Princeton University Press
Political Dissent in Democratic Athens: Intellectual Critics of Popular Rule
Key Metrics
- Josiah Ober
- Princeton University Press
- Paperback
- 9780691089812
- 9.12 X 6.08 X 1.08 inches
- 1.37 pounds
- History > Ancient - Greece
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
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.
Author Bio
Josiah Ober, Mitsotakis Professor in the School of Humanities and Science, works on historical institutionalism and political theory, focusing on the political thought and practice of the ancient Greek world and its contemporary relevance.
He is the author of a number of books mostly published by Princeton University Press, including Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (1989), Political Dissent in Democratic Athens (2008), Democracy and Knowledge (2008).
He has also published about 75 articles and chapters, including recent articles in American Political Science Review, Philosophical Studies, Hesperia, Polis, and Transactions of the American Philological Association.
His book on The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece was published in Spring 2015, from Princeton University Press. It documents and explains the remarkable Greek efflorescence of ca. 800-300 BCE, the Macedonian conquest of the late fourth century, and the persistence of economic flourishing into the Hellenistic era.
Other work in progress includes a general theory of democracy, a study of rational cooperation and useful knowledge in Greek political thought.
Source: Stanford Department of Classics
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