Political Dissent in Democratic Athens

by Ober, Josiah

• ISBN13: 9780691001227
• ISBN10: 0691001227
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-12-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

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 Biography

Josiah Ober is the David Magie Professor of Ancient History in the Department of Classics at Princeton University

Table of Contents

PREFACE	xiii	(2)
ABBREVIATIONS	xv
INTRODUCTION Why Dissent? Why Athens?	3	(11)
CHAPTER 1 The Problem of Dissent: Criticism as Contest	14	(38)
A. Beginning at a Dead End: Ps.-Xenophon Political Regime of the Athenians	14	(13)
1. Democracy as Demotic Self-Interest	16	(4)
2. Public Pleasures and Private Perversity	20	(3)
3. What Is to Be Done? Ps.-Xenophon's aporia	23	(4)
B. Dissident Texts and Their Democratic Contexts	27	(14)
1. Critical versus Democratic Discourse	28	(5)
2. Democratic Knowledge	33	(3)
3. J. L. Austin and Performative Political Speech	36	(3)
4. Why Democracy Begets Dissent	39	(2)
C. The Company of Athenian Critics	41	(11)
1. A Competitive Community of Interpretation	43	(5)
2. Immanent versus Rejectionist Critics?	48	(4)
CHAPTER 2 Public Speech and Brute Fact: Thucydides	52	(70)
A. Subject and Author	52	(26)
1. Historical Knowledge: erga versus logoi	53	(10)
2. Three Models of State Power: The "Archaeology"	63	(4)
3. Human Nature: Individual and Collective Interests	67	(3)
4. Stasis at Epidamnus	70	(2)
B. Justice and Interest I: The Corcyra/Corinth Debate	72	(7)
C. Leadership in Democratic Athens	79	(15)
1. Themistocles and the Value of Foresight	79	(2)
2. Pericles' First Assembly Speech	81	(2)
3. The Fragility of Greatness: Funeral Oration of Pericles	83	(6)
4. The Last Days of Pericles	89	(5)
D. Justice and Interest II: The Mytilenean Debate	94	(10)
E. Disastrous Consensus: The Sicilian Debate	104	(18)
1. Speeches of Nicias and Alcibiades	107	(6)
2. Aftermath and Assessment	113	(9)
CHAPTER 3 Essence and Enactment: Aristophanes Ecclesiazusae	122	(34)
A. Comic Theater as Political Criticism	122	(6)
1. The Comic Poet and His Critical Genre	123	(3)
2. A Retreat from Politics?	126	(2)
B. Plot and Structure	128	(6)
C. Persuasion and Enactment	134	(13)
1. Nature versus Political Culture	135	(5)
2. Persuasion versus Perception	140	(2)
3. Violence and the Law	142	(3)
4. Nomos and psephisma: Old and New	145	(2)
D. Equality and Exclusivity	147	(9)
CHAPTER 4 Justice, Knowledge, Power: Plato Apology, Crito, Gorgias, Republic	156	(92)
A. Plato and Socrates in Athens	156	(9)
1. Modern Contextualist Readings	156	(6)
2. Toward Political Philosophy: The Seventh Letter	162	(3)
B. Gadfly Ethics	165	(25)
1. Doing Good: Apology	166	(13)
2. Not Doing Harm: Crito	179	(5)
3. A Socratic Code of Ethical Criticism	184	(6)
C. In Dubious Battle: Gorgias	190	(24)
1. Gorgias versus Apology and Crito	191	(2)
2. Citizen Socrates	193	(4)
3. Callicles and Erotic Proportions	197	(9)
4. Socrates' Political techne	206	(8)
D. A Polis Founded in Speech: Republic	214	(34)
1. Setting the Stage	215	(3)
2. Founding "Logopolis"	218	(5)
3. Obedience Training: The Education of the Guards	223	(9)
4. From logos to ergon: Philosopher-Rulers	232	(8)
5. Republic versus Apology and Crito	240	(8)
CHAPTER 5 Eloquence, Leadership, Memory: Isocrates Antidosis and Areopagiticus	248	(42)
A. A Rhetorician among the Critics	248	(8)
B. Isocrates' Verbal Monument to Himself: Antidosis	256	(21)
1. A Novel Oration and Its Imagined Audience	257	(3)
2. Isocrates' Mimesis of Socrates	260	(4)
3. Great Men in the Democratic Polis	264	(4)
4. Timotheus and the Impossible Priority of praxis	268	(5)
5. The Corruption of Language	273	(4)
C. Restoring the politeia: Areopagiticus	277	(9)
1. Demokratia Redefined	278	(2)
2. Dodging the Oligarchic Tarbrush	280	(2)
3. Hierarchy, Patronage, and Oversight	282	(4)
D. The Rhetorician and the Democracy	286	(4)
CHAPTER 6 Political Animals, Actual Citizens, and the Best Possible Polis: Aristotle Politics	290	(62)
A. Aristotle in and out of Athens	290	(5)
1. The Politics in Its Fourth-Century Context	291	(2)
2. Final Democracy	293	(2)
B. The Natural Polis: Political Animals and Others	295	(21)
1. Problems of Exclusion	301	(9)
2. Regimes and Citizens	310	(6)
C. Who Should Rule the Polis?	316	(12)
1. Oligarchy versus Democracy (Politics 3.8-10)	316	(3)
2. Aristocracy versus Democracy (Politics 3.11-13)	319	(5)
3. Democracy/Aristocracy versus Monarchy (Politics 3.15)	324	(4)
D. Political Sociology and Its Limits	328	(11)
1. Economic Class as an Analytic Category	330	(2)
2. Types of Democracy	332	(7)
E. The Best Possible Polis	339	(13)
1. Potential Citizens = Actual Citizens	340	(2)
2. National Character and the Role of Kingship	342	(2)
3. Slave Laborers and the Economics of eudaimonia	344	(3)
4. The Macedonian Solution	347	(5)
CHAPTER 7 The Dialectics of Dissent: Criticism as Dialogue	352	(23)
A. An Arbitrator among the Critics: Ps.-Aristotle Political Regime of the Athenians	352	(12)
1. Correct and Final Democracy?	352	(4)
2. Seizing the Middle Ground	356	(4)
3. The Duty of the Good Citizen	360	(4)
B. Theophrastus' "Oligarchic Man" and the Paradox of Intellectualism	364	(5)
C. The Power of Ideas? Toward a Critical Democratic Discourse	369	(6)
BIBLIOGRAPHY	375	(28)
INDEX LOCORUM	403	(6)
GENERAL INDEX	409