An Introduction

Barbara Carnevali and Gianni Paganini

“Der Hellenismus ist die moderne Zeit des Heidentums”

J. G. Droysen

Hellenistic philosophy is back. Philosophers from very different traditions,

often little given to mutual dialogue, now find themselves united in draw-
ing inspiration from the great philosophical schools of the Alexandrian
epoch in framing their own critical theories and normative propos-
als. New Cynics, new Stoics, new Sceptics, and new Epicureans openly
describe themselves in these terms, and, without fear of appearing naive
or untimely, expressly affirm the absolute “timeliness” of a return to the
philosophy of the ancients. Historiographical research into the Hellenistic
thinkers is flourishing. And if only the most militant authors openly assert
the continuing validity of their technical arguments and their immediate
relevance to the problems of our own time, it is not difficult to discern
a highly sympathetic attitude to this tradition even in the most erudite
and specialist corners of research: the Hellenistic philosophies now appear
rather close, familiar, and very much alive.
It is true that cultural trends always have something tendentious about
them: books speak not only of their ostensible subject matter, but equally
tell us much about those who write them. Yet it is entirely natural to won-
der about the deep-rooted reasons which have inspired this new passion for
the philosophy of antiquity. The querelles which have marked the history of
European culture show how the study of the classical authors and the inten-
sive engagement with them have prompted the moderns to reflect upon their
own place in history and elaborate the category of “modernity”: in many
respects the modern sense of identity was born from a perception of a break
or distance that has allowed the moderns to differentiate themselves from,
and define themselves in relation to, the world of antiquity. But what we
are witnessing now seems to be something rather different. For the anti-
quity which is evoked today is no longer that which once provided an exem-
plary image of harmony and totality, of measure and serenity, of natural and
immediate spontaneity, and thus furnished the moderns of the 18th and 19th
centuries with a screen upon which to project their own normative ideal of a

Iris, issn 2036-3257, I, 2 October 2009, p. 461-467

© Firenze University Press
462 Barbara Carnevali and Gianni Paganini

perfectly realised humanity. Far from presenting an integrated and harmoni-

ous image of this kind, Hellenistic culture has always struck its interpreters
as restless, hybrid, formless, and internally conflicted. That is why the term
“Alexandrian” has become a synonym for all that is mannered and artificial.
The Hellenistic age is an age of epigones, one that is quite aware of its own
distance from the “classical” world. It is, in short, an antiquity comparable to
modernity, one in which we moderns, not by chance, have readily been able
to recognise our own image.1
The history of the concept of the “Hellenistic Age” reveals the reasons
for this identification.2 The expression “Hellenism” (in the sense of the
“Hellenistic Age”) was invented, as is well known, by the German historian
Johann Gustav Droysen (1808-1884). He wished to devise a synthetic category
that could capture the characteristic features of the epoch which began with
the conquests of Alexander the Great, and would also allow him, in opposi-
tion to the traditional classicising approach, to treat the period in question as
a new, original, and “positive” civilisation in its own right.3 Droysen coined
the term Hellenismus on analogy with the then current concept of Romanismus
which defined the object of the discipline of “romance philology,” namely
the medieval union of the Roman and the Germanic worlds and the result-
ing synthesis of various linguistic and cultural traditions. The civilisation
of the Hellenistic period, according to Droysen, was also born from a very
similar process of creative fusion. The “Preface” to Droysen’s Geschichte des
Hellenismus, the first volume of which appeared in 1836, defines the Wesen or
essence of the Hellenistic age by reference to the concept of Welteinheit, as the
first example of the idea of a “unified world” in history, and to the concept of
Vermischung, the “mingling” which resulted from the encounter between the
West and the East, between Greece and the “barbarian” peoples.
Given this definition of the Hellenistic Age in terms of the notion of a
unified world (today we would speak of the process of globalisation) and of
ethno-cultural mingling (today we would speak of relativism, of multicultural-
ism, or, depending on one’s point of view, of the encounter or the “clash” of

