BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 183 enforcing these rules must have existed, whether by general public attitude or by officials specifically chargedwith the task" (258). This is certainlycorrect,and I would place particular emphasis on the role of informal social practices (such as public shaming of social offenders) in regulation of the moral order of the polis in archaic and classical Greece.4 In one of the best sections of the book, Nagle explicates how Aristotle theorized the effects of music, suggesting that Aristotle acknowledged the importance of civic festivals in shaping the characters of citizens, and thus accepted that ordinary people, not only a rarified elite, were capable, through music, of attaining a share of virtue and the good life. Since women participated in the festival, and possibly even theatrical, life of the polis, women were actively shaped by the moral effects of music and other "incidental" cultural forms of civic education. Here Nagle takes a strong and entirely plausible position on the importance of women in the civic life of the polis. He rather overstates the novelty of this position, though, since few scholars today would accept the position of "Arendt and her followers" that women were "only inhabitants of the private sphere" (309).' This is a rich book, which ranges widely over textual, archaeological, and ethnographic evidence to argue for the centrality of the household, and (more surprisingly) ofwomen, in Aristotle's conception of the politics. University of Michigan Sara Forsdyke Aristotle and the Rediscovery of Citizenship. By Susan D. Collins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2006. Readers of Phoenix will want to know at the outset that this book targets an audience of political theorists, rather than classicists or ancient philosophers. Collins, seeks to use Aristotelian theoretical resources in order to intervene in modern debates over citizenship. Such an approach is, in principle, plausible; and it is shared by many neo-Aristotelians who seek to repair, supplement, criticize, or renew contemporary, and especially liberal, theory (think of Nussbaum, Frank, Salkever, and Maclntyre, among others). Collins strives to differentiate herself from this group by emphasizing Aristotle's pre-liberal assumptions: Aristotle envisions citizens neither as pre-political rights-bearers nor as parties to a social contract nor as isolated individuals pursuing happiness as they see fit. On the contrary, Aristotle confronts liberal theorists, even those attuned to the claims of political virtue, with an uncompromisingly "thick" theory of nature, human goodness, justice, and civic education. By the end, Collins has elicited from Aristotle a judiciously skeptical model of citizenship: the best and most enlightened Aristotelian citizens, in her reading, are committed to civic justice, the law, and the public cultivation of virtue, while also recognizingthe limitations ofpoliticsand theneed to fulfill ourmost profound longingsthrough philosophy. Thankfully, Collins's Aristotle does not offer readers any "bottom line," as though a fresh reading of his Politics might nowadays save us from the grief of terrorism or global poverty. Yet, as she illustrates in the first chapter, Collins resuscitates an Aristotle who presents potentially important challenges to liberal neutrality and anti-perfectionism. At the heart of these challenges iswhether liberal theorists can plausibly defend the priority 4 See S. Forsdyke, "StreetTheater and Popular Justice inAncient Greece: Shaming, Stoning and Starving Offenders Inside and Outside theCourts," Past and Present 201 (2008) 3-50. 184 PHOENIX of the right to the good, and whether liberal accounts of civic education are responsive to our desire to cultivate moral virtue for its intrinsic value. Collins' discussion illustrates that Aristotelian theory iswell placed to enlarge our political understanding, and even to liberate us from the occasionally unsatisfying homogeneity of liberal culture. Yet, amidst her Aristotelian enthusiasms, readers may find that Collins occasionally loses sight of liberalism's extraordinary political successes, chief among these being its establishment of a peaceful, tolerant, and pluralistic modus vivendi for the religiously, ethnically, and culturally diverse citizens of enormous modern polities. Aristotle does, as Collins shows, provide an attractive, systematic account of the virtues as expressions of human excellence. And it can, indeed, be useful for liberals to reflect upon theAristotelian virtues. Despite Aristotle's merits, however, ithas never been clear, at least since Hobbes's day, that "Aristotelity" (or any other such...