This essay explores the treatment of the relation between nature (phusis) and norm or convention (nomos) in Democritus and in certain Platonic dialogues. In his physical theory Democritus draws a sharp contrast between the real nature of things and their representation via human conventions, but in his political and ethical theory he maintains that moral conventions are grounded in the reality of human nature. Plato builds on that insight in the account of the nature of morality in the myth in the Protagoras. That provides material for a defense of morality against the attacks by Callicles in the Gorgias and Thrasymachus and Glaucon in the Republic, all of whom seek to use the nature-convention contrast to devalue morality.

Among the instances of apparent illiberality in Plato's Republic, one stands out as especially curious. Long before making a forced return to the cave, and irrespective of the kinds of compulsion operative in such a homecoming, the philosopher-king has been compelled to apprehend the Good (Rep. VII.519c5-d2, 540a3-7). Why should compulsion be necessary or appropriate in this situation? Schooled intensively through the decades for an eventual grasping of the Good, beginning already with precognitive training in music and art calculated to equip the guardian with a natural affinity towards the good and beautiful (Rep. III.401d3-402a4), the fully mature guardian might be expected to leap towards the Good when it is first opportune. For the Good is, according to Plato, the greatest thing to be learned (megiston mathêma; Rep. VI.504e4-5, 505a2). Reflection on these questions permits us to develop a richer appreciation of the forms of necessitation and compulsion Plato envisages for his guardians, which turn out to be primarily merely hypothetical instances of nomic necessitation. It follows that many of Plato's appeals to compulsion are neither coercive nor objectionably authoritarian.

The aim of this long essay is to explain why the philosopher-ruler of Plato's Republic descends “with regret” or having been “compelled” from his contemplation of the Forms to rule the state. It offers a new, optimistic interpretation of his goal in so descending, namely to try to make everyone into a philosopher. After a brief introductory section, I turn to the argument of the Republic to show both that the philosopher's understanding of the Good causes him to try to maximize the amount of good in the cosmos, and that, since every rational person is capable, in virtue of his rational soul, of becoming a philosopher, this amounts to adopting the aforementioned goal. In the third section, I argue that the source of his regret cannot be that he sacrifices his own happiness in descending. Here the vehicle is a consideration of the “Plotinian” reading of the Republic, whose conclusion is that once he has achieved knowledge of the Forms, the philosopher can neither increase his happiness by further study, nor lose his happiness. Hence, if he is true to his goal, he has to try to improve the lot of others. In the next section, I argue that the Timaeus' account of the Demiurge's construction of the cosmos helps us to understand both the nature of the ruler's attempts to make everyone a philosopher and why he also understands that he will inevitably fail. Here the key idea is to link the Timaeus' account of Necessity or the Wandering Cause with the circumstances facing the philosopher in ruling the state. In the conclusion, I sketch how this account of the philosopher's reason for descending suggests that the best or ideal city in the Republic is not the tripartite kallipolis, but is rather a version of the City of Pigs.

Plato's antidemocratic theory of social justice is instructive once we distinguish between the abstract parts of his theory and the empirical or other assumptions he uses in applying that theory. His application may have contained empirical mistakes, and it may have been burdened too much with a prolific metaphysics and a demanding epistemology. An attempt is made to look at his theory of social justice in imaginary isolation from empirical mistakes and from his metaphysics and epistemology. It is then argued that some of Plato's proposals and criticisms of democracy are well worth our attention, especially in the case of governing. His attempt to separate ruling and wealth and to establish economic floors and ceilings for his ideal city seems especially instructive in view of problems in these areas that modern democracies have experienced. Isolating his theory of social justice from his epistemology and metaphysics may be more problematic. Still, Plato's insistence that superior wisdom is the central virtue of rulers is instructive, and in this respect some modern defenders of democratic justice, such as J. S. Mill and John Rawls, have leaned some in Plato's direction. Finally, Plato's criticism of democratic free choice of occupation is less persuasive.

