The chapters of this volume represent some of the most promising results of current advanced research on a number of related themes in the thought of Aristotle, and in so doing aim to honor the many and varied contributions of Allan Gotthelf to Aristotelian studies. These two aims are not accidentally connected. Perhaps no one has done more in recent decades to promote, to sponsor, to organize, and to stimulate research on these topics in Aristotle's thought than Allan Gotthelf. The explorations and ideas on display here all reflect and, to a significant degree, derive from his efforts. As such, they constitute a fitting token of esteem from his friends and colleagues. As he would be the first to agree, nothing could be more suitable, as a way of honoring him and his accomplishments, than to further advance our understanding of Aristotle.

Many of the essays in this collection were first presented at a gathering held at the University of Pittsburgh on October 1–3, 2004 under the rubric: “Being, Nature, and Life: A Conference Celebrating Allan Gotthelf's Contributions to the Study of Classical Philosophy and Science.” Others are contributed by scholars who were unable to attend. The main themes here are those of the conference: Aristotle's metaphysics, his natural science and biology, and his methodology. All of these studies exhibit, to a greater or lesser extent, the interconnections among these topics in Aristotle's own thinking.

INTRODUCTION: CONTESTING SOCRATIC EGOISM

There is a widespread understanding among historians of philosophy that ancient Greek ethics is largely or even entirely eudaimonist in structure. And yet, there are some deeply counter-intuitive consequences of a eudaimonist ethics. Ordinarily, we think that it is possible for us to benefit others for their own sake, a possibility that does not depend upon its being a condition of our own happiness. Egoism, the position attributed to Socrates by, e.g., Terence Irwin and Gregory Vlastos, claims that such independently arising, other-directed concern is irrational. Indeed, it seems that a growing consensus among scholars of Socratic ethics attributes to Socrates the thesis of eudaimonism, the view that an agent exclusively pursues her own wellbeing, as well as that of psychological egoism (i.e., that an agent acts in her own self-interest). According to the latter thesis, it is impossible for agents to be motivated to do anything other than what is in their own interest.

Can it really be that Socrates is to be credited with the discovery of egoistic eudaimonism? Well aware that this association looms strongly in the mind of most informed readers, in what follows I attempt to show that there is a great deal of assumption and not much by way of strong evidence to support the attribution.

Unlike the Republic, which expresses the ideal of an aristocracy of philosophers, that is, essentially the ideal of rule by the most intellectually talented members of the upper classes, the Laws offers a more traditional paradigm of conservative agrarianism, principally founded on the time-honored model of the Greek soldier-farmer. This farmer is the citizen who serves his city economically by ensuring that his plot remains productive and militarily by serving in the army as a heavy infantryman (hoplitês). In all likelihood, some of the citizens of the Laws are leisured landlords and some self-sufficient but not excessively wealthy farmers regularly toiling on their own land. The conservatism of both groups informs much of the thinking of the Laws on social issues.

It is in the framework of this conservatism that the family structure espoused in the Laws can be best understood. The formal prerequisite for citizenship is membership in one of the city's 5,040 households (oikoi). In making membership in the oikos the basic criterion for citizenship Plato follows a long and almost universal Greek tradition. The household was the fundamental social and (to a large extent) economic unit of the Greek world. Aristotle understandably treats it as the first social structure out of which the city (polis) eventually emerges (Politics 1252b9–10).

The land of Magnesia is divided into 5,040 parts to be distributed by lot, one to each head of a family coming into the colony (737c).

Only once does Socrates say more than a few words in Seneca: in the final chapters of De vita beata, written in 58 ce, when Seneca was at the height of his power and wealth as Nero's adviser. In response to an imagined accuser who asks how it is that someone can study philosophy and be so wealthy (VB 21.1), Seneca has Socrates speak at length, including the following (VB 25.4):

When the text breaks off several chapters later, Socrates is still speaking.

What kind of Socratic voice is this? Below I consider four aspects, partly of the voice itself and partly of the content of the utterance: (1) The voice belongs to a prosopopoeia. (2) Socrates espouses the Stoic doctrine of preferred indifferents. (3) He invokes recognizably Roman examples such as the triumph.