In this volume W. and T. seek to address the role of polemics in philosophy in the ancient world. Their focus here is novel as the volume concerns not the articulation of doctrinal positions expressed in polemics, but rather (as the title suggests) the ‘strategies of polemics’: ‘how [the forms and mechanisms of polemics] contributed to the shaping of philosophical argument and to the molding of philosophical positions’ (pp. 7–8).
The goal of this volume is to demonstrate that polemics (of certain kinds) can be genuinely philosophical, a task that is performed with mixed results, but is overall quite successful. The ten chapters (plus the editors’ introduction) all provide high quality analyses of their subject matter – which runs from the use of polemics in the Early Academy down to that of the Neoplatonists. One takes from the volume that the study of strategies of polemics is a substantial and significant issue, worthy of sustained reflection, and one that provides a unique and profitable perspective for understanding and clarifying ancient philosophical debates. However, there are three issues that work against the volume: first, the central term, ‘polemics’, is never adequately defined; second, the relevance of certain papers to the issue of polemics is not always explicitly established to a sufficient degree; and third, there are some notable gaps in the treatment of polemics in the ancient world (although this is a more minor point).
The first two chapters, the introduction and A. Laks's chapter, set as their task introducing, contextualising and defining polemic, and making some general statements concerning its relationship to philosophy. Of these tasks, the historical contextualisation is done best, as we are offered interesting quotes from significant figures concerning the role of polemic in philosophy. These can be broken down into two categories: (i) those Christian (and Jewish) authors that denounce the Greek and Roman philosophical traditions for their commitment to polemics, understood here as argumentation and disagreement – or διαϕωνία; and (ii) those who argue that polemic has no place in philosophy (particularly Kant), polemic here being opposed to the calm, measured, unemotional, rational critique of ideas.
Concerning the definition of what constitutes a ‘polemic’, both the editors and Laks are ‘intentionally lax’, recognising that a wide variety of phenomena fall under the concept, arguing that polemics constitute more a series of phenomena related through ‘family resemblance’ than something that admits to definite categorisation. (It is pointed out that there is no Greek or Roman term for ‘polemic’.) Instead these chapters attempt to circle in on the meaning(s) of the term through appeal to concepts of disputation, eristic, intoxication, reconciliation and critique (among others).
I have considerable sympathy for this approach, however, there is an important category distinction in the way that the term ‘polemics’ is used in the volume, captured in the initial use of historical quotes, and which underlies the entire project. At times ‘polemics’ is used more to refer to ‘argumentation’ (pace the Christian critique), and so concerns general structural features of polemic on a discursive level. At other times, as the Kant quotes suggest, ‘polemics’ captures what we might call the ‘tenor’ of a discussion (which could be argumentative or not), involving more particular discursive features such as exaggeration, mockery, scorn etc. (In her own chapter, W. helpfully refers to these as ‘polemical devices’, although does not contrast this use of ‘polemic’ to that of argumentation.) That there is an important distinction here is borne out by the fact that, prima facie, polemics in the first sense would surely be considered essential to philosophy, while the second sense is not one usually associated with philosophy (although this volume does important work to show that this is not necessarily so). But this distinction is not recognised anywhere, and yet it is one that underlies the volume, as all the chapters approach polemics from one of these two perspectives. For example, T., M. Bonazzi and R. Lamberton offer considerable insights concerning the ways in which argumentation has been deployed in the ancient philosophical tradition. Bonazzi (in one of the best chapters of the volume) shows how Middle Platonists, and particularly Plutarch, used polemics to insert themselves into an established intellectual context, taking as a case study Plutarch's appropriation of the Stoic concept ennoiai; Lamberton demonstrates the necessity for Proclus to obfuscate his disagreement with the Christians; and T. argues that, for Socrates, argumentation is a sign of respect to one's opponent, and one that he denies to the ‘successful litigant’, and like-minded relativists, in the Theaetetus. Furthermore, C. Murgier and V. Tsouna show how engaging with established viewpoints on an issue can shape how philosophers come to understand this issue, these scholars using as case studies respectively the debates between Plato and Aristotle on hedonism and the Cyrenaic and Epicurean disagreements concerning the nature and value of pleasure.
