Responses to Responses

34Historically Speaking January/February 2005 Responses to Responses J. Peter Euben I begin with an apology. Because Platonic Noise (the book from which my initial remarks were drawn) is a series ofessays that makes an argument cumulativelyrather than consecutively, I decided to make some general methodological and poUtical points as a way ofinviting debate. Thatmayhave been a mistake . I probablyshouldhave chosen one point and developed it in more detail and with greater nuance. Absent that, conclusions become mere assertions, and (hopefuUy) subtle arguments become mere platitudes. Perhaps thatwould have assuaged Samons's complaints that my call for engagement leaves him "cold" and that I offer no alternative to Nussbaum's Uberal cosmopolitanism except a banal conclusion about thinking with the Greeks (though I must admit his churlish tone does not make me sanguine about this). In fact, Platonic Noise has a chapter on Nietzsche that elaborates the idea of engagement and another that develops a "critical cosmopolitanism" as an alternative to Nussbaum 's. Much of Carol Thomas's response is sensible, but I do have a few caveats, which may or may not constitute more substantive disagreements . First of all, I am not convinced that confrontation is always unproductive, as the civil rights movementindicated. Second, I am more skeptical than she is that "the human element of all cultures has been relatively constant" because I am not sure how much or what kind ofevidence could warrant such a claim, and because the human element has too often proved to be a projection ofa particularlypowerful class or culture. FinaUy, I wonder how much the idea that the emotions are hardwired is not itselfa cultural construct , though I have no wish to associate myselfwith a know-nothing anti-positivism. I could not agree more with Mary Lefkowitz about the contemporary "usefulness " of the ate as a way of reminding ourselves about the Umits ofhuman knowledge, the need for a self-critical voice to interrogate those overly confident oftheir ability to master events and peoples, and her assertion that only a god can see the whole. And in the present poUtical context her otherwise uncontroversial claim that "trying to know, being wiUing to ask hard questions ofoneself and others, is not a sign ofweakness but a sign of wisdom" has power and urgency. Nor do I have any serious disagreements with DanieUe Allen's elegant and provocative remarks. I obviously endorse her claim that every generation answers differendythe question of what it should take into the future from a past it partly constructs. I also agree that there is no single final use for classical historythatjustifies its value once and for all. . . . I do not think reading Plato or Sophocles will "solve" anything. Further, I regard civility and comtnunity as overratedvirtues , which couldonly sporadically befound in classicalAthens. ButI am tempted to push this further and ask under what historical conditions might that past have no use at all? For instance, a thoroughly Marxist or theocratic regime could not recognize Athens and Rome as a politically and culturally relevant archive. Though I find her suggestion ofwhat unites otherAthenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." And while I agree that experimentalism destabiUzes the future in a waythatmakes embracing an uncontroversial past attractive, such a past in turn constructs a series ofexclusions that hinder more profound forms of experimentation. Like Allen, Ober provides an example of how to use classical poUtical thought with a sense of discrimination and purpose (as he does in all his other work). His first sentence reminds us ofwhatis assumed bysaying "the Greeks" and why it is that generalities must attend to particulars. Only then can we recognize the differences between Athens and most other Greek poleis and so intelligently consider the similarities between it and us. I agree with Ober that the unattractive exceptionalism of Athens is ineluctably connected to what most ofus regard as its attractions and admire how, in a brief space, he shows how the multiple sources, locations, and organizations of social and technical knowledge enabled the Athenians to become a powerful state largely run by ordinary citizens. More provocatively, he argues against the assumption that democratic politics are incompatible with...