Download or read book Thucydides and the Pursuit of Freedom written by Mary P. Nichols and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-05 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Thucydides and the Pursuit of Freedom, Mary P. Nichols argues for the centrality of the idea of freedom in Thucydides' thought. Through her close reading of his History of the Peloponnesian War, she explores the manifestations of this theme. Cities and individuals in Thucydides' history take freedom as their goal, whether they claim to possess it and want to maintain it or whether they desire to attain it for themselves or others. Freedom is the goal of both antagonists in the Peloponnesian War, Sparta and Athens, although in different ways. One of the fullest expressions of freedom can be seen in the rhetoric of Thucydides’ Pericles, especially in his famous funeral oration. More than simply documenting the struggle for freedom, however, Thucydides himself is taking freedom as his cause. On the one hand, he demonstrates that freedom makes possible human excellence, including courage, self-restraint, deliberation, and judgment, which support freedom in turn. On the other hand, the pursuit of freedom, in one’s own regime and in the world at large, clashes with interests and material necessity, and indeed the very passions required for its support. Thucydides’ work, which he himself considered a possession for all time, therefore speaks very much to our time, encouraging the defense of freedom while warning of the limits and dangers in doing so. The powerful must defend freedom, Thucydides teaches, but beware that the cost not become freedom itself.
Download or read book Vindicating the Commercial Republic written by Anthony A. Peacock and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contrary to most academic commentary on The Federalist, this book contends thatthe most significant teachings of the work did not have to do with the institutions of government so much as with the non-institutional features of American constitutionalism, specifically its advocacy for greater union, the development of an unparalleled culture of enterprise, and provision for war. Key to understanding why these features were so critical to The Federalist is the work’s rejection of classical liberalism’s orthodoxy that commercial republics were moderate or pacific in nature rather than spirited, enterprising, and warlike. Using the ancient historian Thucydides account of the daring, innovation, and restlessness of ancient commercial Athens as an interpretive guide for the commercial republican theory that The Federalist embraces, this book provides a sweeping reinterpretation of American constitutionalism. At the heart of The Federalist’s teaching, Peacock contends, is the intention to create an innovative and spirited culture of enterprise that will not only inform America’s civil character post-1787 but its military character as well. No scholarship has considered the significance of Thucydides to the The Federalist. This book does in a comprehensive reconstruction of the work that concludes that The Federalist anticipates as well as any text on American constitutionalism what many consider to be the most definitive features of American character today: its spirit of enterprise and its qualified willingness to engage in war for both reasons of national interest and republican principle.
Download or read book Politics Literature and Film in Conversation written by Matthew D. Dinan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a series of essays in honor of noted scholar of political theory, Mary P. Nichols. The essays reflect Nichols’ pathbreaking work in ancient Greek political thought, as well as her influential treatments of works of literature and film in conversation with political theory. Part I: Conversations Concerning Love and Friendship features essays about the philosophical meaning of human connection and affection. Part II: Conversations Between Politics and Poetry looks at the political significance of art, and the ways in which political rule can be understood to be “artistic” or poetic. Part III: Conversations from Tragedy to Comedy considers whether the human need for community is something to be lamented or celebrated. Broad in scope and interdisciplinary in approach, the essays in this volume address authors such as Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Mary Wollstonecraft, G.W.F. Hegel, Jane Austen, Henry James, William Faulkner, Albert Camus, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, as well as the films of Woody Allen and Whit Stillman.
Download or read book Freedom written by Annelien De Dijn and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the PROSE Award An NRC Handelsblad Best Book of the Year “Ambitious and impressive...At a time when the very survival of both freedom and democracy seems uncertain, books like this are more important than ever.” —The Nation “Helps explain how partisans on both the right and the left can claim to be protectors of liberty, yet hold radically different understandings of its meaning...This deeply informed history of an idea has the potential to combat political polarization.” —Publishers Weekly “Ambitious and bold, this book will have an enormous impact on how we think about the place of freedom in the Western tradition.” —Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough “Brings remarkable clarity to a big and messy subject...New insights and hard-hitting conclusions about the resistance to democracy make this essential reading for anyone interested in the roots of our current dilemmas.” —Lynn Hunt, author of History: Why It Matters For centuries people in the West identified freedom with the ability to exercise control over the way in which they were governed. The equation of liberty with restraints on state power—what most people today associate with freedom—was a deliberate and dramatic rupture with long-established ways of thinking. So what triggered this fateful reversal? In a masterful and surprising reappraisal of more than two thousand years of Western thinking about freedom, Annelien de Dijn argues that this was not the natural outcome of such secular trends as the growth of religious tolerance or the creation of market societies. Rather, it was propelled by an antidemocratic backlash following the French and American Revolutions. The notion that freedom is best preserved by shrinking the sphere of government was not invented by the revolutionaries who created our modern democracies—it was first conceived by their critics and opponents. De Dijn shows that far from following in the path of early American patriots, today’s critics of “big government” owe more to the counterrevolutionaries who tried to undo their work.
Download or read book Reason s Inquisition written by Christopher A. Colmo and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-08-29 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theory and practice, reason and revelation, ancients and moderns are the key themes running through the eighteen studies of the literature of political philosophy in Reason’s Inquisition. Alfarabi is a pivotal figure, but the range is wide, from Plato and Thucydides to Shakespeare and Hobbes, extending to such contemporary figures as Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin.
Download or read book Witnesses and Evidence in Ancient Greek Literature written by Andreas Markantonatos and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-01-19 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fact that aspects of witnesses and evidence put them in the centre of the institutional and cultural (e.g. religious, literary) construction of ancient societies indicates that it is important to keep offering nuanced approaches to the topic of this volume. To advance knowledge of the processes of presenting witnesses and gathering, or constructing, evidence is, in fact, to better and more fully understand the ways in which deliberative Athenian democracy functions, what the core elements of political life and civic identity are, and how they relate to the system of using logos to make decisions. For, witnesses and evidence were important prerequisites of getting the Athenian citizenship and exerting the civic/political identity as a member of the community. It is important, therefore, all the matters that relate to information-gathering and decision-making to be examined anew. Emphasis can be placed on a variety of genres to allow scholars recreate the fullest and clearest possible image about the witnessing and evidencing in antiquity. Chapters in this volume include considerations of social, political, literary, and moral theory, alongside studies of the impact of information-gathering and decision-making in oratory and drama, with a steady focus on the application of key ideas and values in social and political justice to issues of pressing ethical concern.
Download or read book Analysing Historical Narratives written by Stefan Berger and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2021-05-14 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For all of the recent debates over the methods and theoretical underpinnings of the historical profession, scholars and laypeople alike still frequently think of history in terms of storytelling. Accordingly, historians and theorists have devoted much attention to how historical narratives work, illuminating the ways they can bind together events, shape an argument and lend support to ideology. From ancient Greece to modern-day bestsellers, the studies gathered here offer a wide-ranging analysis of the textual strategies used by historians. They show how in spite of the pursuit of truth and objectivity, the ways in which historians tell their stories are inevitably conditioned by their discursive contexts.
Download or read book Political Theory on Death and Dying written by Erin A. Dolgoy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political Theory on Death and Dying provides a comprehensive, encyclopedic review that compiles and curates the latest scholarship, research, and debates on the political and social implications of death and dying. Adopting an easy-to-follow chronological and multi-disciplinary approach on 45 canonical figures and thinkers, leading scholars from a diverse range of fields, including political science, philosophy, and English, discuss each thinker’s ethical and philosophical accounts on mortality and death. Each chapter focuses on a single established figure in political philosophy, as well as religious and literary thinkers, covering classical to contemporary thought on death. Through this approach, the chapters are designed to stand alone, allowing the reader to study every entry in isolation and with greater depth, as well as trace how thinkers are influenced by their predecessors. A key contribution to the field, Political Theory on Death and Dying provides an excellent overview for students and researchers who study philosophy of death, the history of political thought, and political philosophy.
Download or read book Sinclair Lewis and American Democracy written by Steven J. Michels and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-10-28 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sinclair Lewis was one of the most astute observers of American social and political life. Sinclair Lewis and American Democracy is a highly readable analysis of his novels. The book examines each of Lewis’s novels on key themes in the history of political thought and democracy including freedom and purpose, success and materialism, and nationalism and race. Lewis is revealed to be an unapologetic individualist and a fierce humanitarian.
Download or read book The Greek Superpower written by Paul Cartledge and published by Classical Press of Wales. This book was released on 2018-12-31 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Greeks - in later times - saw Athens as 'the Hellas of Hellas', but in the classical period many Athenians thought otherwise. Athens might be a school of Hellas, but the school of Hellas was Sparta. Militarily and morally, Sparta was supreme. This book explores how Athenians - ordinary citizens as well as writers and politicians - thought about Sparta's superiority. Nine new studies from a distinguished international cast examine how Athenians might revere Sparta even as they fought her. This respect led to Plato's literary creation of fantasy cities (in the Republic and Laws) to imitate Spartan methods. And, after its military surrender in 404 BC, ruling Athenian politicians claimed that their city was to be remodelled as itself a New Sparta.
Download or read book Thucydides and the Modern World written by Katherine Harloe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-05 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient Greek historian Thucydides has had an enormous impact on modern historiography, political theory, international relations and strategic studies, but this influence has never been properly studied. This book brings together leading scholars from a range of disciplines to explore the different facets of Thucydides' modern reception and influence, from the birth of political theory in Renaissance Europe to the rise of scientific history in nineteenth-century Germany and the triumph of 'realism' in twentieth-century international relations theory. Its chapters consider the different national and disciplinary traditions of reading and citing Thucydides, but also highlight common themes and questions; in particular, the variety of images of the historian produced by his modern readers: the scientific historian or the artful rhetorician, the brilliant analyst of society and politics or the great narrator of political and military events, the man of experience and affairs or the man of contemplation and reflection.
Download or read book Wherefrom Does History Emerge written by Tilo Schabert and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Powers of chaos accompany any order of the human world, being the force against which this order is set. Human experience of history is two-fold. There is history ruled by chaos and history ruled by order. "History" occurs in a continuous flow of both histories. The dialectics of life unto nothingness/creation, struggles for order/order achieved is unceasingly actual. In exploring it, within a wide interdisciplinary and transcultural range, this book reaches beyond a conventional "philosophy of history". It deals with the chaotic as well as the cosmic part of the human historical experience. It stages this drama through the tales that religious, mythical, literary, philosophical, folkloristic, and historiographical sources tell and which are retold and interpreted here. From early on humans wished to know where, why, and wherefore all started and took place. Couldn’t the dialectics between chaos and order be meaningful? Couldn’t they assume a productive role as to the world’s precarious event? Power, strife, guilt, divine grace and revelation, literary symbolization, as well as storytelling are discussed in this book. Philosophy, political theory, theology, religious studies, and literary studies will greatly benefit from its width and density.
Download or read book European Supra European Cultural Encounters in Nietzsche s Philosophy written by Marco Brusotti and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-07-06 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nietzsche says "good Europeans" must not only cultivate a "supra-national" view, but also "supra-European" perspective to transcend their European biases and see beyond the horizon of Western culture. The volume takes up such conceptual frontier crossings and syntheses. Emphasizing Nietzsche's genealogy of European culture and his reflections upon the constitution of Europe in the broadest sense, its essays examine peoples and nations, values and arts, knowledge and religion. Nietzsche's apprehensions about the crises of nihilism and decadence and their implications for Europe's (and humankind’s) future are investigated in this context. Concerning the crossing of notional frontiers, contributors examine Nietzsche’s hoped-for dismantling of Europe’s state borders, the overcoming of national prejudices and rivalries, and the propagation of a revitalizing "supra-European" perspective on the continent, its culture(s) and future. They also illuminate lines of syntheses, notably the syncretism of the ancient Greeks and its possible example for the European culture to-be. Finally certain of Europe's current problems are considered via the critical apparatus furnished by Nietzsche's philosophy and the diagnostic tools it provides.
