[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]
The chapters in this collection are mainly about what might be phusei or kata phusin or secundum naturam and about how these might or might not be norms for politics in classical antiquity, the Hellenistic age, late antiquity, and the middle ages. The ones reviewed in some detail here are those which are most explicit about what the underlying phusis and natura might be.
In the first chapter, Oliver Primavesi argues that the anonymous target in the Gyges section of Republic IX represents Antiphon the sophist, to whom a version of the phusis-nomos opposition has been traced. The author begins with the myth of the three groups of citizens associated with the different metals in Republic III, noting that Socrates uses both phusisand its cognates in this section, where Socrates says that the citizens are born from the earth like plants. Primavesi discusses the use of the cognates phuomai and phuton with phusis, “usually translated as ‘nature’ but literally meaning ‘plant growth’,” and observes, invoking Patzer: “It is true that the literal meaning of phusis was normally generalized to ‘natural form of a living being,’ but this very generalization indicates that, in Greek, the growth of plants epitomizes the stability and regularity with which all genera of organic life reproduce themselves in basically unchanged form – as far as the Greeks could tell” (5). The focus on phusis comes about in the Republic, according to the author, because, for Socrates, the “anti-democratic character of his legislation stands in need of justification” which “is to be provided by convincing everybody that his laws concerning class-division simply acknowledge and preserve a division produced by natural growth” (5). So far, this explanation is consistent with some earlier scholars’ observations on phusis as growth. In Republic IX, however, “where the term phusis – in keeping with its word formation – is associated with the process of bodily growth (phuein, phuesthai) or its result (pephukenai), phusis and its cognates completely lack the usual [favorable] normative connotation” (16), they serve instead a criticism of phusis in favor of the nomos which provides Socrates with an effective argument against Antiphon’s advocacy of secret injustice in the Aletheia fragments. For Socrates, human phusis has a rational component which provides the nomos or nomima, while for Antiphon “the only relevant conflict is between natural disposition and human needs, on the one hand, and legal norms (nomima) that restrict and even oppose nature, on the other” (30). In the end, “as soon as human nature is identified with the immortal soul . . ., it becomes the true source of the norms guiding human behaviour” (31). Thus for Primavesi, while phusis can be normative, how it is normative depends on how it is understood: the phusis in question is growth, and “human nature is identified with the immortal soul.”
For the ancients, according to Christof Horn in his chapter on Politics I.2, “the nature of something was considered to consist of its essential attributes and excellent features” (62). Horn identifies four interpretations of this chapter: (a) that Aristotle’s naturalness is an “aspect of human nature” instead of “Nature in general;” (b) that Aristotle accepts the view that human beings fulfill their phusis in the polis, where they reach autarkeia; (c) that he accepts the view that phusis is an inner cause; (d) that he accepts the naturalness of the city as “part of a biological teleology” of phusis (60). Horn favors the last interpretation, purportedly following Pellegrin (60-1). Horn bases his view on 1252a26-30, where he finds Aristotle saying that the union of male and female is formed “not of deliberate purpose, but because, in common with other animals and plants, humans have a natural desire to leave behind them an image of themselves,” which desire introduces “final causality” (64). Although deliberate purpose is not involved, Horn identifies “reproduction as the strategy of a perishable individual [presumably any animal or plant which has the desire] to achieve some sort of everlastingness, namely through the intergenerational persistence of a species” in a “broader metaphysical framework” (65). Horn further suggests that Aristotle’s view “implies a strong version of normative naturalism” in his claim that “there is only one political constitution (politeia) which is, by nature, everywhere the best,” citing EN 1135a5 (75-6), also cited by Miller and Keyt (133) and O’Keefe (194) to similar effect. Horn concludes that “Nature in Aristotle should be seen as the structuring principle that organizes the universe” and that, for the political sphere, “this principle implies a strong version of normative naturalism which anticipates the later natural law tradition” (79).
Christoph Rapp advocates a version of Horn’s (a)—that “the polis is not legitimized and normalized through arbitrary references to nature, but solely through its relation to human nature,” while disagreeing with Horn’s other three, in what is at some points a reply to Horn. Rapp bases his argument on 1252b30—pasa polis phusei estin, rendered “every state (polis) exists by nature” and glossed “the state exists in accordance with human nature” (81) and “is established by human beings in accordance with their nature” (90). Rapp amplifies further: “in claiming that the polis exists by nature, Aristotle does not mean to contrast poleis with artefacts and things established by people” (93). Rapp approaches saying what he intends by phusis this way: “The nature that is the end is the nature of each thing, i.e. its essence” (107). In concluding his response to the interrogative title “Whose State? Whose Nature? How Aristotle’s Polis is ‘Natural’,” Rapp writes: “It is the state of all free people who live in a polis for the sake of autarkeia and living well, and it is by being in accordance with their (human) nature that the state exists ‘by nature’” (115).
In Part II, Raphael Woolf, drawing on De Re Publica, De Officiis, and De Legibus, argues that Cicero, while recognizing “general moral principles independent of human convention, to which the actual laws and conventions . . . must conform,” also held that, because of “differences in local circumstances,” conformity “need not, and perhaps should not, imply uniformity” (221). Since, in De Legibus, law and justice are “rooted in nature” (228), Cicero’s concept of nature is “a normative concept – humans can fail to live up to their own nature, corrupted by the effects of bad habit and empty opinion.” Woolf identifies natura in De Legibus I as, “in the first instance, human nature” but also “the nature of the universe as a whole” (229). Still, because of the “inadequacy of the natural perspective” (234), in De Legibus II law is placed “on the opposite side to nature, and privileged over nature.” Hence “Unnatural Law” in the title of this chapter. Cicero recognizes that “it is civilizations, those most wonderful of human artefacts, that actually produce the institutions that enable human flourishing” (235).
