The Golden Age of Virtue: Aristotelian Ethics (review)

616 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 35:4 OCTOBER ~997 part of his "visible wealth" (phanera 0us/a), and in so doing, acknowledges that the practice of his profession does take the form of a private business transaction, but one that, unlike those of the sophists, has lasting value for democratic Athens (4o). Plato's Socrates, in contrast, rejects the notion that philosophy can or should be exchanged for honors, power, property, fame, or sexual pleasure, and consistently refuses to be part of any system in which knowledge is exchanged for such things. Thus he insists in the Apology that his "benefaction [to Athens] is qualitatively different from those of other benefactors .... [H]e bestows real blessings whereas the others offer 'seeming' blessings " (49). And thus does Alcibiades remind us in the Symposium that his offer to exchange his "beauty" for Socrates' "beauty" was rebuffed by Socrates as an offer of bronze for gold, echoing, Nightingale notes, the exchange of armor between Glaucus and Diomedes in the Iliad: "... no amount of Alcibiades' physical beauty will add up to the 'true' beauty of Socrates" (47). Alcibiades' reminder also serves as a Socratic response to Pausanias' claim about the exchange of sex and logoi--which he cites as a difference between cultured and "philosophical" Athenians and other more boorish peoples--and to the traditional concept of sunousia from which this claim proceeds. And thus does Socrates refuse Alcibiades who, like Pausanias, invokes the practice of the erastes"instructing" the eromenonabout virtue, in exchange for erotic pleasure. Besides these instances of intertextuality found in the Antidosis, the Apologyand the Symposium, Nightingale analyzes Plato's parody of Euripides' Antiope in the Gorgias, his critique of encomiastic discourse in the Menexenus, the Lysis,and the Symposium,and his claim in the Phaedrus that philosophical discourse is "authentic" in contrast to that of traditional genres. She also presents an insightful account of the complex relations between philosophy and comedy, an account which recognizes comedy's social and political role in shaping public opinion about important matters, and Plato's debt to Old Comedy as the "model for dramatizing and criticizing the 'contest of public voices' in Athens and for enlisting a new and privileged 'voice' in the competition" (192). Those with interests in how literacy effected changes in the discursive practices of classical Athens and affected the "contest of public voices" might wish that Nightingale had extended her discussion in this direction as well, by considering how the increased use of writing and texts in Greek paideia made possible more private, analytical, and relaxed occasions for philosophical reflection, and an alternative form of Greek education to the contest of public voices. But one always wishes for more of a good thing. As it stands, this book should provide any reader interested in the construction of philosophy with an occasion for philosophical reflection. JOANNE WAUGH University of South Florida Theodore Scaltsas. The GoldenAge of Virtue: AristotelianEthics (in Greek). Athens: Alexandria Press, 1993. Pp. 167. NP. The proper title should be--as it was in an earlier version which won the Photinos Prize of the Athenian Academy--"t~q6VrlOLg and L~ttOX~ll~V I in Aristotle." This is a BOOK REVIEWS 617 highly interesting work, clearly written and closely argued, with hardly any rhetoric or padding--never a dull moment. Ancient authors are quoted in ancient Greek, with no translation, no apology, and (luckily: the book is in Greek) no transliteration. Recent philosophical scholarship, especially in English, is drawn on, and S.'s own contributions to the debate belong firmly within this Anglophone tradition. Any Greek reader unfamiliar with recent Anglo-American philosophical scholarship on Aristotle will get a good taste of what much of it is like. Summaries of continuous Aristotelian discussions are often correct and helpful, and refutations of positions taken by other scholars are often convincing (e.g., 29-31--where EN 11 ~3a2-5 would have been more useful; 111-12). Yet it is exactly where S. offers new solutions to old (or recent) problems that I begin to have my doubts. Space allows only a few brief examples. T6 ~:Qyovmoo &v0Qda~o~ (69-82). Against Maclntyre, Glassen and Irwin, S. maintains that...