Download or read book Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstruction of American Democracy written by J. Peter Euben and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of essays on Athenian democracy, organized in three sections on situating the Athenian democracy in relation to various regimes, exploring how discourse in democratic Athens displayed awareness of democracy's limitations, and creating direct dialogues between the discourse of Athenian democracy and that of contemporary thought. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book Athenian Political Thought and the Reconstitution of American Democracy written by J. Peter Euben and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-05 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the contemporary United States the image and experience of Athenian democracy has been appropriated to justify a profoundly conservative political and educational agenda. Such is the conviction expressed in this provocative book, which is certain to arouse widespread comment and discussion. What does it mean to be a citizen in a democracy? Indeed, how do we educate for democracy? These questions are addressed here by thirteen historians, classicists, and political theorists, who critically examine ancient Greek history and institutions, texts, and ideas in light of today's political practices and values. They do not idealize ancient Greek democracy. Rather, they use it, with all its faults, as a basis for measuring the strengths and shortcomings of American democracy. In the hands of the authors, ancient Greek sources become partners in an educational dialogue about democracy's past, one that goads us to think about the limitations of democracy's present and to imagine enriched possibilities for its future. The authors are diverse in their opinions and in their political and moral commitments. But they share the view that insulating American democracy from radical criticism encourages a dangerous complacency that Athenian political thought can disrupt.

Download or read book Free Speech and Democracy in Ancient Athens written by Arlene W. Saxonhouse and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-12-19 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book illuminates the distinctive character of our modern understanding of the basis and value of free speech by contrasting it with the very different form of free speech that was practised by the ancient Athenians in their democratic regime. Free speech in the ancient democracy was not a protected right but an expression of the freedom from hierarchy, awe, reverence and shame. It was thus an essential ingredient of the egalitarianism of that regime. That freedom was challenged by the consequences of the rejection of shame (aidos) which had served as a cohesive force within the polity. Through readings of Socrates's trial, Greek tragedy and comedy, Thucydides's History, and Plato's Protagoras this volume explores the paradoxical connections between free speech, democracy, shame, and Socratic philosophy and Thucydidean history as practices of uncovering.

Download or read book The Platonic Political Art written by John R. Wallach and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2015-12-16 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first comprehensive treatment of Plato’s political thought in a long time, John Wallach offers a "critical historicist" interpretation of Plato. Wallach shows how Plato’s theory, while a radical critique of the conventional ethical and political practice of his own era, can be seen as having the potential for contributing to democratic discourse about ethics and politics today. The author argues that Plato articulates and "solves" his Socratic Problem in his various dialogues in different but potentially complementary ways. The book effectively extracts Plato from the straightjacket of Platonism and from the interpretive perspectives of the past fifty years—principally those of Karl Popper, Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, M. I. Finley, Jacques Derrida, and Gregory Vlastos. The author’s distinctive approach for understanding Plato—and, he argues, for the history of political theory in general—can inform contemporary theorizing about democracy, opening pathways for criticizing democracy on behalf of virtue, justice, and democracy itself.

Download or read book The Athenian Revolution written by Josiah Ober and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where did "democracy" come from, and what was its original form and meaning? Here Josiah Ober shows that this "power of the people" crystallized in a revolutionary uprising by the ordinary citizens of Athens in 508-507 B.C. He then examines the consequences of the development of direct democracy for upper-and lower-class citizens, for dissident Athenian intellectuals, and for those who were denied citizenship under the new regime (women, slaves, resident foreigners), as well as for the general development of Greek history. When the citizens suddenly took power into their own hands, they changed the cultural and social landscape of Greece, thereby helping to inaugurate the Classical Era. Democracy led to fundamental adjustments in the basic structures of Athenian society, altered the forms and direction of political thinking, and sparked a series of dramatic reorientations in international relations. It quickly made Athens into the most powerful Greek city-state, but it also fatally undermined the traditional Greek rules of warfare. It stimulated the development of the Western tradition of political theorizing and encouraged a new conception of justice that has striking parallels to contemporary theories of rights. But Athenians never embraced the notions of inherency and inalienability that have placed the concept of rights at the center of modern political thought. Thus the play of power that constituted life in democratic Athens is revealed as at once strangely familiar and desperately foreign, and the values sustaining the Athenian political community as simultaneously admirable and terrifying.

