ABSTRACT
Politics, as an arena of ambition, competition and enmity, could not but inspire the mental pains of anxiety, apprehension and jealousy, grief at defeat and false joy at victory; it might well demand painful physical exertion, even in normal circumstances and times of political stability. Both in Plato and in classic Stoic texts, there was a further tension between the acceptance of existing political forms, as already suitable for the participation of a philosophos, and the demand for radical reform as the precondition for his involvement. The question of the proper relationship between philosophia and active engagement in political processes had in fact been under continuous discussion since the fourth century BCE, beginning with Plato and Aristotle. It was a firm conviction, that philosophical discourse - and so also its providers - belonged in public space, and indeed were sorely needed there.
