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Epicurean Justice and Law University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 Epicurean Justice and Law Jan Maximilian Robitzsch University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Classics Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Robitzsch, Jan Maximilian, "Epicurean Justice and Law" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1976. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1976 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1976 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Epicurean Justice and Law Abstract This dissertation concerns a cluster of related issues surrounding the Epicurean conception of justice. First, I show that the Epicureans defend a sophisticated kind of social contract theory and maintain a kind of legal positivism, views that are widely held today and so are of continuing interest for contemporary readers. In doing so, I argue that thinking about justice and law forms an integral part of Epicurean philosophy (pace the standard view). Second, I take up some neglected issues regarding justice and so provide detailed accounts of the metaphysics of moral properties in Epicureanism as well as of Epicurean moral epistemology. After the introduction in chapter 1, I set out the main features of the Epicurean view of justice and law in chapters 2-4. In chapter 2, I explain the basics of the Epicurean conception of justice as an agreement and relate it to Epicurean ethics as whole. In chapter 3, I examine Epicurean culture stories and I point out in what way the Epicurean view is a kind of social contract theory. In chapter 4, I argue that the most important aspect of the Epicurean conception of justice from a metaethical perspective is that justice, a moral fact, depends on benefit, a natural fact about the world. On the basis of this analysis, I subsequently argue that the Epicurean conception of the law is best understood as a kind of inclusive positivism. After having laid out the Epicurean view in this way, I enlarge the conversation in chapters 5-7. In chapter 5, I discuss the motivations Epicurean agents have to be just and comment on the relationship between contractual justice, that is, justice that comes about by agreements, and aretetic justice, that is, justice understood as a virtue or character disposition. In chapter 6, I turn to the metaphysics of justice, arguing that the just, for the Epicureans, is an accidental property. In chapter 7, finally, I show that Epicurean agents come to have an understanding of justice via sense experience in the same way that they have an understanding of everyday objects. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Philosophy First Advisor Susan Sauvé Meyer Keywords Epicureanism, Epicurus, Justice, Law, Social Contract Subject Categories Classics | Philosophy | Political Science This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1976 EPICUREAN JUSTICE AND LAW Jan Maximilian Robitzsch A DISSERTATION in Philosophy Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2016 Supervisor of Dissertation ______________ Susan Sauvé Meyer Professor of Philosophy Graduate Group Chairperson _________________ Professor of Philosophy and of Law, Avalon Professor of the Humanities and Graduate Chair of Philosophy Dissertation Committee Alexander Guerrero, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and of Medical Ethics Charles Kahn, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Phillip Mitsis, Alexander S. Onassis Professor of Hellenic Culture and Civilization (NYU) EPICUREAN JUSTICE COPYRIGHT 2016 Jan Maximilian Robitzsch Für meine Eltern Christine Weber-Robitzsch und Lutz-Henning Robitzsch iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First and foremost, I would like to thank Susan Sauvé Meyer for advising my dissertation. I am very thankful to her for the many conversations and the detailed feedback she provided on my ideas. She greatly helped me improve my writing and saved me from many errors. I would also like to thank the members of my dissertation committee: Alexander Guerrero, Charles Kahn, and Phillip Mitsis. Their comments on different parts of the dissertation were invaluable and I am very grateful for their help and guidance. I am especially indebted to Professor Mitsis for agreeing to be an outside reader and for skyping with me from Abu Dhabi. When I was looking for a dissertation topic, Andreas Kamp suggested to me to think about Hellenistic political philosophy. I will always be thankful to him for his suggestion as well as for the opportunity during my time in Cologne to participate in the Theorie Kolleg, which he organized together with Wolfgang Leidhold. These seminars played a major role in my decision to go to graduate school. I also feel much gratitude for the support of another of my former teachers, Andreas Speer. I first learned to philosophize in his courses and am glad to have had the opportunity to work for him as a research assistant at the Thomas Institut. I presented parts of various chapters at different professional meetings and in Dissertation Seminar at Penn. I would like to thank my commentators and the audience members on each of these occasions for their suggestions for improvement. Through conference participation, I also met Rex Mixon, to whom I am thankful for all the time spent talking about the Epicureans, and Clerk Shaw, to whom I am thankful for the feedback on my work and the invitation to serve as commentator at a workshop on iv Epicureanism in Knoxville in March 2015. This workshop greatly influenced my thinking about some ideas in this dissertation. During my time at Penn, I was fortunate to meet Andreas Avgousti, Aditi Chaturvedi, and Hal Parker. They made a special contribution to helping me mature philosophically. I feel honored that I may call them my friends. I came to Philadelphia to receive a doctorate and in the process met Caitlin Butler. I am very thankful to her for many things, but here would like to express my gratitude to her for making me see the glass half-full rather than half-empty and for reminding me that there are other things in life than graduate school. Finally, the last word of thanks goes to my parents, Christine Weber-Robitzsch and Lutz-Henning Robitzsch, without whose continued support in every imaginable way I would never be writing these lines. It is to them that I dedicate this dissertation. v ABSTRACT EPICUREAN JUSTICE AND LAW Jan Maximilian Robitzsch Susan Sauvé Meyer This dissertation concerns a cluster of related issues surrounding the Epicurean conception of justice. First, I show that the Epicureans defend a sophisticated kind of social contract theory and maintain a kind of legal positivism, views that are widely held today and so are of continuing interest for contemporary readers. In doing so, I argue that thinking about justice and law forms an integral part of Epicurean philosophy (pace the standard view). Second, I take up some neglected issues regarding justice and so provide detailed accounts of the metaphysics of moral properties in Epicureanism as well as of Epicurean moral epistemology. After the introduction in chapter 1, I set out the main features of the Epicurean view of justice and law in chapters 2-4. In chapter 2, I explain the basics of the Epicurean conception of justice as an agreement and relate it to Epicurean ethics as whole. In chapter 3, I examine Epicurean culture stories and I point out in what way the Epicurean view is a kind of social contract theory. In chapter 4, I argue that the most important aspect of the Epicurean conception of justice from a metaethical perspective is that justice, a moral fact, depends on benefit, a natural fact about the world. On the basis of this analysis, I subsequently argue that the Epicurean conception of the law is best understood as a kind of inclusive positivism. vi After having laid out the Epicurean view in this way, I enlarge the conversation in chapters 5-7. In chapter 5, I discuss the motivations Epicurean agents have to be just and comment on the relationship between contractual justice, that is, justice that comes about by agreements, and aretetic justice, that is, justice understood as a virtue or character disposition. In chapter 6, I turn to the metaphysics of justice, arguing that the just, for the Epicureans, is an accidental property. In chapter 7, finally, I show that Epicurean agents come to have an understanding of justice via sense experience in the same way that they have an understanding of everyday objects. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT......................................................................................IV ABSTRACT .........................................................................................................VI 1. INTRODUCTION............................................................................................... 1 2. THE BASIC EPICUREAN VIEW: JUSTICE AS AN AGREEMENT................. 8 2.1. The Content of Agreements and Their Role in Epicurean Theory...................................10 2.2. Benefit, Justice, and Law.....................................................................................................21 2.3. Who is Able to Form Agreements?.....................................................................................27
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