Papers by Sara Brill
Aristotle on the Concept of Shared Life, 2020
Antiquities beyond Humanism, 2019
Antiquities Beyond Humanism, 2019
Knowledge and Ignorance of Self in Platonic Philosophy, 2018
Antiquities Beyond Humanism, 2019
This paper focuses on the influence of the language of medical diagnosis, prognosis and treatment... more This paper focuses on the influence of the language of medical diagnosis, prognosis and treatment at an important juncture in the inquiry into psuchē Plato undertakes in the Republic: the discussion of degenerate regimes and forms of soul in Books 8 and 9. I argue that the work that is accomplished by Plato's critical appropriation of medical terms and concepts is crucial to the dialogue as a whole: it gives us insight into the deepest questions and problems animating the dialogue, namely, how to choose the best life possible, and what role philosophy has in this task. More specifically, I argue that the medically inflected psychological and political diagnostics that Socrates employs in the analysis of civic and psychic decay in Books 8 and 9 produces a sophisticated critical theory, one which takes as its object of analysis neither the city nor the soul by themselves, but rather the peculiar degenerating operation of desire that is common to both, and which hinges upon the capacity for self-analysis of the diagnostician. This critical theory is further developed by the fusion of medical and juridical stances that is operative in the judgment of lives with which Book 9 concludes. Near the end of the Republic, Socrates interrupts his recounting of the myth of Er in order to reflect on the difficulty of choosing a good life, a choice that would require a nuanced understanding of the nature of the soul (618d). His concern is apropos; for all of their discussion of psuchē, Socrates and his interlocutors conclude that they have failed to attain such a vision, and any assessment of the success of Socrates' efforts at a holistic psychology must be weighed against the several qualifications he makes to his and his interlocutors' study of soul, culminating in the enigmatic statement in Book 10 that they have seen the soul in its human life but not in its true nature (612a). Thus, Socrates' exhorta-tion to Glaucon to find that study by means of which he could determine who would best equip him with the understanding of psuchē needed to choose the best life attests to Plato's awareness of the persistence of the difficulties with
This article addresses contemporary efforts to understand how the earliest practitioners of philo... more This article addresses contemporary efforts to understand how the earliest practitioners of philosophy conceived of the philosophic life. It argues that, for Plato, the concept of bios was a central, animating, and structuring object of philosophic inquiry. Concentration on the imagery Plato employed to draw bios into the purview of philosophic contemplation and choice points to interpretative avenues that further the aim of treating the dialogues as complex, integrated wholes, and offers a new approach to the question of the status of image-making in them. The article concludes with thoughts on how an exploration of bios might extend beyond Plato to Aristotle, via an examination of his treatment of the range of human and animal bioi, suggesting that such an examination clarifies the relationship between his analysis of the polis-dwelling animal and his broader investigation of living beings as such.
International philosophical quarterly, Jan 1, 2009
Polis: The Journal of the Society for Greek Political …, Jan 1, 2007
Edited volumes by Sara Brill
Biopolitics and Ancient Thought. Edited by Jussi Backman and Antonio Cimino. (Classics in Theory.) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022., 2022
The volume studies, from different perspectives, the relationship between ancient thought and bio... more The volume studies, from different perspectives, the relationship between ancient thought and biopolitics, that is, theories, discourses, and practices in which the biological life of human populations becomes the focal point of political government. It thus continues and deepens the critical examination, in recent literature, of Michel Foucault's claim concerning the essentially modern character of biopolitics. The nine contributions comprised in the volume explore and utilize the notions of biopolitics and biopower as conceptual tools for articulating the differences and continuities between antiquity and modernity and for narrating Western intellectual and political history in general. Without committing itself to any particular thesis or approach, the volume evaluates both the relevance of ancient thought for the concept and theory of biopolitics and the relevance of biopolitical theory and ideas for the study of ancient thought. The volume is divided into three main parts: part I studies instances of biopolitics in ancient thought; part II focuses on aspects of ancient thought that elude or transcend biopolitics; and part III discusses several modern interpretations of ancient thought in the context of biopolitical theory.