Download or read book Plato s Democratic Entanglements written by S. Sara Monoson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2000-05-08 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Sara Monoson challenges the longstanding and widely held view that Plato is a virulent opponent of all things democratic. She does not, however, offer in its place the equally mistaken idea that he is somehow a partisan of democracy. Instead, she argues that we should attend more closely to Plato's suggestion that democracy is horrifying and exciting, and she seeks to explain why he found it morally and politically intriguing. Monoson focuses on Plato's engagement with democracy as he knew it: a cluster of cultural practices that reach into private and public life, as well as a set of governing institutions. She proposes that while Plato charts tensions between the claims of democratic legitimacy and philosophical truth, he also exhibits a striking attraction to four practices central to Athenian democratic politics: intense antityrantism, frank speaking, public funeral oratory, and theater-going. By juxtaposing detailed examination of these aspects of Athenian democracy with analysis of the figurative language, dramatic structure, and arguments of the dialogues, she shows that Plato systematically links democratic ideals and activities to philosophic labor. Monoson finds that Plato's political thought exposes intimate connections between Athenian democratic politics and the practice of philosophy. Situating Plato's political thought in the context of the Athenian democratic imaginary, Monoson develops a new, textured way of thinking of the relationship between Plato's thought and the politics of his city.

Download or read book The Hellenistic Reception of Classical Athenian Democracy and Political Thought written by Mirko Canevaro and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-19 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Hellenistic period (c.323-31 BCE), Greek teachers, philosophers, historians, orators, and politicians found an essential point of reference in the democracy of Classical Athens and the political thought which it produced. However, while Athenian civic life and thought in the Classical period have been intensively studied, these aspects of the Hellenistic period have so far received much less attention. This volume seeks to bring together the two areas of research, shedding new light on these complementary parts of the history of the ancient Greek polis. The essays collected here encompass historical, philosophical, and literary approaches to the various Hellenistic responses to and adaptations of Classical Athenian politics. They survey the complex processes through which Athenian democratic ideals of equality, freedom, and civic virtue were emphasized, challenged, blunted, or reshaped in different Hellenistic contexts and genres. They also consider the reception, in the changed political circumstances, of Classical Athenian non- and anti-democratic political thought. This makes it possible to investigate how competing Classical Athenian ideas about the value or shortcomings of democracy and civic community continued to echo through new political debates in Hellenistic cities and schools. Looking ahead to the Roman Imperial period, the volume also explores to what extent those who idealized Classical Athens as a symbol of cultural and intellectual excellence drew on, or forgot, its legacy of democracy and vigorous political debate. By addressing these different questions it not only tracks changes in practices and conceptions of politics and the city in the Hellenistic world, but also examines developing approaches to culture, rhetoric, history, ethics, and philosophy, and especially their relationships with politics.

Download or read book Democracy and Goodness written by John R. Wallach and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-25 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proposes a new democratic theory, rooted in activity not consent, and intrinsically related to historical understandings of power and ethics.

Download or read book Ancient Greek Political Thought in Practice written by Paul Cartledge and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-05-28 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Greece was a place of tremendous political experiment and innovation, and it was here too that the first serious political thinkers emerged. Using carefully selected case-studies, in this book Professor Cartledge investigates the dynamic interaction between ancient Greek political thought and practice from early historic times to the early Roman Empire. Of concern throughout are three major issues: first, the relationship of political thought and practice; second, the relevance of class and status to explaining political behaviour and thinking; third, democracy - its invention, development and expansion, and extinction, prior to its recent resuscitation and even apotheosis. In addition, monarchy in various forms and at different periods and the peculiar political structures of Sparta are treated in detail over a chronological range extending from Homer to Plutarch. The book provides an introduction to the topic for all students and non-specialists who appreciate the continued relevance of ancient Greece to political theory and practice today.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Political Thought written by Stephen G. Salkever and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-27 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to the central texts and problems in ancient Greek political thought from Homer through the Stoics and Epicureans.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory written by John S Dryzek and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-06-12 with total page 900 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long recognized as one of the main branches of political science, political theory has in recent years burgeoned in many different directions. Close textual analysis of historical texts sits alongside more analytical work on the nature and normative grounds of political values. Continental and post-modern influences jostle with ones from economics, history, sociology, and the law. Feminist concerns with embodiment make us look at old problems in new ways, and challenges of new technologies open whole new vistas for political theory. This Handbook provides comprehensive and critical coverage of the lively and contested field of political theory, and will help set the agenda for the field for years to come. Forty-five chapters by distinguished political theorists look at the state of the field, where it has been in the recent past, and where it is likely to go in future. They examine political theory's edges as well as its core, the globalizing context of the field, and the challenges presented by social, economic, and technological changes.

