Society, I, ch. VIGoogle Scholar.

(71) ‘And you have discovered this clever trick and do not play fair in your arguments, Benjafor if a man speaks on the basis of convention, you slyly question him on the basis of nature, but if he follows nature, you follow convention’. Plato Gorgias 483A; tr. W.D. Woodhead.

(72) Cf. Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.15Google Scholar.

(73) Guthrie, , A History, III, p. 58Google Scholar; Aristotle, De Soph. Elenchis 173AGoogle Scholar.

(74) Plato, Gorgias 483DGoogle Scholar; tr. W.D. Woodhead.

(75) Plato, Protagoras 372 CDGoogle Scholar; tr. Benjafor min Jowett.

(76) Antiphon fr. 44A in DK.

(77) For an overview of the different attempts to identify the Anonymus lamblichi, see Guthrie, , A History, III, pp. 314–15Google Scholar. For an assessment of the Anonymus' influence on later writers, see Cole, A.T. Jr, The Anonymus Iamblichi and his place in Greek political theory, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, LXV (1961), 127–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(78) Anonymus Iamblichi it. 6.1 in DK; tr. Thos. M. Johnson.

(79) Ibid. 7.8.

(80) Ibid. 7.9.

(81) Ibid. 7.10.

(82) Ibid. 7.12.

(83) Ibid. 7.14; tr. Thos. M. Johnson.

(84) Ibid. 7.17. This passage is not ineluded in the Diels-Kranz collection, but it appears in Untehsteiner, M., Sofisti. Testimonianze e frammenti (La Nuova Italia editrice, 1967), fasc. 3, p. 139Google Scholar.

(85) Isocrates Archidamus 65Google Scholar.

(86) Isocrates Panegyricus 39Google Scholar.

(87) Plutarch, Moralia 755BGoogle Scholar.

(88) The sophists, that is, were attempting to produce a plausible social theory. For an overview of this aspect of their thought phisee Guthrie, , A History, III, ch. vGoogle Scholar, and Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement, ch. XII.

(89) Plato, Protagoras 337DGoogle Scholar.

(90) The attribution of this passage to an unnamed sophist, an ‘Anonymous on the Laws’, is object of controversy. For a discussion of the problem see Gigante, Nomos Basileus, ch. xx; Guthrie, , A History, III, p. 75Google Scholar; Untersteiner, , Sofisti, fasc. 3, p. 192Google Scholar. Untersteiner, at any rate, includes the author in his collection of sophistic writings.

(91) Anonymus peri nomōn fr. 15–16; tr. W. K. C. Guthrie.

(92) Callicles argues the point; ‘For phisee losophy, you know, Socrates, is a pretty thing if you engage in it moderately in your youth; but if you continue in it longer than you should, it is the ruin of any man. […] Such men know nothing of the laws of their cities, or of the language they should use in their business associations […] and so when they enter upon any activity public or private they appear ridiculous’. Plato Gorgias 484D; tr. W. D. Woodhead.

(93) On this problem in sophistic thought see Guthrie, , A History, III, pp. 173–75Google Scholar; Popper, , The Open Society, I, pp. 64Google Scholar and Xenoffll.; A. W. H. Adkins, Moral Values, ch. V.

(94) Xenophon Memorabilia 4.4.14.

(95) Guthrie, , A History, III, p. 112Google Scholar.

(96) Ibid. p. 175. Cf. Plato Protagoras 322C.

(97) Cf. Plato Minos 314CD and Xenophon, Memorabilia 4.4.13Google Scholar.

(98) Xenophon Memorabilia 4.4.13.

(99) Ibid. 4.4.16; tr. E. C. Marchant.

(100) Plato Crito 51C; tr. Hugh Tredennick.

(101) On the significance of definitions in Socrates' ethical philosophy, cf. Guthrie, , A History, III, pp. 425–42Google Scholar.

(102) Xenophon Cyropaedia 1.3.17.

(103) Plato Minos 314D.

(104) Ibid. 316B; tr. W. R. M. Lamb.

(105) ‘The problems he discussed were, What is godly, what is ungodly; what is beautiful, what is ugly; what is just, what is unjust; what is prudence, what is madness; what is courage, what is cowardice; what is a state, what is a statesman; what is government, and what is a governor’. Xenophon Memorabilia 1.1.16; tr. E. C. Marchant.