PART I: BIOPOLITICS IN ANCIENT THOUGHT
1:Biopolitics and the "boundless people": An Iliadic model (Sara Brill)
2:Plato and the biopolitical purge of the city-state (Mika Ojakangas)
3:Sovereign power and social justice: Plato and Aristotle on justice and its biopolitical basis in heterosexual copulation, procreation, and upbringing (Kathy L. Gaca)
PART II: ANCIENT THOUGHT BEYOND BIOPOLITICS
4:Otherwise than (bio)politics: Nature and the sacred in tragic life (Kalliopi Nikolopoulou)
5:Beyond biopolitics and juridico-institutional politics: Aristotle on the nature of politics (Adriel M. Trott)
6:Bene vivere politice: On the (meta)biopolitics of "happiness" (Jussi Backman)
PART III: BIOPOLITICAL INTERPRETATIONS OF ANCIENT THOUGHT
7:Hannah Arendt's genealogy of biopolitics: From Greek materialism to modern human superfluity (Ville Suuronen)
8:From biopolitics to biopoetics and back again: On a counterintuitive continuity in Foucault's thought (Sergei Prozorov)
9:Agamben's Aristotelian biopolitics: Conceptual and methodological problems (Antonio Cimino)
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/biopolitics-and-ancient-thought-9780192847102?cc=nl&lang=en
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192847102.001.0001
Review by Morten S. Thaning in Foucault Studies:
https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.i35.7083
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Papers by Sara Brill
Edited volumes by Sara Brill
PART I: BIOPOLITICS IN ANCIENT THOUGHT
1:Biopolitics and the "boundless people": An Iliadic model (Sara Brill)
2:Plato and the biopolitical purge of the city-state (Mika Ojakangas)
3:Sovereign power and social justice: Plato and Aristotle on justice and its biopolitical basis in heterosexual copulation, procreation, and upbringing (Kathy L. Gaca)
PART II: ANCIENT THOUGHT BEYOND BIOPOLITICS
4:Otherwise than (bio)politics: Nature and the sacred in tragic life (Kalliopi Nikolopoulou)
5:Beyond biopolitics and juridico-institutional politics: Aristotle on the nature of politics (Adriel M. Trott)
6:Bene vivere politice: On the (meta)biopolitics of "happiness" (Jussi Backman)
PART III: BIOPOLITICAL INTERPRETATIONS OF ANCIENT THOUGHT
7:Hannah Arendt's genealogy of biopolitics: From Greek materialism to modern human superfluity (Ville Suuronen)
8:From biopolitics to biopoetics and back again: On a counterintuitive continuity in Foucault's thought (Sergei Prozorov)
9:Agamben's Aristotelian biopolitics: Conceptual and methodological problems (Antonio Cimino)
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/biopolitics-and-ancient-thought-9780192847102?cc=nl&lang=en
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192847102.001.0001
Review by Morten S. Thaning in Foucault Studies:
https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.i35.7083
PART I: BIOPOLITICS IN ANCIENT THOUGHT
1:Biopolitics and the "boundless people": An Iliadic model (Sara Brill)
2:Plato and the biopolitical purge of the city-state (Mika Ojakangas)
3:Sovereign power and social justice: Plato and Aristotle on justice and its biopolitical basis in heterosexual copulation, procreation, and upbringing (Kathy L. Gaca)
PART II: ANCIENT THOUGHT BEYOND BIOPOLITICS
4:Otherwise than (bio)politics: Nature and the sacred in tragic life (Kalliopi Nikolopoulou)
5:Beyond biopolitics and juridico-institutional politics: Aristotle on the nature of politics (Adriel M. Trott)
6:Bene vivere politice: On the (meta)biopolitics of "happiness" (Jussi Backman)
PART III: BIOPOLITICAL INTERPRETATIONS OF ANCIENT THOUGHT
7:Hannah Arendt's genealogy of biopolitics: From Greek materialism to modern human superfluity (Ville Suuronen)
8:From biopolitics to biopoetics and back again: On a counterintuitive continuity in Foucault's thought (Sergei Prozorov)
9:Agamben's Aristotelian biopolitics: Conceptual and methodological problems (Antonio Cimino)
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/biopolitics-and-ancient-thought-9780192847102?cc=nl&lang=en
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192847102.001.0001
Review by Morten S. Thaning in Foucault Studies:
https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.i35.7083