Download or read book The Radical Greek Idea written by Joel Farrell and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new, bold, radical idea emerged in ancient Athens in 508 BCE, the concept that the people could rule themselves. Democracy today is equated with good, just government, but in ancient Greece, it still had a lot to prove. The Athenians embraced democracy in its purest form: direct democracy in which each citizen participated in all the decisions of the state. They had no representatives; rather, they voted directly on all the laws and measures considered by the government. The question was: could it work? The Athenian democracy had plenty of chances to prove itself. It had to deal with the Persian Wars, wars with Sparta and its allies, and the rise of Philip and Alexander the Great. It had to govern a great empire and manage a growing society bent on high achievement. Perhaps the greatest proof of democracy's merits was that from it came the Golden Age of Athens which gave the world so many of its intellectual and cultural foundations. Joel Farrell's recounting of the development and challenges of Athenian democracy is peopled by some of the greatest leaders any democracy has produced, as well as some of its worst demagogues. Athenian government was sometimes wise and sometimes foolish, but usually effective. It teaches us much about the potential of democracy in our time and the challenges that any democratic society must face.
Download or read book Becoming God written by Patrick Lee Miller and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-01-20 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A lucid presentation of the first and most influential attempts to weave together philosophical thought on God, reason and happiness.
Download or read book Cornelius Castoriadis and Radical Democracy written by Vrasidas Karalis and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2014-07-24 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cornelius Castoriadis and the Project of Radical Autonomy analyses the philosophy of Greek-born French philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis. A leading member of the influential revolutionary group, Socialism or Barbarism in France, Castoriadis analysed contemporary political subjectivity and culture in terms of the collective and individual attempt to gain autonomy. His philosophy frames a multi-dimensional analysis of modern capitalist societies, based on a systematic critique of orthodox Marxism, Heideggerian ontology and Lacanian psychology. The present volume consists of two parts. In the first part, his most significant essays written before his departure to France in 1945 are translated and present young Castoriadis’ interpretation of Max Weber’s theory of bureaucratic societies. The second part consists of a series of essays by various scholars on aspects of Castoriadis’ mature philosophy in relation to other thinkers, and against the background of Europe’s political and social history.
Download or read book Political and Cultural Aspects of Greek Exoticism written by Panayis Panagiotopoulos and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-13 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the new Greek exoticism by examining political and cultural mechanisms that contribute to Greece’s image and self-image construction. The contributions shed light on the subject from different perspectives, including political science, history of ideas, sociology, cultural studies, and art criticism. In the first part, the book provides a historical review with a focus on philhellenism, perceptions of antiquity and modernity, and the evolution of Greece as an idea. The second part looks at the current Greek crisis and analyses ideological, political and cultural aspects and stereotypes that contributed to the formation of contemporary Greek culture. The third and final part discusses notions such as aestheticism, idealism and pragmaticism, and deconstructs narrations of Greece through artistic media, such as films and exhibitions, which present a new oriental Utopia.
Download or read book The Greek Polis and the Invention of Democracy written by Johann P. Arnason and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-29 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Greek Polis and the Invention of Democracy presents a series of essays that trace the Greeks’ path to democracy and examine the connection between the Greek polis as a citizen state and democracy as well as the interaction between democracy and various forms of cultural expression from a comparative historical perspective and with special attention to the place of Greek democracy in political thought and debates about democracy throughout the centuries. Presents an original combination of a close synchronic and long diachronic examination of the Greek polis - city-states that gave rise to the first democratic system of government Offers a detailed study of the close interactionbetween democracy, society, and the arts in ancient Greece Places the invention of democracy in fifth-century bce Athens both in its broad social and cultural context and in the context of the re-emergence of democracy in the modern world Reveals the role Greek democracy played in the political and intellectual traditions that shaped modern democracy, and in the debates about democracy in modern social, political, and philosophical thought Written collaboratively by an international team of leading scholars in classics, ancient history, sociology, and political science
Download or read book The Greek Concept of Justice written by Eric Alfred Havelock and published by Cambridge : Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1978 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Eric Havelock presents a challenging account of the development of the idea of justice in early Greece, and particularly of the way justice changed as Greek oral tradition gradually gave way to the written word in a literate society. He begins by examining the educational functions of poets in preliterate Greece, showing how they conserved and transmitted the traditions of society, a thesis adumbrated in his earlier book Preface to Plato. Homer, he demonstrates, has much to say about justice, but since that idea is nowhere in the epics directly stated or expressed, it must be deduced from the speech and actions of the characters. Havelock's careful reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey is original and revealing; it sheds light both on Homeric notions of justice and on the Archaic Greek society depicted in the poems. As Havelock continues his inquiry from Hesiod to Aeschylus, his findings become more complex. The oral Greek world shades into a literate one. Words lose some kinds of meanings, gain others, and steadily become more suitedto the conceptualization that Plato strove for and achieved. This evolution of language itself, Havelock shows, was one of the principal accomplishments of the Greek world. Lucidly written and forcefully argued, this book is a major contribution to our knowledge of ancient Greece--its politics, philosophy, and literature, from Homer to Plato.
