How and why did the Western tradition of political theorizing
arise in Athens during the late fifth and fourth centuries B.C.? By
interweaving intellectual history with political philosophy and
literary analysis, Josiah Ober argues that the tradition originated
in a high-stakes debate about democracy. Since elite Greek
intellectuals tended to assume that ordinary men were incapable of
ruling themselves, the longevity and resilience of Athenian popular
rule presented a problem: how to explain the apparent success of a
regime "irrationally" based on the inherent wisdom and practical
efficacy of decisions made by non-elite citizens? The problem
became acute after two oligarchic "coups d' tat" in the late fifth
century B.C. The generosity and statesmanship that democrats showed
after regaining political power contrasted starkly with the
oligarchs' violence and corruption. 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.
Ober offers fresh readings of the political works of Thucydides,
Plato, and Aristotle, among others, by placing them in the context
of a competitive community of dissident writers. These thinkers
struggled against both democratic ideology and intellectual rivals
to articulate the best and most influential criticism of popular
rule. The competitive Athenian environment stimulated a century of
brilliant literary and conceptual innovation. Through Ober's
re-creation of an ancient intellectual milieu, early Western
political thought emerges not just as a "footnote to Plato," but as
a dissident commentary on the first Western democracy.
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