Download or read book Plato on Democracy written by Thanassis Samaras and published by Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 2002 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revising his 1996 doctoral dissertation for the University of Warwick, though not departing radically from his original contention, Samaras argues that Plato's political thinking develops along a continuous line. He shows how some fundamental principles inform his thinking from beginning to end, and no abrupt breaks occur from one dialogue to the next or within any dialogue, but that the continuity does not mean his political though remains essentially unchanged. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Download or read book Plato and Democracy Today written by Keekok Lee and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-14 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deploys an innovative narrative device to mount an exercise in (popular) political philosophy. It presents Plato as “the Reith Lecturer” bringing up to date his critique of democracy which he began more than two thousand years ago in The Republic. Three recent “unexpected” electoral outcomes (the Brexit Referendum in the UK, the Presidential Election in the USA in 2016, and the UK General Election in 2017) allow it to focus on populism and the role it plays in understanding the logic of democracy. The book relentlessly exposes its fundamental flaw as demagoguery, relying not on high abstract philosophical/political theorising but entirely on empirical data to back up his critique. Ironically, it shows that Orwell’s Newspeak is its tongue.

Download or read book A Wolf in the City written by Cinzia Arruzza and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-26 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The problem of tyranny preoccupied Plato, and its discussion both begins and ends his famous Republic. Though philosophers have mined the Republic for millennia, Cinzia Arruzza is the first to devote a full book to the study of tyranny and of the tyrant's soul in Plato's Republic. In A Wolf in the City, Arruzza argues that Plato's critique of tyranny intervenes in an ancient debate concerning the sources of the crisis of Athenian democracy and the relation between political leaders and demos in the last decades of the fifth century BCE. Arruzza shows that Plato's critique of tyranny should not be taken as veiled criticism of the Syracusan tyrannical regime, but rather of Athenian democracy. In parsing Plato's discussion of the soul of the tyrant, Arruzza will also offer new and innovative insights into his moral psychology, addressing much-debated problems such as the nature of eros and of the spirited part of the soul, the unity or disunity of the soul, and the relation between the non-rational parts of the soul and reason.

Download or read book Against Democracy written by Jason Brennan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bracingly provocative challenge to one of our most cherished ideas and institutions Most people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government. They believe people have the right to an equal share of political power. And they believe that political participation is good for us—it empowers us, helps us get what we want, and tends to make us smarter, more virtuous, and more caring for one another. These are some of our most cherished ideas about democracy. But Jason Brennan says they are all wrong. In this trenchant book, Brennan argues that democracy should be judged by its results—and the results are not good enough. Just as defendants have a right to a fair trial, citizens have a right to competent government. But democracy is the rule of the ignorant and the irrational, and it all too often falls short. Furthermore, no one has a fundamental right to any share of political power, and exercising political power does most of us little good. On the contrary, a wide range of social science research shows that political participation and democratic deliberation actually tend to make people worse—more irrational, biased, and mean. Given this grim picture, Brennan argues that a new system of government—epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable—may be better than democracy, and that it's time to experiment and find out. A challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable, Against Democracy is essential reading for scholars and students of politics across the disciplines. Featuring a new preface that situates the book within the current political climate and discusses other alternatives beyond epistocracy, Against Democracy is a challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable.

Download or read book Plato s Democratic Entanglements written by S. Sara Monoson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-18 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 Rhetoric of Plato s Republic written by James L. Kastely and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plato isn’t exactly thought of as a champion of democracy, and perhaps even less as an important rhetorical theorist. In this book, James L. Kastely recasts Plato in just these lights, offering a vivid new reading of one of Plato’s most important works: the Republic. At heart, Kastely demonstrates, the Republic is a democratic epic poem and pioneering work in rhetorical theory. Examining issues of justice, communication, persuasion, and audience, he uncovers a seedbed of theoretical ideas that resonate all the way up to our contemporary democratic practices. As Kastely shows, the Republic begins with two interrelated crises: one rhetorical, one philosophical. In the first, democracy is defended by a discourse of justice, but no one can take this discourse seriously because no one can see—in a world where the powerful dominate the weak—how justice is a value in itself. That value must be found philosophically, but philosophy, as Plato and Socrates understand it, can reach only the very few. In order to reach its larger political audience, it must become rhetoric; it must become a persuasive part of the larger culture—which, at that time, meant epic poetry. Tracing how Plato and Socrates formulate this transformation in the Republic, Kastely isolates a crucial theory of persuasion that is central to how we talk together about justice and organize ourselves according to democratic principles.

