On the Proper Use of Ancient Political Philosophy: A Comment on Stephen Taylor Holmes's “Aristippus in and out of Athens”

Abstract

The central concern of Stephen Holmes' article is neither with theories that seek to describe contemporary society, nor with the teachings of ancient Greek political philosophy, but with the relation between Greek political philosophy and contemporary society. Two strands of thought run through the article's argument. On the one hand, modern society has become so obviously different in so many ways from the Greek polis that the conceptions of Greek thought should be discarded as timeworn and obsolete. In accordance with this view, Leo Strauss' arguments for the serious reconsideration of the ancient philosophic understanding are lightly dismissed as amusing claims, rather pointless questions (however solemnly asked), and mere calls to remember ancestral pieties (Holmes, 1978, pp. 116-17). On the other hand, the appeal of Greek political philosophy today is dangerously powerful and tends to produce the evil consequences of totalitarianism. So great is the allure of Greek political thought, says Holmes, that Hannah Arendt, author of the most profound book on the origins of totalitarianism, failed to see how her piety toward Greece might increase the danger of what she cared most deeply to avoid (p. 117). How, one wonders, can obviously obsolete thought have so powerful an allure for serious thinkers? One answer to this question might be that the obsoleteness of Greek conceptions is not obvious, but needs to be revealed by Holmes' analysis. This answer, however, cannot suffice, for virtually every literate political scientist is aware of the massive differences between the Greek polis and our contemporary societies, which produce the obsoleteness of Greek thought as Holmes understands it. Even Leo Strauss, who is alleged to be singularly neglectful of social structure, states with complete clarity the immediate inapplicability of Greek principles: