Corrupting Youth

by Euben, J. Peter

• ISBN13: 9780691012025
• ISBN10: 0691012024
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781400822331
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-10-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr
• More Book Details
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Summary

In Corrupting Youth, Peter Euben explores the affinities between Socratic philosophy and Athenian democratic culture as a way to think about issues of politics and education, both ancient and modern. The book moves skillfully between antiquity and the present, from ancient to contemporary political theory, and from Athenian to American democracy. It draws together important recent work by political theorists with the views of classical scholars in ways that shine new light on significant theoretical debates such as those over discourse ethics, rational choice, and political realism, and on political issues such as school vouchers and education reform. Euben not only argues for the generative capacity of classical texts and Athenian political thought, he demonstrates it by thinking with them to provide a framework for reflecting more deeply about socially divisive issues such as the war over the canon and the politicization of the university. Drawing on Aristophanes' Clouds, Sophocles' Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannos, and Plato's Apology of Socrates, Gorgias, and Protagoras, Euben develops a view of democratic political education. Arguing that Athenian democratic practices constituted a tradition of accountability and self-critique that Socrates expanded into a way of doing philosophy, Euben suggests a necessary reciprocity between political philosophy and radical democracy. By asking whether we can or should take Socrates out of the academy and put him back in front of a wider audience, Euben argues for anchoring contemporary higher education in appreciative yet skeptical encounter with the dramatic figure in Plato's dialogues.

Table of Contents

PREFACE	xi
CHAPTER I Imploding the Canon: The Reform of Education and the War over Culture	3	(29)
CHAPTER II Corrupting Socrates	32	(32)
CHAPTER III The Battle of Salamis and the Origins of Political Theory	64	(27)
CHAPTER IV Democratic Accountability and Socratic Dialectic	91	(18)
CHAPTER V When There Are Gray Skies: Aristophanes' Clouds and the Political Education of Democratic Citizens	109	(30)
CHAPTER VI Antigone and the Languages of Politics	139	(40)
CHAPTER VII Oedipean Complexities and Political Science: Tragedy and the Search for Knowledge	179	(23)
CHAPTER VIII The Gorgias, Socratic Dialectic, and the Education of Democratic Citizens	202	(27)
CHAPTER IX The Protagoras and the Political Education of Democratic Citizens	229	(38)
INDEX	267