Download or read book Demokratia written by Josiah Ober and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-09 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the result of a long and fruitful conversation among practitioners of two very different fields: ancient history and political theory. The topic of the conversation is classical Greek democracy and its contemporary relevance. The nineteen contributors remain diverse in their political commitments and in their analytic approaches, but all have engaged deeply with Greek texts, with normative and historical concerns, and with each others' arguments. The issues and tensions examined here are basic to both history and political theory: revolution versus stability, freedom and equality, law and popular sovereignty, cultural ideals and social practice. While the authors are sharply critical of many aspects of Athenian society, culture, and government, they are united by a conviction that classical Athenian democracy has once again become a centrally important subject for political debate. The contributors are Benjamin R. Barber, Alan Boegehold, Paul Cartledge, Susan Guettel Cole, W. Robert Connor, Carol Dougherty, J. Peter Euben, Mogens H. Hansen, Victor D. Hanson, Carnes Lord, Philip Brook Manville, Ian Morris, Martin Ostwald, Kurt Raaflaub, Jennifer Tolbert Roberts, Barry S. Strauss, Robert W. Wallace, Sheldon S. Wolin, and Ellen Meiksins Wood.

Download or read book Prudes Perverts and Tyrants written by Christina H. Tarnopolsky and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-12 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, most political theorists have agreed that shame shouldn't play any role in democratic politics because it threatens the mutual respect necessary for participation and deliberation. But Christina Tarnopolsky argues that not every kind of shame hurts democracy. In fact, she makes a powerful case that there is a form of shame essential to any critical, moderate, and self-reflexive democratic practice. Through a careful study of Plato's Gorgias, Tarnopolsky shows that contemporary conceptions of shame are far too narrow. For Plato, three kinds of shame and shaming practices were possible in democracies, and only one of these is similar to the form condemned by contemporary thinkers. Following Plato, Tarnopolsky develops an account of a different kind of shame, which she calls "respectful shame." This practice involves the painful but beneficial shaming of one's fellow citizens as part of the ongoing process of collective deliberation. And, as Tarnopolsky argues, this type of shame is just as important to contemporary democracy as it was to its ancient form. Tarnopolsky also challenges the view that the Gorgias inaugurates the problematic oppositions between emotion and reason, and rhetoric and philosophy. Instead, she shows that, for Plato, rationality and emotion belong together, and she argues that political science and democratic theory are impoverished when they relegate the study of emotions such as shame to other disciplines.