1 
See A. Momigliano, Genesi e funzione attuale del concetto di Ellenismo (1935), reprinted in Id.,
Contributo alla storia degli studi classici, Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1955, pp. 165-193;
Id., Introduzione all’Ellenismo (1970), reprinted in Id., Quinto contributo alla storia degli studi classici e
del mondo antico, 2 vols., Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1975, vol. 1, pp. 267-291.
2 
The two fundamental studies by Momigliano, along with L. Canfora, Ellenismo, Rome-Bari:
Laterza, 1987, are still particularly instructive.
3 
According to Droysen, the “Hellenistic Age” should no longer simply be considered as an age
of decadence, as the scholars who adopted the traditional classical ideal had assumed, but should
be recognised on the contrary as a period which promoted cultural progress and the emergence
of the great new contribution of Christianity.
 An Introduction 463

civilisations), it is not difficult to see why contemporary culture tends to see

itself reflected in what Droysen himself called “the modern age of paganism.”
In this connection we must remember the specific constellation of historical
events and social, moral, and political developments which framed the emer-
gence of Hellenistic civilisation: the decline of the polis; the associated disin-
tegration of the ethos which had defined the meaning to life in the classical age
of Greece;4 the emergence of more impersonal forms of power, forms which if
not directly threatening were nonetheless alien and remote, far removed from
the sphere of influence or control on the part of individuals (Hellenistic cul-
ture is par excellence an “age of the Empires,” whether that of Alexander or
subsequently that of Rome); the loosening of the bonds between the individual
and the community; the growth of an individualistic mentality which served
in turn to favour the proliferation of magical, irrational, and superstitious cults
and practices; the encounter with foreign cultures and the resulting challenge
to the earlier values and ideals of classical civilisation.5 All these factors, as most
historians of ancient philosophy generally agree, encouraged a demand for new
eudaimonistic moralities and moralities of “resistance” which were oriented to
the individual subject and helped to provide a kind of autonomy and normative
support that was independent of socio-historical reality.6
It is unnecessary to indicate in detail how all these factors readily find a
corresponding echo in the cultural and historical constellation of our own
time (not least with reference to individualism and the notion of “empire”).
And just as commentators have long spoken of a Hellenistic “crisis,” which
was said to find its exemplary reflection in the rise of sceptical philosophy,7
so too our contemporary culture appears equally ready to define itself as an
age of loss and scepticism: “relativism,” “uncertainty,” “difference,” “knowl-
edge without foundations,” “pluralism of values” – these are just some of the
phrases and watchwords typically invoked to describe the epochal transfor-
mation now widely described as “post-modernity.”8

4 
As Mario Vegetti rightly observes, the notion of the “collapse” of the polis is largely a myth, but
he himself acknowledges that the transition from the classical to the Hellenistic age “certainly
precipitated a shock in the general consciousness.” See M.Vegetti, L’etica degli antichi, Rome-Bari:
Laterza, 1996 (new edition), p. 219.
5 
On this question, see above all A. Momigliano, Alien Wisdom: the Limits of Hellenization,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
6 
In this connection, see in particular Vegetti, L’etica degli antichi, pp. 219 ff.
7 
“The success of the sceptical school was conspicuous throughout the whole of the Hellenistic
age […], and it is not difficult to understand how the travails of the time turned the minds of
this period towards such a doctrine of desperation.” See P. Lévêque, Le monde hellénistique, Paris:
Armand Colin, 1992 p. 144.
8 
It has become a commonplace polemical strategy to identify an “Alexandrian” strain at work
in “postmodernism” (and its supposed representatives, especially Derrida).
464 Barbara Carnevali and Gianni Paganini

