Political Philosophy and Orientalism: The Classical Origins of a Discourse

On the modernity of Orientalism (as a formal discourse) and its central motifs, see the ranking and major study in the field by Said Edward , Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979), pp. 2, 49–50, 300–301, passim..

This is true of thinkers as different as Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt. For instance, see Strauss's The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978) and Arendt's The Human Condition (Chicago: Doubleday, 1958).

Said, Orientalism. This is a central theme of the book. For a taste of the Western view, see pp. 60–72, 285–288, passim..

For example, see Ghirshman R. , Iran (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1954), chs. 3 and 4.

Finley M. I. , The Ancient Greeks (New York: Penguin, 1977), p. 18, and Robert Schlaifer “Greek Theories of Slavery from Homer to Aristotle,” in M. I. Finley, ed., Slavery in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1960), pp. 165–167.

Ehrenberg Victor , Man, State and Diety (London, Methuen, 1974), ch. 1, pp. 2, 3 and 9, and M. I. Finley, ed., The Portable Greek Historians (New York: Viking, 1960), Introduction, pp. 1–2.

Finley, ibid., pp. 1–4.

Schlaifer, “Greek Theories of Slavery from Homer to Aristotle,” pp. 166, 201; cf. Weiler Ingomar , “Greek and Non-Greek World in the Archaic Period,” in Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1, Spring 1968, pp. 22–23.

Said, Orientalism, p. 56.

Finley M. I. , The World of Odysseus (New York: Pelican Books, 1979) (Revised edition), ch. 5.

Herodotus , The Histories (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1954) (translated by Aubrey de Selincourt).

Schlaifer , “Greek Theories of Slavery from Homer to Aristotle,” p. 167.

Ibid..

The Ancient Greeks, p. 142.

The Histories, p. 120.

Finley , The Portable Greek Historians, p. 29; cf. Finley's Introduction to this volume, pp. 5–7.

Waters K. H. , Herodotus the Historian (London: Croom Helm, 1985), p. 3.

On his impartiality, see Arendt Hannah , Between Past and Future (New York: Viking, 1968), p. 51.

Schlaifer , “Greek Theories of Slavery from Homer to Aristotle,” p. 167.

The Histories, p. 176.

Said, Orientalism, ch. 3, pp. 284–328.

The Histories, p. 550.

Finley , The Portable Greek Historians, Introduction, pp. 1–21.

Weiler , “Greek and Non-Greek World in the Archaic Period,” pp. 25–26.

ibid., p. 25.

For example, see the classic study by Wolin Sheldon S. , Politics and Vision (Boston: Little Brown, 1960), ch. 1, esp. pp. 8–11.

ibid., p. 2.

ibid., p. 16.

ibid., p. 13. As Wolin points out this tendency to warn against presumed dangers, whatever they are deemed to be, is common to nearly all the leading political philosophers in the Western tradition.

Gay Peter , Freud, Jews and Other Germans (New York, Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 231.

Schlaifer , “Greek Theories of Slavery from Homer to Aristotle,” pp. 168, 191.

Plato , Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945) (translated by F. M. Cornford), p. 132 (435e-436a); cf. p. 172 (590 cd).

ibid., p. 132 (435e-436a).

ibid., p. 173.

Arendt , Human Condition, p. 201.

Schlaifer, “Greek Theories of Slavery from Homer to Aristotle,” p. 170, and Bevan Edwyn , “Greeks and Barbarians,” in Marvin F. S. , ed., Western Races And The World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922), p. 49.

Schlaifer , ibid., pp. 168, 170.

Aristotle , Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958) (translated by Barker Ernest , p. 7 (1253a).

ibid., p. 6 (1253a).

ibid., p. 7 (1253a).

ibid., p. 5 (1253a).

Arendt , Human Condition, pp. 13–15, 24–26, 33–34, passim..

ibid..

Aristotle , Politics, p. 6 (1253a).

ibid., pp. 4, 138, 296, 388. It is worth noting that, although Aristotle regarded non-Greek Europeans as barbarians, he thought they were by nature free, not slaves like the barbarian Orientals. This blatantly contradictory concession fully reveals his attitude to the Orient, even at the expense of making nonsense of his fundamental distinction between “free” Greeks and “slavish” barbarians (p. 296).

ibid., p. 16 (1255a).

ibid., p. 3 (1252b).

ibid., p. 12 (1254a).

ibid., pp. 14–15 (1255a).

Schlaifer , “Greek Theories of Slavery from Homer to Aristotle,” p. 198.

ibid., emphasis added.

Aristotle , Politics, p. 296 (1327b).

ibid., pp. 296 (1327b) and 138 (1285a).

ibid., p. 396 (1327a) (emphasis added).

ibid., p. 14 (1255a).

Ehrenberg Victor , Alexander and the Greeks (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1938), ch. III “Aristotle and Alexander's Empire,” p. 85 (emphasis added).

ibid., p. 89.

ibid., pp. 92, 93, respectively.

ibid., p. 89.

Werner Jaeger intimates that Alexander's rejection of Aristotle's advice may well have to do with the fact that he was “a true scion of [Philip's] wild stock,” a sort of “half-barbarian”, in his Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948), p. 122.

Wolin , Politics and Vision, p. 94—cf. p. 443 (fn. 6); see also James L. Wiser, Political Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1983), pp. 59–60.

In his essay “Greeks and Barbarians,” Edwyn Bevan asserts that the available evidence suggests that Alexander “wished Hellenism as a culture to be pre-dominant” in the Greco-Oriental civilization that he created in ancient Persia (p. 58).

Ehrenberg , Alexander and the Greeks, claims that Alexander's motive in fusing the Greek and Persian worlds was rather mundane: “he did so because he had realized this general fusion to be the foundation needed for the gigantic structure of his empire” (p. 92).

For a persuasive argument on Alexander's philosophic commitment to “the brotherhood of man,” see Tarn W. W. , “The Unity of Mankind: A New Social Philosophy” in Borza Eugene N. (ed.), The Impact of Alexander the Great (Hinsdale, Illinois: Dryden Press, 1974), pp. 77–85; cf. Ghirshman, Iran, pp. 206–217.

Ghirshman , Iran, pp. 215–217, and Ehrenberg, Alexander and the Greeks, p. 88.

Schlaifer , “Greek Theories of Slavery from Homer to Aristotle,” pp. 166–167.

Fackenheim Emil L. , Metaphysics and Historicity (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1961), pp. 9 and 13.

Aristotle , Politics, p. 138 (1285a).

Ehrenberg , Alexander and the Greeks, pp. 89–90.

Bevan Edwyn , “Greeks and Barbarians,” p. 56.

For instance, see Southern R. W. , Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA: University of Cambridge Press, 1962); Norman Daniel, Islam and West: The Making of an Image (Edinburgh; Edinburgh University Press, 1960); and Said, Orientalism, especially his discussion of modern Orientalism in ch. 3.

Said, Orientalism. This study is littered with analyses of colonialist attitudes and practices, e.g. pp. 31–40, passim: cf. Said Edward , The Question of Palestine (New York: Vintage, 1980), chs. 1 and 2.

For a summary of the key themes of modern Orientalism, see Said, Orientalism, pp. 300–301.

Weil Simone , “East and West,” in Selected Essays (translated by Rees Richard ) (London: Oxford University Press, 1962).