Description
It is true that Mill will find that his principle of individuality is illustrated by “the whole stream of Greek history,” as a “series of ex- amples of how often events on which the whole destiny of subsequent civilization turned were dependent on the personal character for good or evil of some one individual.” But whatever may have been the role of the individual in Greek history, he does not play any decisive role in Plato’s or Aristotle’s political theory. Cicero’s Republic is the earliest surviving political theory which is largely composed of examples of how much depends on the personal character for good or evil of some one individual. The changed conception of human nature which is usually corre- lated with the emergence of the individual in modern political theory is the conception that “human nature is essentially selfish, and that the effective motives on which a statesman must rely are egoistic”-as Sabine puts it in his History of Political Theory .
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