The late John J. Cleary certainly belongs to those twentieth-century scholars of ancient philosophy whose work will influence scholarship for years to come. His books and articles are still a must-read for anyone working on the ancient philosophy of mathematics (especially that of Proclus), and central questions of Aristotle's metaphysics and epistemology. The volume under review collects almost all of Cleary's articles on ancient philosophy, with the exception of four (‘Working through Puzzles with Aristotle’, ‘Mathematics and Cosmology in Aristotle's Philosophical Development’, ‘Mathematical Methods in Proclus’ Theology' and ‘Mathematics as Paideia in Proclus’); this is regrettable since there are connections between these and the articles in the volume, which are consequently lost to the reader. The volume also contains a previously unpublished paper (‘The Paideia of the Historical Protagoras’) and one that until now was only available in German (‘Back to the Texts themselves’). The 25 articles are divided into five sections entitled ‘Paideia’ (8 papers), ‘History of Mathematics’ (3), ‘Plato’ (3), ‘Aristotle’ (7) and ‘Proclus and Later’ (4). The categories the editors have chosen give an idea of how broad Cleary's interest in ancient philosophy was, both historically and thematically. A closer look reveals that the chronological span of his work is even greater and encompasses philosophers from as early as the pre-Socratic Protagoras through Plato, Aristotle, the Old Academy, the Neoplatonist Proclus and Hegel, to Hans-Georg Gadamer, whose hermeneutic theory Cleary discusses and employs in his interpretations. Thematically, there is hardly an area that did not attract Cleary's attention. Apart from the areas mentioned in the section titles, the articles discuss problems of metaphysics (e.g. in ‘Science, Universals, and Reality’), natural philosophy (e.g. in ‘The Mathematical Cosmology of Plato's Timaeus’), ethics (e.g. in ‘Socratic Influences on Aristotle's Ethical Inquiry’) and political philosophy (e.g. in ‘Should One Pray for Aristotle's Best Polis?’). As far as supplementary materials are concerned, the volume contains two prefatory texts. The first, written by O'B., provides an overview of Cleary's academic work and points out some links between Cleary's philosophical interests as well as themes running through several of the reproduced papers; the other, by O'R., gives an account of Cleary's biography. Also, a bibliography of Cleary's works, of the literature cited in the articles, and an index nominum can be found at the end of the volume.

It would be pointless even to try to summarise and evaluate each and every article, not only because of the spatial restrictions of a short review, but also because of the rich variety of Cleary's philosophical interests. And since Cleary's early work on metaphysics and especially on mathematics is probably much better known than his later work on παιδεία, I will focus on the latter.Footnote ¹

One of the central theses running through many of Cleary's papers concerning παιδεία is that modern scholarship has not properly acknowledged the role παιδεία plays for the understanding of ancient political ideas and it is his aim to promote the topic to its deserved place. The first paper investigating παιδεία is ‘The Paideia of the Historical Protagoras’. Drawing on Plato's Protagoras and further circumstantial evidence in the form of ancient reports on Protagoras' work, Cleary argues that the anonymous Dissoi Logoi should be seen as a treatise reflecting Protagoras' style and as influenced by his teaching practice. Further, Cleary understands the Dissoi Logoi as a textbook not so much concerned with the moral doctrines it contains, but rather with an argumentative technique, namely the ability to argue on both sides of any question. Protagoras' new παιδεία, then, marks a break from the traditional educational model based on the memorisation of poetry; rather, Cleary concludes, its emphasis was on dialectics and argumentation, skills that were very useful for advancing political careers. The relation between παιδεία and political life is taken up again in ‘Competing Models of Paideia in Plato's Gorgias’ (2007). Cleary detects two implicit models of παιδεία that correlate with the explicit contrast between rhetoric, on the one hand, and dialectic, on the other. Dialectic, defended by Socrates in the text, enquires into the τί ἐστι of things and although Callicles, who is supporting rhetoric, is prepared to concede that dialectic is a fine accomplishment, he cannot see its importance for political affairs and urges that political success requires a different education.

Cleary's thesis concerning the under-appreciation of the role of παιδεία in modern scholarship is perhaps most obvious in ‘Cultivating Intellectual Virtue in Plato's Philosopher-Rulers’ (2007): according to Cleary, παιδεία and not epistemology or ontology should be at the centre of a reading of the Republic, although scholarship has tended to privilege the latter. Mathematics and dialectic, key educational imperatives of the central books of the Republic, are rather part of a pedagogical programme that aims to prepare the rulers for, and stimulate in them, an intellectual virtue that is directed towards the good. But ordinary citizens also have to be properly educated if a society, even a second-best society, is to work. Education with the aim of producing a temperate citizen has to begin in early childhood. This is a point Plato makes by way of a paradigmatic prose text, the Laws, offered for the education of ordinary citizens, as Cleary claims in ‘Paideia in Plato's Laws’ (2003).

A problem that particularly interested Cleary is ἀκρασία, the impotence to do the right or good thing although one is fully aware what the right or good thing to do is. While a Socratic moral intellectualism precludes the possibility of ἀκρασία – a claim that is in somewhat strong opposition with our everyday experiences – Cleary, in ‘Cultivating Intellectual Virtue in Plato's Philosopher Rulers’ (2007), sees Plato's introduction of the tripartition of the soul in the Republic as an attempt to explain this phenomenon. Ἀκρασία occupied Cleary in two additional articles. In ‘Socratic Influences on Aristotle's Ethical Inquiry’ (1991) Cleary discusses Aristotle's rejection of the Socratic denial of the possibility of ἀκρασία. This rejection does not, however, lead Aristotle to reject moral intellectualism altogether; inquiring into the essence of virtues is not useless, but Socrates' failure was to neglect to ask whence and how they come to be. Finally, in ‘Akrasia and Moral Education in Aristotle’ (2008) ἀκρασία is presented as a problem that serves ‘as a starting-point for examining how Aristotle discussed the process of moral education in his ethical writings’ (p. 131). Cleary concludes that Aristotle's views on moral education ‘are best understood in terms of the type of character that it is intended to produce’ (p. 149). Ἀκρασία is best handled not by the self-controlled person, who tries to suppress his passions, but rather by attempting ‘to persuade them to cooperate with practical reason’ (p. 149). This, of course, cannot mean rational persuasion – since the passions are not rational – but rather, Cleary suggests, a process of habituation. Thus, Cleary relates ἀκρασία, too, to the general topic of παιδεία, adding an aspect that in the secondary literature is usually neglected in favour of a focus on (meta-)ethical explanations.

This carefully edited volume invites scholars of ancient philosophy to re-read Cleary's better known articles that continue to influence the research in the history of metaphysics, mathematics and epistemology and to discover those essays that are perhaps less well known. Cleary's breadth of interest and his precise style of presenting his arguments and findings will certainly continue to be of great value to the scholarly community.