The Federalist, written by “Publius” (Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison) in 1787-1788 in defense of the proposed constitution of the United States, endorses a fundamental principle of political legitimacy: namely, “it is the reason of the public alone, that ought to control and regulate the government.” This essay argues that this principle—the rule of reason—may be traced back to Plato. Part I of the essay seeks to show that Plato's Statesman offers a clearer understanding of the rule of reason than his more famous Republic, and it also indicates how this principle gave rise to the ideal of constitutionalism, which was adopted and reformulated by Aristotle, Polybius, and Cicero, as well as moderns including Locke and Montesquieu. Part II argues that The Federalist agrees with Plato when it argues that popular sovereignty must be tempered by the rule of reason. A proper distance should be maintained between the people and the actual exercise of power in order that political decisions be based on reason rather than passion. The people must therefore act through a federal system divided between national government and state governments, and these governments must themselves possess separated powers which control each other by means of checks and balances. Indeed, federalism itself may be viewed as a modern counterpart of Plato's “art of weaving,” which unites naturally disparate and opposed parts of the city-state into a concordant whole. In declaring, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” The Federalist concedes that politics is the art of the possible. But statesmanship is not an exercise in pragmatism devoid of principles. Here “Publius” shares Plato's vision of politics as a “second sailing,” that is, an attempt to approximate the ideal of rational governance as far as possible in ordinary politics.

This essay aims at establishing that the word “free” (eleutheros) and related terms are used by Plato in the Laws in two main senses. There is, first, the constitutional meaning of “freedom” which is put to work in book 3 in order to analyze moderately good and degenerate forms of historical constitutions. Strikingly enough, this meaning does not play any subsequent role in the shaping of the Platonic constitution itself—a fact which requires some kind of explanation. There is, then, scattered throughout the work, the behavioral meaning of “freedom” according to which the citizens of Magnesia, who are free in the sense that they are free men, are supposed to behave as such and to be educated accordingly, that is as “gentlemen.” One important aspect here is that a free education will appeal to rationality. The philosophically interesting fact, however, is that there appears to be no intrinsic link for Plato between freedom and rationality, as we might expect on the basis of modern philosophical assumptions whereby freedom is grounded on rationality. Rather, freedom is the condition for exercising rationality, because this exercise takes time. True, there is in the Laws a unique occurrence of yet another conception of “freedom” according to which one is free when one's reason masters one's desires. One might speculate why Plato did not develop this specific conception of freedom, which is in some sense closer to some modern views about liberty, as is shown, for example, from I. Berlin's concept of “positive liberty.”

I examine Plato's claim in the Republic that philosophers must rule in a good city and Aristotle's attitude towards this claim in his early, and little discussed, work, the Protrepticus. I argue that in the Republic, Plato's main reason for having philosophers rule is that they alone understand the role of philosophical knowledge in a good life and how to produce characters that love such knowledge. He does not think that philosophic knowledge is necessary for getting right the vast majority of judgments about actions open to assessment as virtuous or vicious. I argue that in the Protrepticus Aristotle accepts similar reasons for the rule of philosophers, but goes beyond the Republic and seems to suggest that philosophic knowledge is required for getting right ethical and political judgments in general. I close by noting some connections with Aristotle's later views in the Eudemian Ethics, the Nicomachean Ethics, and the Politics.

