The aim of the project is to explore the origins of political philosophy in ancient Greece. Specifically, we have investigated the emergence of certain techniques of argumentation - what we label “internal critique”, assessing a claim “from within”, with reference to the principles or empirical arguments that the claim is supposed to be derived from. These techniques of argument are often considered to be typically Platonic. We argue, however, that they have a prehistory before Plato, as well as a life after Plato, and that it is essential to understand these if one wants to understand the development of Greek civilisation and the workings of normative theory. In order to recover this history, we have explored a number of genres in Greek antiquity - poetry, philosophy, rhetoric, sophistry and historiography.

The purpose of Tralau's project is to demonstrate the importance of Greek poetry for this development. He has studies how internal critique - often seen as a Platonic invention - can be found, in a very precise form, in the tragedian Sophokles at the end of the 5th century. Moreover, he has studied the way in which the dramatist Euripides elucidates implications of normative principles in the 430s - specifically, by abrupt or absurd argumentative improprieties that serve to highlight logical correlations. Furthermore, he has shown how the poet Aischylos, in 458 BC, brought about the first mise-en-scène of internal critique with recognisable terminology, i.e., as the first source in extant Greek literature in which a character explicity tells another that they contradict themselves. In this context, Tralau has speculated about the older history of this technique of argument, discussing the role of comedy (Aristophanes) and making the claim that early natural philosophy is less important than expected. He has likewise maintained that internal critique appears to be reamarkably absent in early epic (Homer). According to some disconcertingly late sources, however, one of the legendary Seven Sages of Greece, Anacharsis, could be attributed a leading part in this drama.
Tralau has presented his project att conferences at home and abroad, at several departments in different disciplines in several countries, e.g., the British Academy and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (a  complete list of all the presentations given by the project members can be provided).


Iordanoglou's research has centred on the so-called sophistic movement, the techniques of argument associated with it, and its place in the history of normative thinking. His project soon found reason to challenge the grounds for the contemporary revaluation of the sophists as ancestors of the epistemological relativism broadly associated with postmodernism. Focusing on sophistic notions and treatments of contrariety and contradiction, especially in the tradition of Protagoras and the so-called Dissoi logoi, the longest surviving sophistic text, the project has shown that the sophists must be re-written into the history of rationality, not as opponents, but as precursors to the Aristotelian achievements in the field of logic. Iordanoglou has also produced the first translation into Swedish of a wide selection of sophistic texts and testimonies as well as begun work on a collection of contrapuntal essays on the political history of democratic Athens, from Thersites to Isocrates.
Iordanoglou has regularly presented his work at international and national conferences, and has been a frequent presenter at various seminars in Greek, Rhetoric and Ancient History and Archaeology at the universities of Uppsala and Lund.

    
The stated aim of Weigelt's project was to explore the development of dialectic from Plato to Aristotle, assuming that these two thinkers in this respect are united by a common problematique, which concerns the epistemic relevance of dialectic as a critical practice. In other words, the question concerns how dialectic, insofar as it proceeds as critique, might be generative of knowledge, and thus not purely destructive, which is Socrates' express verdict on dialectic in Plato's early dialogues. The relevance of this approach has been corroborated as the project has evolved, and it has enabled an interpretation of the status of dialectic in Plato and Aristotle that focuses on what the two have in common in this respect, rather than on what sets them apart, which has been the dominant tendency in previous scholarship. Within the project Weigelt has also devoted herself more specifically to Plato's political philosophy, and in particular to the question concerning the defining characteristics of political skill or competence, as well as worked on questions pertaining to the ethical and political dimension of dialectic, again with respect to how the nature of this dimension changes from Plato to Aristotle. In addition to the work done in the project, Weigelt has begun writing a monograph on the figure of Socrates in Plato.

Lupo's project has studied the role of the Presocratics in internal critique. Presocratic philosophy is not primarily a practical philosophy according to the specific meaning that practical philosophy has in Aristotle. The latter defines it as a practical science, namely a knowledge - science, episteme - of principles. The Presocratics developed an ontology of nature which implied an anthropological, moral and political vision. We have today a corpus of maxims, mottos, aphorisms, normative sentences which testify to these visions, even if we lack a detailed analysis of the structural problems concerning praxis and political life. In Lupo's project, it is argued that we can trace the origins of a specific kind of political argument which is the model of internal critique. It means that the Presocratics already elaborated the particular modus of arguing which is internal critique and that this modus was already in use in the sphere of political argument before the golden age in Athen. Internal critique can present different forms of constructions. It is not typical only for political argument but includes, in a more generic sense, every kind of argument which is not an apodictical argument. The form of internal critique appears therefore during the Presocratic age, and it has the purpose of refuting assertions which contradict a thesis. From this perspective “internal critique” worked as an argumentation with the aim of proving or legitimating or validating an assertion, in this case a moral or political one.
Lupo has given a number of presentations of the project, at home and abroad.

Linderborg investigates Herodotos and the origin of political philosophy. This is likewise his doctoral dissertation at Uppsala University. In the thesis, his point of departure is a notion of the autonomy of politics, a conception deriving from the work of Christian Meier, Carl Schmitt and Jean-Pierre Vernant. In light of the idea of politics as being independent of the past, he analyses a Persian debate about the advantages and disadvantages of different constitutions in Herodotos. Moreover, he re-interprets another passage in Herodotos, the war counsels of Xerxes, with regard to concepts such as the autonomy of politics as well as secularisation.
Linderborg has presented his work at conferences and departments in several disciplines, at home and abroad.

The three most important result deriving from the project is that 1) political philosophy in the sense of internal critique has an older, complex prehistory in Greece, 2) it is anticipated in sophistic works that have hitherto not been understood in this way, 3) internal critique is not only the work of refutation and critique, but can imply the constructive work of identifying, justifying and applying normative principles.

In this context, new questions have emerged. First, the development of argumentation in Greek poetry appears to be brought about by female characters, and this should make us question many long-standing truths about the Greeks' conceptions of rationality and gender. Iordanoglou and Tralau wish to pursue this problem in the future. Second, the development of internal critique may give us reason to reinterpret the figure of Socrates; Weigelt wishes to address this question further. Third, the relation between techniques of argument on the one hand and substantial normative principles on the other hand needs to be explored, a topic that Lupo and Tralau wish to clarify. Finally, questions about the historical and social conditions for the development of techniques of argument need to clarified; Linderborg and Iordanoglou wish to address these themes individually.

The project and its parts have, as we said, been presented in a number of international contexts on four continents. Likewise, cooperation has been established with highly relevant research environments, primarily Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Cambridge, and Windsor. Iordanoglou and Tralau have organised an international conference on the topic. It took place in Uppsala in September 2016, with representatives from several disciplines.

The project has likewise devoted itself to the 'third task' of universities, publishing popularised versions of its results in newspapers and magazines, as well as in other public fora, such as the Book fair in Gothenburg.

Two important publications can be mentioned. The first is the special issue of Eranos that will be published in 2017, incorporating contributions to the 2016 Uppsala conference; all members have submitted papers to it. The second is Tralau's article in Classical Philology, which develops a new thesis about rationality, argumentation, sacrifice and meat-eating in the Greek city.

The project members have endeavoured to publish in honourable international and domestic fora with large distribution channels. For the securing of open access, cf. the list of publications.