In Part III, George Karamanolis distinguishes three ways in which the early Christians assessed the political norms of non-Christian societies: that the earthly emperor derives authority from God, a position which upholds values found in pagan culture (Tertullian), since Christians and non-Christians share the same nature (325); that non-Christian norms must be replaced by Christian ones (Lactantius) (331); and that the source of political norms “is not God but a special kind of city, a city of perfectly virtuous citizens, the heavenly city of God” (338) (Augustine, in this case following the Stoics). The issue of a common nature is pursued in a section on the question of slavery. Focusing on Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa, Karamanolis writes that their emphasis on a shared human nature “is the result of their theological argument that the Persons of the divine Trinity share a common nature, namely the divine one, while also having distinct individual features.” Gregory argues “that all humans share in God’s image, which means that we all have an equal share in intellect, which crucially involves a capacity for self-mastery and free choice (332)” and that “there is only one human nature in which all humans share, namely the likeness of God’s nature” (332-3).
Opening Part IV, Peter Adamson offers a chapter on two figures in Muslim and Jewish mediaeval thought—al-Razi (ninth-tenth century) and Hallevi (eleventh-twelfth century)—who are presented as arguing against Aristotle that nature, while a cause that can be known, is part of a chain of causes originated by God which can be broken at any point by miracles, in which God acts directly. For al-Razi, “once we portray nature as being like God, there is nothing to choose between the two rival accounts” (349). For Hallevi, natural or physical forces are “mere instruments that God uses to accomplish His will” (354). Although both authors held “a moderate view” (345), they both opposed “naturalism, the invocation of natures as fundamental explanatory principles” (361).
Turning to “political animals” in Christian writers from Albert the Great through the fourteenth century, Juhana Toivanen begins with Albert’s threefold division of animals into those that live always together, those that live always alone, and those that have a mixed life, instancing varieties of birds (368), which leads to a further division of criteria for distinguishing political animals from non-political ones—collaboration to achieve a common aim, having a leader that promotes this common aim, and having a division of labor (370), the first of which is “a necessary condition for being a political animal” (372). Peter of Auvergne “qualifies his claim about the political nature of humans by making a distinction between two senses of nature,” the nature of the species and the nature of the individual, the latter depending on the body, which makes people better or worse qualified for social life (378-9). In short, “medieval philosophers preserve the biological conception of what it means to be a political animal, but they tend to think that it is transformed by human rationality” (389).
While each of the chapters makes some contribution to determining where and when phusis or natura in some sense may or may not have been considered normative for the state in some sense, the volume as a whole suggests that phusis and natura were interpreted variously over the study period—as growth, as the structuring principle that organizes the universe, as essential attributes and excellent features, as essence, as the image of God, as something “congenital or built into us” (O’Keefe, 183), as “that which is” (Humfress, 260), as “one’s principle of action” (Noble, 280), and so on. Phusisand natura may not convey the same thing all the time, and, where they do not, their relations to the polis or res publica, perhaps not always well rendered by ‘state’, may not be the same. To identify an item as Nature or human nature or to assert that an item is natural or phusei or kata phusin or secundum naturam is not to say what phusis or natura is.
There is an occasional oddity. Horn, for example, both claims to follow Pellegrin and interprets EN 1135a5, his leading example of how “normative naturalism can be applied to political reality” (75-6), in a way apparently rejected by Pellegrin in 1990 and again in 2017.[1] Further, there is some disagreement about how to render kata phusin. Rapp insists against Horn on “in accordance with nature” (99-100) instead of ‘by nature’. It would be helpful to see this issue explained further.
The errors in printing (for example, “unties” for ‘unites’, 336) will not affect the sense for anyone with exposure to scribal vagaries. An index locorum with standard page references (Stephanus, Bekker) and a consolidated bibliography would be helpful to readers.
Table of Contents
Introduction ix
Part I: Plato and Aristotle
Oliver Primavesi, Human Nature and Legal Norms: Antiphon the Sophist as Anonymous Target in Plato’s Republic IX 3
Dominic Scott, Natural Born Philosophers 35
Christoph Horn, Normative Naturalism in Aristotle’s Political Philosophy? 59
Christof Rapp, Whose State? Whose Nature? How Aristotle’s Polis is ‘Natural’ 81
Fred D. Miller, Jr. and David Keyt, Aristotle on Freedom, Nature, and Law 119
Béatrice Lienemann, Aristotle on the Rationality of Women: Consequences for Virtue and Practical Accountability 135
Part II: Hellenistic Philosophy
René Brouwer, Cynic Origins of the Stoic Doctrine of Natural Law? 159
Tim O’Keefe, The Normativity of Nature in Epicurean Ethics and Politics 181
Philipp Brüllmann, Nature and Psychology in Cicero’s Republic 201
Raphael Woolf, Unnatural Law: A Ciceronian Perspective 221
Caroline Humfress, Natural Law and Casuistic Reasoning in Roman Jurisprudence 247
Part III: Late Antiquity
Christopher Isaac Noble, Human Nature and Normativity in Plotinus 269
Miira Tuominen, On Justice in Porphyry’s On Abstinence 293
George Karamanolis, Early Christian Philosophers on Society and Political Norms 317
Part IV: Medieval Philosophy
Peter Adamson, Against Nature: Two Critics of Naturalism in the Islamic World 343
Juhana Toivanen, “Like Ants in a Colony We Do Our Share”: Political Animals in Medieval Philosophy 365
Jenny Pelletier, Ockham on Human Freedom and the Nature and Origin of Lordship 393
Index of Names 415
Index of Subjects 419
Notes
[1] Pierre Pellegrin, L’Excellence menacée: Sur la philosophie politique d’Aristote (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017), 204.