In other words: contemporary thought has returned to the sources of

Hellenistic wisdom because it senses that the thinkers of that time found
themselves confronted by problems very similar to those which also arise
for the moral philosopher in the globalised and multicultural world of the
present. This hypothesis, justified by a certain parallel between different his-
torical situations (and thus by a certain similarity of moral demands), is con-
firmed by the fact that the first great renaissance of Hellenistic philosophy
can also be traced back to an epochal “sceptical crisis,” one which is compa-
rable in many respects both to the crisis of the Hellenistic world and to that
of our own. At the end of the Renaissance, in a Europe torn by religious
wars and responding to the moral and cultural trauma of the Reformation,
we may see the culmination of what Richard Popkin famously described as
a “Pyrrhonian crisis.”9 Historians have often associated this upheaval in the
realm of religious, philosophical, and scientific certainties with the moral
repercussions exercised, more gradually, and at the level of the educated elite,
by the new geographical discoveries and the reports that were emerging in
relation to the New World.10 Here too the crisis arises from the sense that
a given world is threatened by confrontation with other civilisations, new
forms of life, different systems of values; here too we witness the weaken-
ing of traditional forms of religious and political authority and the growth
of new and increasingly autonomous forces (in this case the emergence of
absolute states and colonial empires). And here, once again, we see the rise
of individualism, of eudaimonism, of a philosophical quest for new forms of
morality which allow the subject to influence events, to exercise control over
essential aspects of one’s own life, to secure some kind of autonomy. And
along with scepticism, we find a revival of the other currents of Hellenistic
philosophy too – of Stoicism with Lipsius and Charron, of Epicureanism
with Gassendi and the libertinists, of Cynicism with La Boétie and Rabelais.
And all these different strands of Hellenistic thought, of course, find an
exemplary synthesis in the work of Montaigne.11

9 
C. Schmitt, “The Rediscovery of Ancient Skepticism in Modern Times,” in M. Burnyeat (ed.),
The Skeptical Tradition, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983, pp. 225-251; R. Popkin, The
History of Scepticism: from Savonarola to Bayle, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003; G. Paganini,
Skepsis, le débat des modernes sur le scepticisme, Paris: Vrin, 2008; G. Paganini and J. R. Maia Neto
(eds.), Renaissance Scepticisms, Dordrecht: Springer, 2009.
10 
See, for example, the substantial anthology by J.W. Schneewind, Moral Philosophy from Montaigne
to Kant, 2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. For Schneewind, modern moral
philosophy arises from the need to rethink traditional ethical categories in the light of the
problems essentially raised by three phenomena in particular: modern science, cultural relativism,
and the Reformation.
11 
In addition to the contributions presented here, see P.-F. Moreau (ed.), Le retour des philosophies
antiques à l’âge classique, 2 vols., Paris: Albin Michel, 1999 and 2001, which are dedicated to
 An Introduction 465

And likewise today, just as at the end of the Renaissance and during the
Hellenistic age itself, the sceptical crisis is not simply limited to the purely
negative and paralysing effects of doubt or uncertainty. On the contrary, it
also leads to a creative ferment, to a rediscovery and re-examination of ancient
insights in the light of modern problems. It is this conviction which has led
the editors of this issue to invite other specialists to explore the continuing
relevance of the four principal strands of Hellenistic thought in the context of
contemporary philosophy.

The first of the essays presented here addresses the most ancient of these
strands, namely that of “Cynicism” (whose anarchistic representatives
would probably have rejected the overly institutional name a “School”).
John Christian Laursen traces the history and fortunes of this tradition and
attempts to resolve an apparent enigma that immediately arises in this con-
nection. For it is precisely this most rigorous and intransigent strand of moral
thought amongst the ancient schools which has subsequently lent its name
to the most immoral of modern phenomena: all we understand today by
“cynicism” is hypocrisy, strategic manipulation, and a kind of disenchanted
realism which repudiates or derides any moral interest or perspective what-
soever. The philosophy of the “Cynics,” which originally arose as a defence
of freedom and as a radical protest against the prevailing structures of power,
has been transformed into a principal ideological instrument that serves these
structures of power, and now undermines, along with faith in ideals gener-
ally, any attempt to transform the world and thus encourages the acceptance
of the current status quo. Laursen reconstructs the changing significance of
“cynicism” from Antisthenes and Diogenes of Sinope through to the modern
American critics of contemporary culture, asks if it is possible any longer to
distinguish between a good and a bad kind of cynicism, and undertakes to
provide an assessment of the cynical tradition as a whole.
The essay by Olivier Bloch, by contrast, approaches Epicureanism directly
without addressing the subsequent historical reception of this tradition, con-
centrating upon the philosophical core of the Epicurean doctrine in the light
of the needs and perspectives of our own time: what can we now make of
“Canonic,” “Physics,” and “Ethics,” the three great branches of the Epicurean
system? Is it still possible describe ourselves as “Epicureans” in an authentic