Download or read book What s Wrong with Democracy written by Loren J. Samons and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-04-23 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is unlike any recent work I know of. It offers a challenging, often refreshing, and what will certainly be a controversial assessment of classical Athenian democracy and its significance to modern America. Samons is willing to tread where few other classicists are willing to go in print. He reminds readers that the Athenian democracy offers just as many negative lessons as positive ones, and topics like the popular vote, the dangers of state payments to individual citizens, the naturally acquisitive foreign policy of democratic governments, and the place of religion in democracy all come up for discussion and criticism. Samons has written an original and very provocative book."—James Sickinger, author of Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens "Professor Samons' lively and challenging account of ancient Athens raises important questions about democracy, ancient and modern. It will surely arouse keen interest and debate."—Donald Kagan, author of The Peloponnesian War "In this elegantly written, carefully researched, and perceptive book, Samons presents a penetrating analysis of ancient Athenian democracy's dark sides. His book is as much about the errors and weaknesses of our own political system as it is about those of ancient Athens. Whether or not we agree with his critique and conclusions, this book is not merely thought-provoking: it is annoyingly discomforting, forcing us to re-examine firm beliefs and to discard easy solutions."—Kurt A. Raaflaub, author of Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece "In this marvelously unfashionable book, Samons debunks much of what passes in the current-day academy as scholarship on classical Athens, demonstrating that it is an ideologically-driven apology for a radically defective form of government. In the process, he casts light on the perspicacity of America's founding fathers and on the unthinking populism that threatens in our own day to ruin their legacy."—Paul A. Rahe, author of Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution "We are in the greatest age of democracy since antiquity and in the most need of guidance about the wisdom of government by majority vote. Precisely for that reason Professor Samons offers a bold and unbridled look at the nature and history of democracies, ancient and modern. He reminds us that we are capable of doing as much evil as good when constitutional protections and republican oversight are not there to moderate the instant desires of the majority. This is an engaging, provocative, and timely study of ancient Athens and modern America that should serve as a cautionary reminder to both romantic scholars and zealous diplomats."—Victor Davis Hanson, author of The Other Greeks

Download or read book Silence and Democracy written by John Zumbrunnen and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The role of elites vis-&à-vis the mass public in the construction and successful functioning of democracy has long been of central interest to political theorists. In Silence and Democracy, John Zumbrunnen explores this theme in Thucydides&’ famous history of the Peloponnesian War as a way of focusing our thoughts about this relationship in our own modern democracy. In Periclean Athens, according to Thucydides, &“what was in name a democracy became in actuality rule by the first man.&” This political transformation of Athenian political life raises the question of how to interpret the silence of the demos. Zumbrunnen distinguishes the &“silence of contending voices&” from the &“collective silence of the demos,&” and finds the latter the more difficult and intriguing problem. It is in the complex interplay of silence, speech, and action that Zumbrunnen teases out the meaning of democracy for Thucydides in both its domestic and international dimensions and shows how we may benefit from the Thucydidean text in thinking about the ways in which the silence of ordinary citizens can enable the domineering machinations of political elites in America and elsewhere today.

Download or read book Greek Political Thought written by Ryan K. Balot and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This wide-ranging history of ancient Greek political thought showswhat ancient political texts might mean to citizens of thetwenty-first century. A provocative and wide-ranging history of ancient Greekpolitical thought Demonstrates what ancient Greek works of political philosophymight mean to citizens of the twenty-first century Examines an array of poetic, historical, and philosophicaltexts in an effort to locate Greek political thought in itscultural context Pays careful attention to the distinctively ancient connectionsbetween politics and ethics Structured around key themes such as the origins of politicalthought, political self-definition, revolutions in politicalthought, democracy and imperialism

Download or read book Vocations of Political Theory written by Jason A. Frank and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Content Description pt. 1. Invoking political theory. Political theory : from vocation to invocation / Sheldon S. Wolin -- pt. 2. Theorizing loss. Specters and angels at the end of history / Wendy Brown -- The politics of nostalgia and theories of loss / J. Peter Euben -- pt. 3. Thinking in time. Can theorists make time for belief? / Russell Arben Fox -- The history of political thought as a vocation : a pragmatist defense / David Paul Mandell -- pt. 4. The politics of ordinary life. Political theory for losers / Thomas L. Dumm -- Feminism's flight from the ordinary / Linda M.B. Zerilli -- pt. 5. Political knowledge. Conceptions of science in political theory : a tale of cloaks and daggers / Mark B. Brown -- Political theory as a provocation : an ethos of political theory / Lon Troyer -- Gramsci, organic intellectuals, and cultural studies : lessons for political theorists? / Shane Gunster -- pt. 6. Practicing political theory. Reading the body : hobbes, body politics, and the task of political theory / Samantha Frost -- Work, shame, and the chain gang : the new civic education / Jill Locke -- The nobility of democracy / William E. Connolly.