Download or read book Plato on Democracy and Political techn written by Anders Sorensen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Plato on Democracy and Political technē Sørensen argues that the question of democracy’s ‘epistemic potential’ was one that Plato took more seriously than is usually assumed. While he famously rejected democracy on the basis of its inherent inability to accommodate political expertise (technē), he did not think that this failure on democracy’s part was necessarily inevitable but a concept that required further examination. Sørensen shows that in a number of his most important dialogues (Republic, Gorgias, Statesman, Protagoras, Theaetetus), Plato was ready to take up the question of democracy’s epistemic potential and to enter into strikingly technical and sophisticated discussions of what both rule by technē and rule by the people would have to look like in order for the two things to be compatible.

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 Athens Victorious written by Greg Recco and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2009 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plato's Republic is typically thought to recommend a form of government that, from our current perspective, seems perniciously totalitarian. Athens Victorious demonstrates that Plato intended quite the opposite: to demonstrate the superiorityof a democratic constitution. Greg Recco provides a brilliant rereading of Book Eight. Often considered an anticlimax, Book Eight seems to be a mere catalogue of mistakes but is in fact one of Plato's most neglected literary creations: a mythic or epic restaging of the Peloponnesian War that pitted Sparta's militaristic oligarchy against Athens' democracy. In Plato's reenactment, Athens wins. Recco argues that the values identified in Book Eight as distinctively democratic were the very ones that served as the unannounced touchstones of moral and political judgment throughout the dialogue.Athens Victorious is an important reinterpretation ofThe Republic. It is an excellent resource for students and scholars of Classical Studies, Philosophy, and Political Theory.

Download or read book Dream of Reason A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance New Edition written by Anthony Gottlieb and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-08-30 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "His book...supplant[s] all others, even the immensely successful History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell."—A. C. Grayling Already a classic, this landmark study of early Western thought now appears in a new edition with expanded coverage of the Middle Ages. This landmark study of Western thought takes a fresh look at the writings of the great thinkers of classic philosophy and questions many pieces of conventional wisdom. The book invites comparison with Bertrand Russell's monumental History of Western Philosophy, "but Gottlieb's book is less idiosyncratic and based on more recent scholarship" (Colin McGinn, Los Angeles Times). A New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Best Book, and a Times Literary Supplement Best Book of 2001.

Download or read book The Politics of Sincerity written by Elizabeth Markovits and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A growing frustration with “spin doctors,” doublespeak, and outright lying by public officials has resulted in a deep public cynicism regarding politics today. It has also led many voters to seek out politicians who engage in “straight talk,” out of a hope that sincerity signifies a dedication to the truth. While this is an understandable reaction to the degradation of public discourse inflicted by political hype, Elizabeth Markovits argues that the search for sincerity in the public arena actually constitutes a dangerous distraction from more important concerns, including factual truth and the ethical import of political statements. Her argument takes her back to an examination of the Greek notion of parrhesia (frank speech), and she draws from her study of the Platonic dialogues a nuanced understanding of this ancient analogue of “straight talk.” She shows Plato to have an appreciation for rhetoric rather than a desire to purge it from public life, providing insights into the ways it can contribute to a fruitful form of deliberative democracy today.