On the other hand, certain chapters, particularly those of J. Müller, D. Marković and W., focus more on polemics from the perspective of polemical devices. Müller's and W.’s are among the best chapters in the volume. Müller offers a persuasive and fascinating reading of Aristotle's critique of Socrates’ kallipolis in Politics 2, arguing that Aristotle hopes to bring about in his readers a violent revulsion to the Socratic utopia, particularly for those who are otherwise attracted to the promise of this thought experiment. He does this, Müller argues, through deploying sharp and ironic phrases, rhetorical questions and extreme examples, aimed at rousing his readers’ emotions. W. focuses on Plutarch's and Galen's novel emphasis on quotation (one which is preserved in contemporary academic discussion) to hoist their opponents on their own petard. This is a particularly nice analysis, because W. chooses passages that, from a doctrinal perspective, are perhaps not the most interesting, but through the rubric of strategies of polemic prove essential reading because of how clearly they show the aim of these authors to catch their opponents in self-contradiction, either between texts or, as a greater prize, within the same text.
As a collection of papers that originated in a conference, I imagine that one of the tasks of the original enterprise was to determine the conceptual terrain of ‘polemics’, but although I appreciate the desire of the contributors not to be overly reductionist, this issue does demonstrate the need to say something more definite about polemics than they chose to do. Having said this, there are few times in which the two uses of ‘polemics’ are confused, but it does show that perhaps more chapters were required at the beginning of the volume to discuss the nature of polemics from various perspectives.
This then leads me to the second issue with the volume, concerning a tendency among certain contributors not to state explicitly the significance of their analyses for the issue of strategies of polemics. This is particularly the case for C. Shields, T. and Tsouna. Each of these scholars is clearly in command of their material, and all of them contribute something of significance concerning the role of polemics in philosophical discussion, but they do not spend enough time making these links explicit. For example, Shields offers a wonderful discussion of how the Aristotelian distinction between dialectical and eristic syllogisms can help us understand the difference between dialecticians and sophists in Plato. But concerning the conclusions for polemics, the reader is left wondering: is Shields arguing that only eristic is truly polemical? Or is he saying that elenchus and eristic can both be polemical? It is not made clear. By contrast, those papers that concern polemical devices tend to have a much closer link to their central narratives, and here particularly I note the contributions of Murgier, Müller and W. (as well as Bonazzi, who approaches polemics from the perspective of argumentation).
The third issue is much more slight, and it concerns some gaps in the subject matter. With only ten papers at play it is of course not possible to address all the various philosophical movements active in the ancient world, but to its credit the volume does do an admirable job of showing polemics at play in a large variety of these. There are four articles that deal with the Early Academy, one with the Socratic schools, four with Roman philosophy (particularly Platonism and Stoicism) and one with Neoplatonism and Christianity. Notably absent here are chapters on the debates among Presocratics (particularly Heraclitus, although he is mentioned briefly at various points), the dogmatic debates of the Hellenistic philosophers, although the greatest absence is surely a discussion of the Sceptics. Also, given the emphasis on Christian judgements of the over-polemical nature of the philosophers, I would have liked to have seen some papers concerning how accurate this view was, and perhaps a chapter discussing the idea raised in the introduction that the Christian writers (philosophical or otherwise) were in their own way just as polemical towards each other as the philosophers.
But so as not to be overly-polemical (by which I mean critical) myself, I am happy to say that none of these issues really works to undermine the evident quality of this volume. The reader finds here a volume on an issue of genuine philosophical significance, and the papers that make it up demonstrate in no small way the felicity of reading the ancient philosophers through the rubric of polemics. All that the issues I have raised serve to do is to demonstrate one inescapable reality: that no volume can say everything concerning the topic that it discusses.
One major insight arising from this volume is that polemics, unlike real warfare, always assume a third party: an audience or readership, for whom the polemicist is offering his attack. And, as Laks argues, one of the key roles of polemics is to intoxicate the reader and provoke a response from one's adversaries (p. 19). Perhaps the best thing that I can say about this volume (or any academic writing) is that, having read it, I am eager to investigate the matter of polemics further, and that it has got me thinking about the relevance of polemics to my own subject matter.
