Table Of ContentThe Delusions of Invulnerability
CLASSICAL INTER/FACES
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THE DELUSIONS OF
INVULNERABILITY
Wisdom and Morality in Ancient
Greece, China and Today
G.E.R. Lloyd
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
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Bloomsbury Academic
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First published in 2005 by Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
© G.E.R. Lloyd 2005
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Contents
Preface 7
1. The Pluralism of Philosophical Traditions 9
2. Learned Elites: their Training, Openness and Control 35
3. Audiences and Assemblies 63
4. The Delusions of Invulnerability 87
5. The Frailties of Justice: Debates and Prospects 113
6. Models for Living 145
Notes 159
Glossary of Chinese terms 165
Notes on Editions 167
References 169
Index 172
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Preface
The ancient and the modern worlds seem poles apart, and from the
point of view of the material circumstances of many people’s exis-
tence, they are. But a number of fundamental questions, concerning
what makes life worth living, and how social and political relations
are best organised, were debated in such civilisations as ancient
Greece and China and the answers that were given are worth
reviewing for the light they can shed on the problems we continue to
face today. Of course not everyone in such ancient societies formu-
lated views on such matters, and this raises a further set of questions
as to how those who did saw their own role. How did individuals
carve out a niche for themselves to take up positions on basic ques-
tions of values and ideals? Whom were they hoping to persuade, and
how did they set about doing so?
The strategic aim of this book is to explore what we can learn from
the ancient world on questions that continue to haunt us today. My
tactics are to begin, in the first three chapters, with issues to do with
the constitution, organisation, internal rivalries, self-image and
public face, of learned elites. How were different traditions of
learning developed? Where do they resemble or differ from the
various styles of ‘philosophy’ we can exemplify in the modern world?
Are our ideas and practices concerning the recruitment to, and
accountability of, elite groups – such as ‘philosophers’ or ‘scientists’
– appropriate to the ends and functions they should serve? What can
we gather from ancient communication practices – with audiences of
different types – that may throw light on modern ones? I concen-
trate, in these studies, on ancient Greece and China, but broaden my
inquiry, where opportunities present themselves, to other ancient
and pre-modern societies, notably Mesopotamia.
In the final three chapters I turn to the question of ideals. I
examine first ancient, and modern, preoccupations with attempts to
7
The Delusions of Invulnerability
make life somehow secure from misfortune – to achieve invulnera-
bility, no less. I probe the difficulties that societies have always found
in ensuring just and equitable relations between individuals and
groups, and with other societies, whether powerful or weak. Finally
I reflect, from a modern perspective, on the various exemplary
models for living that have been proposed in ancient civilisations.
In all six studies I investigate ancient societies not just for their
own sakes, but to draw out lessons from their experience that bear on
our own ongoing, contemporary, problems. My inquiry has been
driven, throughout, by the conviction that research into the ancient
world can provide a precious resource for our own self-understanding.
Earlier versions of some of the materials in this book have been
presented at seminars in Paris, Lille and Washington D.C. I am
grateful to my hosts on those occasions, Professors Christian Jacob,
André Laks and Gregory Nagy, and to my audiences, for their
constructive comments, while absolving them, as is customary, for
the shortcomings that remain.
G.E.R.L.
8
1
The Pluralism of Philosophical Traditions
One of the striking features of intellectual life in the last hundred
years or so is the way in which quite diverse traditions of philosophy
have been cultivated in different countries. That is true even within
different European countries, before we go any further afield, say to
North America, let alone to India, or to what is still often sweepingly
referred to as ‘the Far East’.
This is not just a matter of the particular fads and fashions culti-
vated in the philosophical journals in different languages: it is a
matter also of what counts as ‘philosophy’, of the way it is taught, the
basic curricula of departments of philosophy in the universities. To
speak personally, for a moment, in the Cambridge of the early 1950s,
where I received my philosophical formation, almost no attention
was paid, in the Faculty of Moral Sciences (as it was then known), to
large areas of continental philosophy, including phenomenology and
even existentialism. True, some reference to Sartre was made in the
English faculty, for they ran a paper called ‘The English Moralists’,
which began, astonishingly, with Plato and Aristotle. But in those
days in Cambridge, the history of philosophy was sharply contrasted
with doing philosophy proper. The former was devalued as essentially
antiquarian: the latter was the real thing, to be practised in the style
of the Wittgenstein of the Philosophical Investigations.
So one of the most shocking features of the divergence in
European traditions of philosophy was the almost total silence, from
those who taught philosophy at Cambridge, about Heidegger, about
Nietzsche, even about Hegel. But it was not just a question of philos-
ophy finding it difficult to travel northwards across the Channel, for
it could be just as difficult going South. Philosophy faculties in
France took almost as long to take seriously British or American
9