Download or read book Liberty Democracy and the Temptations to Tyranny in the Dialogues of Plato written by Charlotte C. S. Thomas and published by . This book was released on 2021-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on the 2019 A.V. Elliott Conference on Great Books and Ideas at Mercer University, eleven scholars take up some of the complex questions that emerge when one considers carefully how Plato presents democracy and liberty in the dialogues, particularly in terms of the threats they seem to pose to justice and philosophy. When Athens lost the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian people also lost their democratic constitution for a brief but brutal time. Plato wrote his dialogues and founded his Academy in the early days of Athens's newly restored democratic regime, the regime that executed Socrates. But, he set most of the dialogues in the days leading up to Athens's downfall. Plato presents Socrates as so deeply committed to Athens that he would not consider living anywhere else, even when the Athenians intend to execute him. The authors whose essays are collected in this volume explore these tensions deeply and with great attention to the subtleties and complexities of Plato's texts.

Download or read book The Trial of Socrates written by I. F. Stone and published by Anchor. This book was released on 1989-02-01 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In unraveling the long-hidden issues of the most famous free speech case of all time, noted author I.F. Stone ranges far and wide over Roman as well as Greek history to present an engaging and rewarding introduction to classical antiquity and its relevance to society today. The New York Times called this national best-seller an "intellectual thriller."

Download or read book Numbers Rule written by George Szpiro and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author takes the general reader on a tour of the mathematical puzzles and paradoxes inherent in voting systems, such as the Alabama Paradox, in which an increase in the number of seats in the Congress could actually lead to a reduced number of representatives for a state, and the Condorcet Paradox, which demonstrates that the winner of elections featuring more than two candidates does not necessarily reflect majority preferences. Szpiro takes a roughly chronological approach to the topic, traveling from ancient Greece to the present and, in addition to offering explanations of the various mathematical conundrums of elections and voting, also offers biographical details on the mathematicians and other thinkers who thought about them, including Plato, Pliny the Younger, Pierre Simon Laplace, Thomas Jefferson, John von Neumann, and Kenneth Arrow.

Download or read book Political Dissent in Democratic Athens written by Josiah Ober and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2001-12-02 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since it was no longer self-evident that "better men" meant "better government," critics of democracy sought new arguments to explain the relationship among politics, ethics, and morality.

Download or read book Democracy Justice and Equality in Ancient Greece written by Georgios Anagnostopoulos and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-11-16 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The original essays in this volume discuss ideas relating to democracy, political justice, equality and inequalities in the distribution of resources and public goods. These issues were as vigorously debated at the height of ancient Greek democracy as they are in many democratic societies today. Contributing authors address these issues and debates about them from both philosophical and historical perspectives. Readers will discover research on the role of Athenian democracy in moderating economic inequality and reducing poverty, on ancient debates about how to respond to inborn and social inequalities, and on Plato’s and Aristotle’s critiques of Greek participatory democracies. Early chapters examine Plato’s views on equality, justice, and the distribution of political and non-political goods, including his defense of the abolition of private property for the ruling classes and of the equality of women in his ideal constitution and polis. Other papers discuss views of Socrates or Aristotle that are particularly relevant to contemporary political and economic disputes about punishment, freedom, slavery, the status of women, and public education, to name a few. This thorough consideration of the ancient Greeks' work on democracy, justice, and equality will appeal to scholars and researchers of the history of philosophy, Greek history, classics, as well as those with an interest in political philosophy.

Download or read book The Politics written by Aristotle and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 1981-09-17 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty-three centuries after its compilation, 'The Politics' still has much to contribute to this central question of political science. Aristotle's thorough and carefully argued analysis is based on a study of over 150 city constitutions, covering a huge range of political issues in order to establish which types of constitution are best - both ideally and in particular circumstances - and how they may be maintained. Aristotle's opinions form an essential background to the thinking of philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli and Jean Bodin and both his premises and arguments raise questions that are as relevant to modern society as they were to the ancient world.