Download or read book The Making of Fornication written by Kathy L. Gaca and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-10-26 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative work provides a radical reassessment of the emergence and nature of Christian sexual morality, the dominant moral paradigm in Western society since late antiquity. While many scholars, including Michel Foucault, have found the basis of early Christian sexual restrictions in Greek ethics and political philosophy, Kathy L. Gaca demonstrates on compelling new grounds that it is misguided to regard Greek ethics and political theory—with their proposed reforms of eroticism, the family, and civic order—as the foundation of Christian sexual austerity. Rather, in this thoroughly informed and wide-ranging study, Gaca shows that early Christian goals to eradicate fornication were derived from the sexual rules and poetic norms of the Septuagint, or Greek Bible, and that early Christian writers adapted these rules and norms in ways that reveal fascinating insights into the distinctive and largely non-philosophical character of Christian sexual morality. Writing with an authoritative command of both Greek philosophy and early Christian writings, Gaca investigates Plato, the Stoics, the Pythagoreans, Philo of Alexandria, the apostle Paul, and the patristic Christians Clement of Alexandria, Tatian, and Epiphanes, freshly elucidating their ideas on sexual reform with precision, depth, and originality. Early Christian writers, she demonstrates, transformed all that they borrowed from Greek ethics and political philosophy to launch innovative programs against fornication that were inimical to Greek cultural mores, popular and philosophical alike. The Septuagint's mandate to worship the Lord alone among all gods led to a Christian program to revolutionize Gentile sexual practices, only for early Christians to find this virtually impossible to carry out without going to extremes of sexual renunciation. Knowledgeable and wide-ranging, this work of intellectual history and ethics cogently demonstrates why early Christian sexual restrictions took such repressive ascetic forms, and casts sobering light on what Christian sexual morality has meant for religious pluralism in Western culture, especially among women as its bearers.
Download or read book Greek Philosophy Thales to Plato written by John Burnet and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
Download or read book Radical Hope written by Jonathan Lear and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the story of Plenty Coups, the last great Chief of the Crow Nation. This title contains a philosophical and ethical inquiry into a people faced with the end of their way of life.
Download or read book The Birth of Politics written by Melissa Lane and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-16 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "First published in the United Kingdom as: Greek and Roman political ideas: a Pelican introduction, by the Penquin Group, Penguin Books ... London"--T.p. verso.
Download or read book Can Democracy Work written by James Miller and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Of all the books on democracy in recent years one of the best is James Miller’s Can Democracy Work? . . . Miller provides an intelligent journey through the turbulent past of this great human experiment in whether we can actually govern ourselves." —David Blight, The Guardian A new history of the world’s most embattled idea Today, democracy is the world’s only broadly accepted political system, and yet it has become synonymous with disappointment and crisis. How did it come to this? In Can Democracy Work? James Miller, the author of the classic history of 1960s protest Democracy Is in the Streets, offers a lively, surprising, and urgent history of the democratic idea from its first stirrings to the present. As he shows, democracy has always been rife with inner tensions. The ancient Greeks preferred to choose leaders by lottery and regarded elections as inherently corrupt and undemocratic. The French revolutionaries sought to incarnate the popular will, but many of them came to see the people as the enemy. And in the United States, the franchise would be extended to some even as it was taken from others. Amid the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century, communists, liberals, and nationalists all sought to claim the ideals of democracy for themselves—even as they manifestly failed to realize them. Ranging from the theaters of Athens to the tents of Occupy Wall Street, Can Democracy Work? is an entertaining and insightful guide to our most cherished—and vexed—ideal.
Download or read book Radical Platonism in Byzantium written by Niketas Siniossoglou and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-03 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking approach to late Byzantine intellectual history and the philosophy of visionary reformer Gemistos Plethon.
Download or read book The Development of the Greek Idea written by Florence DeBar and published by . This book was released on 1906 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Greek Praise of Poverty written by William D. Desmond and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: William Desmond, taking issue with common popular and scholarlyviews of the ancient Greek Cynics, contends that early Cynics likeAntisthenes and Diogenes were not cultural outcasts or marginal voicesin classical culture; rather, the Cynic movement through the fourthcentury B.C. had deep and significant roots in what Desmond calls theGreek praise of poverty. Desmond demonstrates that classical views ofwealth were complex and allowed for the admiration of poverty and thevirtues it could inspire. He explains Cynicism's rise in popularity in theancient world by exploring the set of attitudes that collectively formedthe Greek praise of poverty. Desmond argues that in the fifth and fourthcenturies B.C., economic, political, military, and philosophical thoughtcontained explicit criticisms of wealth and praise of poverty.
Download or read book The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and India written by Richard Seaford and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-05 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains for the first time the genesis and early form of both Indian and Greek philosophy, and their striking similarities.
Download or read book Monstrosity and Philosophy written by Filippo Del Lucchese and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amazons and giants, snakes and gorgons, centaurs and gryphons: monsters abounded in the ancient world. Del Lucchese grapples with the concept of monstrosity, showing how ancient philosophers explored metaphysics, ontology, theology and politics to respond to the challenge of radical otherness in nature and in thought.