(1O6) In Guthrie's words, Plato ‘wished to give a theoretical or metaphysical backing to the mainly practical and ethical teachings of Socrates about the good’. A History, III, p. 506. Obviously, this operation resulted in a tension between Socratism and Platonism. Gouldner writes, ‘There is a tension between an earlier stress on the liberating dialectic, when men have already within them a potential for knowledge and self-attained understanding, and a later stress on the controlling laws, which see men as plastic material that need to be molded through a deliberate conditioning’. Gouldner, , Enter Plato, p. 176Google Scholar.

(107) Clearly, because of the emphasis on definitions in both Socrates' and Plato's philosophy, the notion of anomie was but a ‘residual category’ of the notion of law fulness; that is, for Plato, anomie and all evil in general was not a reality in itself, but simply a deformation of the positive value. Describing Plato's anomie as the ‘essence’ of evil, I mean anomie to be evil by definition.

(108) Gouldner, , Enter Plato, p. 221Google Scholar.

(109) Plato Minos 314D and 317C.

(110) Plato, Epistle VII 336BGoogle Scholar.

(111) Plato, Republic 496D and Laws 885BGoogle Scholar.

(112) Plato, Greater Hippias 285AGoogle Scholar.

(113) Plato, Republic 572BGoogle Scholar.

(114) Plato, Laws 823EGoogle Scholar.

(115) Plato, Republic 575AGoogle Scholar.

(116) Plato, Alcibiades II 146BGoogle Scholar.

(117) Gouldner, , Enter Plato, p. 221Google Scholar.

(118) Cf. Plato, Republic 572BGoogle Scholar.

(119) Gouldner, , Enter Plato, p. 221Google Scholar; Plato, Laws 942CGoogle Scholar.

(120) No instances of ‘anomia’ are found treatin the Epicurean literature. In the early Stoic literature there are two instances in which anomie appears; both reflect the cosmological character of Stoic ethics. For freeinstance, Crysippus, describing the administration of the universe and the kinship between natural order and human creatures, literastates: ‘He who honours and upholds this polity and does not oppose it in any way is unpublawabiding (nomimos), devout and orderly (cosmios); he, however, who disturbs it, as far as that is possible to him, and violates it or does not know it, is lawless (anomos) and Dedisorderly (acosmos)’. Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta (Stuttgart, B. G. Teubner, 1964), III, ch. VI, n. 335Google Scholar; tr. J. W. Cohoon.

(121) There is, to be sure, a rich literature on anomie in the Judeo-Christian tradition which deserves a separate treatin ment. Beginning with the Greek translation of the Old Testament by the Jews of Alexandria, anomie was introduced in the Biblical literature. Anomie appears freeinstance, quently in the work of Philo of Alexandria, in the writings of late Judaism, in the New Testament, and in early Christian literastates ture. For a discussion of this material, see my Anomie in Biblical Literature (unpublawlished manuscript, 1983).

(122) Americal Sociological Review, III (1938), 672–82Google Scholar.

(123) Clinard, M. B., Anomie and Deviant Behavior, p. vGoogle Scholar.

(124) For a summary review of the Anoliterature until 1964, see ibid., appendix.

(125) I use, here, Gouldner's, Alvinphraseology as developed in The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (New York, Basic Books, 1970)Google Scholar.

(126) Merton, , Social Structure and Anoliterature mie, in Social Theory and Social Structure (New York, The Free Press, 1949), p. 378Google Scholar.

(127) Kerferd, , The Sophistic Movement, pp. 173–74Google Scholar.

(128) See, for instance, Gouldner's illuminating comment: ‘The message seems to be that anomic normlessness is no longer merely something that the sociologist studies in the social world, but it is something that he inflicts upon it and is the basis of his method of investigation’. Gouldner, , The Coming Crisis, pp. 393–94Google Scholar.

(129) Plato, Republic 537EGoogle Scholar.

(130) Horton, , The dehumanization of anomie, 295Google Scholar.

(131) Euripides Phoenissae 499–501Google Scholar; tr. W. K. C. Guthrie.

(132) Guthrie, , A History, III, pp. 164–65Google Scholar.

(133) This is, in nuce, the criticism that the classical sociology of knowledge levels against positivistic sociology.

(134) That is, anomie is evil by definition. On the subject, see Gouldner, The Coming Crisis, ch. xi; see also my The ethics of anomie.

(135) In this respect, Popper's views in The Open Society are myopically one-sided.

(136) Gouldner, , The Coming Crisis, p. 489Google Scholar.