Download or read book Making Sense of Diseases and Disasters written by Lee Trepanier and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-07-31 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines diseases and disasters from the perspective of social and political theory, exploring the ways in which political leaders, social activists, historians, philosophers, and writers have tried to make sense of the catastrophes that have plagued humankind from Thucydides to the present COVID pandemic. By adopting the perspective of political theory, it sheds light on what these individuals and events can teach us about politics, society, and human nature, as well as the insights and limitations of political theory. Including thinkers such as Thucydides, Sophocles, Augustine, Bacon, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Publius, Bartolomé de las Casas, Jane Addams, Camus, Saramago, Baudrillard, Weber, Schmitt, Voegelin and Agamben, it considers a diverse range of events including the plagues of Byzantium and 14th century Europe, 9/11, the hurricanes of Fukushima, Boxing Day, and New Orleans, and the current COVID pandemic. An examination of past, present, and future diseases and disasters, and the ways in which individuals and societies react to them, this volume will appeal to scholars of politics, sociology, anthropology and philosophy with interests in disaster and the social body.
Download or read book David s Sling written by Victoria C. Gardner Coates and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2016-01-05 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout Western history, the societies that have made the greatest contributions to the spread of freedom have created iconic works of art to celebrate their achievements. Yet despite the enduring appeal of these works—from the Parthenon to Michelangelo’s David to Picasso’s Guernica—histories of both art and democracy have ignored this phenomenon. Millions have admired the artworks covered in this book but relatively few know why they were commissioned, what was happening in the culture that produced them, or what they were meant to achieve. Even scholars who have studied them for decades often miss the big picture by viewing them in isolation from a larger story of human striving. David’s Sling places into context ten canonical works of art executed to commemorate the successes of free societies that exerted political and economic influence far beyond what might have been expected of them. Fusing political and art history with a judicious dose of creative reconstruction, Victoria Coates has crafted a lively narrative around each artistic object and the free system that inspired it. This book integrates the themes of creative excellence and political freedom to bring a fresh, new perspective to both. In telling the stories of ten masterpieces, David’s Sling invites reflection on the synergy between liberty and human achievement.
Download or read book Homer s Hero written by Michelle M. Kundmueller and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2019-11-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Draws on Plato to argue that Homer elevated private life as the locus of true friendship and the catalyst of the highest human excellence. Offering a new, Plato-inspired reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey, this book traces the divergent consequences of love of honor and love of one’s own private life for human excellence, justice, and politics. Analyzing Homer’s intricate character portraits, Michelle M. Kundmeuller concludes that the poet shows that the excellence or virtue to which humans incline depends on what they love most. Ajax’s character demonstrates that human beings who seek honor strive, perhaps above all, to display their courage in battle, while Agamemnon’s shows that the love of honor ultimately undermines the potential for moderation, destabilizing political order. In contrast to these portraits, the excellence that Homer links to the love of one’s own, such as by Odysseus and his wife, Penelope, fosters moderation and employs speech to resolve conflict. It is Odysseus, rather than Achilles, who is the pinnacle of heroic excellence. Homer’s portrait of humanity reveals the value of love of one’s own as the better, albeit still incomplete, precursor to a just political order. Kundmueller brings her reading of Homer to bear on contemporary tensions between private life and the pursuit of public honor, arguing that individual desires continue to shape human excellence and our prospects for justice. “A beautiful account of the Homeric hero, in all his complexity.” — Mary P. Nichols, author of Thucydides and the Pursuit of Freedom
Download or read book Thucydides and Political Order written by Christian R. Thauer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, the second of two monographs, consists of contributions by world-class scholars on Thucydides' legacy to the political process. It also includes a careful examination of the usefulness and efficacy of the interdisciplinary approach to political order in the ancient world and proposes new paths for the future study.