Stoicism and Scepticism respectively; M. Clément, Le cynisme à la Renaissance. D’Erasme à

Montaigne, Genève: Droz, 2005; G. Paganini and E. Tortarolo (eds.), Der Garten und die Moderne.
Epikureische Moral und Politik vom Humanismus bis zur Aufklärung, Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog,
2004; A. Deney-Tunney and P.-F.  Moreau (eds.), L’Epicurisme des Lumières, special number of
Dix-huitieme siècle, 35 (2003).
466 Barbara Carnevali and Gianni Paganini

sense? Bloch offers a qualified but positive answer to this question. If many
of the doctrines of Epicurus, particularly those concerning atomism itself
and the role of sensation in the acquisition of knowledge, must certainly be
re-examined and corrected in the light of the results of modern science and
epistemology, the general “spirit” of Epicurean thought nonetheless shows
itself to be as relevant as ever: its lasting and insuperable heritage lies in the
inner bond between atheism and materialism, one rooted in the ethical task
of liberating human beings from imaginary fears and irrational persuasions by
appeal to the “true nature of things.” It is only in the light of a more accu-
rate and precise understanding of the universe, and of the role which human
beings play within it, that the wise can attain that peace of mind and that
true, simple, accessible, and reassuring “pleasure” which alone satisfies the
Epicurean ideal of happiness.
Jean-Baptiste Gourinat explores the vicissitudes of Stoicism in relation to
the idea of a living philosophy, in the double sense of a philosophy which still
lives – one which rises like the Phoenix from its own ashes – and a philosophy
which is directly lived, or is actually practised by individuals. In Gourinat’s
reconstruction of the tradition, its most relevant and contemporary aspects are
to be found in Stoic logic, which in many respects resembles modern proposi-
tional logic, and above all in Stoic ethics which seems to be resurfacing today
in the idea of a “therapy of the passions” and of “philosophy as a way of life.”
For contemporary forms of cognitive and behavioural therapy, like Stoicism,
also insist upon the importance of conscious processes (rather than simply
unconscious ones, as in psychoanalysis), claiming that in many cases our suffer-
ings essentially arise from false judgements, from the particular way in which
we consider things, and specifically offering to correct such judgements. For its
part, the Stoic model of life also reveals a surprising and unexpected survival
both in military ethics (as in the case of Admiral Stockdale, the “philosophical
fighter pilot” who put the principles of Epictetus to the test during his impris-
onment in Vietnam) and in the imagination of popular culture.
Renato Lessa, finally, re-examines the long history of scepticism in relation
to one of its most fundamental and important themes: that of “belief.” The
discussion takes its point of departure from an analysis of ancient scepticism,
and particularly Pyrrhonian scepticism, which recommended a life without
beliefs as an experience or expression of ataraxia, and moves on to consider the
specifically modern scepticism of Montaigne and Hume for whom particu-
lar beliefs, even though they lack epistemological justification in theoretical
terms, constitute the framework of regularity and significance on which our
common life and socio-historical reality in general are based. This perspective
will acquire ever greater importance for the philosophy of the 20th century
which emphasises the productive and constructive aspects of this approach.
 An Introduction 467

Lessa finally demonstrates the importance of the role of belief in the construc-
tion of human reality by reference to an extreme negative case: in the experi-
ence of the extermination camps, as described by Primo Levi, the destruction
of every belief ultimately involves annihilation of the human being as such.

These four readings all testify, in different ways, to how Hellenistic phi-
losophy can still speak to the modern world.
(Translated from Italian by Nicholas Walker)

Barbara Carnevali
University of East Piemonte
barbara.carnevali@lett.unipm.it

Gianni Paganini
University of East Piemonte
paganini@lett.unipm.it