Contemporary political discourse is marked with the language of democracy, and Western countries in particular seek to promote democracy at home and abroad. However, there is a sublimated conflict in general political discourse between a desire to rely on alleged political experts and a desire to assert the supposed common sense of all men. Can the struggle between the democratic and aristocratic values embodied in this conflict be reconciled? The question is perennial, and raises issues that are central to constitutional design. Aristotle, developing in significant ways insights made by his teacher Plato, grapples with it in his Politics. Aristotle's views on these matters are relevant—by way of the American Founders'—to contemporary American politics and modern democracies generally. During the eighteenth century, the Founders, some of whom explicitly reached back to Aristotle's work, also struggled—especially in The Federalist Papers—with these thorny issues of constitutional design. They created the U.S. Constitution in part to address these very same problems and issues. We are living in some ways, then, in the shadow of Aristotle's political theorizing, albeit as transposed by the American Founders. Both Aristotle and some of the American Founders theoretically favor aristocracy over democracy, but concede that in practice a blend of the two has to be integrated into the fundamental structure of political society. We need to reconnect with these important political discussions in order to come to terms with aristocratic and democratic values in our current circumstances.

Aristotle's doctrine that human beings are political animals is, in part, an empirical thesis, and posits an inclination to enter into cooperative relationships, even apart from the instrumental benefits of doing so. Aristotle's insight is that human cooperation rests on a non-rational propensity to trust even strangers, when conditions are favorable. Turning to broader questions about the role of nature in human development, I situate Aristotle's attitude towards our natural propensities between two extremes: he rejects both the view that we must bow to whatever nature dictates, and also the view that nature is generally or always to be suppressed or overcome. This middle position requires that Aristotle hold nature and goodness apart, so that the latter can serve as a standard for evaluating the former. He holds that nature does not treat all human beings alike: just as some are handicapped in their development by a deficiency in their natural abilities or propensities, others are extraordinarily fortunate and have so powerful a disposition to act well that they easily acquire good habits and skills of practical reasoning. Further, he recognizes that sociable inclinations and natural virtues have to compete in the human soul with other natural forces that make ethical life extraordinarily difficult. That is why things so often go so badly for us: we need not only to subdue the external environment, but to overcome certain inner natural obstacles as well. Even so, for Aristotle ethical life is not generally alienated from nature, as it is for other philosophers.

This essay deals with Aristotle's complex account in Politics III.4 of the good man and the upright citizen. By this account the goodness of an upright citizen is relative to the city of which he is a citizen, whereas the goodness of a good man is absolute. Aristotle holds that the goodness of a good man and the goodness of an upright citizen are identical in one case only, that of a full citizen of his ideal city. In a non-ideal city the two are always distinct. One would expect, then, that cases would arise where the goodness of an upright citizen would demand, and the goodness of a good man forbid, the very same action. Aristotle, however, never discusses such cases directly, and many scholars have thought that he skirts the issue entirely. I argue, on the contrary, that Aristotle believes that there are cases where a good man will act differently from an upright citizen and that, consequently, he believes, as we would hope he would believe, that there are limits to political obligation.

This essay argues that Stoicism is the ancient philosophy most relevant to modern politics and civic education. Its relevance is due not to the advocacy of any specific political system or public policy but to its theory that the human good depends primarily on rationality and excellence of character rather than on material prosperity and productivity. According to Stoicism, all human beings are related to one another in virtue of our communal nature as rational animals. Reflection on the norms of human nature persuaded the Stoics that we all share a common interest in living just and mutually beneficial lives. This principle, though it favors an equitable distribution of goods and services, makes rationality and integrity, rather than material prosperity, the essential values of community and the measure of normative citizenship and lawmaking. Our goal as Stoic citizens is to practice the art of what is always possible or in our power—doing our best to live mutually beneficial and well-reasoned lives—while recognizing that the external success we are naturally inclined to aim at may be frustrated because we live in a world we can never fully control.

While the classical Greco-Roman tradition is not ordinarily thought of as associated with radical individualism, many of the central concerns of such radical individualists as Frédéric Bastiat, Herbert Spencer, Benjamin Tucker, Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, and Ayn Rand—including their views on human sociality, spontaneous order, and the relation between self-interest and non-instrumental concern for others—are shown to be inheritances from and developments of Platonic, Aristotelian, Epicurean, and Stoic ideas. Hence those working in the classical tradition have reason to explore the radical individualist tradition and vice versa.