This book is a fresh examination of Thucydides' treatment of Alcibiades in his History of the Peloponnesian War, Alcibiades' significance in the History, and his relation to Thucydides' political themes.

The main title of this work is a little misleading. Hobbs does not begin to consider in any detail Plato’s relation to traditional Greek models of the hero until chapter 6, nearly two-thirds of the way through the book. In fact, Hobbs’s treatment of Plato’s re-working of the hero-figure is embedded in a nexus of themes revolving round the Greek virtue of andreia and its psychological basis in that part of the soul that Plato in the Republic calls the thumos. (...) Commonly translated ‘spirit’, the term is notoriously hard to render by a single English equivalent. Plato’s conception of this human drive can be captured, according to Hobbs’s succinct phrase, as “the need to believe that one counts for something”. (shrink)

Alcibiades is one of the most explicitly sexualized figures in fifth-century Athens, a "lover of the people" whom the demos "love and hate and long to possess" (Ar. Frogs 1425). But his eros fits ill with the normative sexuality of the democratic citizen as we usually imagine it. Simultaneously lover and beloved, effeminate and womanizer, Alcibiades is essentially paranomos, lawless or perverse. This paper explores the relation between Alcibiades' paranomia and the norms of Athenian sexuality, and argues that his eros (...) reveals an intrinsic instability within the sexual economy of the democracy: the desire he embodied blurred the categories that defined Athenian masculinity; the desire he inspired rendered the demos passive and "soft." This same instability can be seen in Thucydides' juxtaposition of the mutilation of the Herms and the legend of Harmodius and Aristogeiton. These two episodes (obscurely linked by Thucydides) together tell of an idealized citizen body under threat. The tyrannicide story figures the democratic citizen as an elite lover, whose sexual dominance is vital to his political autonomy. The Herms, with their prominent phalloi, symbolized this citizen-lover, and thus their mutilation was an assault on the masculinity, as well as political power, of the demos. The tyrannicide legend seems to promise a defense against this threat of civic castration; but instead of shoring up the sexually-dominant citizen, Thucydides' version of the legend merely reveals his frailty and fictionality: even in Athens' heroic past there is no inviolable democratic eros to cure the impotence of mutilation and tyranny. Reading these two episodes against the backdrop of Alcibiades' paranomia (as described by Plutarch and Plato), this paper examines the nature of democratic masculinity, the (eroticized) relation between demagogue and demos, and the place of perverse desire within the protocols of sex. (shrink)

In this book a distinguished philosopher offers a comprehensive interpretation of Plato’s most controversial dialogue. Treating the _Republic _as a unity and focusing on the dramatic form as the presentation of the argument, Stanley Rosen challenges earlier analyses of the _Republic _ and argues that the key to understanding the dialogue is to grasp the author’s intention in composing it, in particular whether Plato believed that the city constructed in the _Republic _is possible and desirable. Rosen demonstrates that the fundamental (...) principles underlying the just city are theoretically attractive but that the attempt to enact them in practice leads to conceptual incoherence and political disaster. The _Republic, _says Rosen, is a vivid illustration of the irreconcilability of philosophy and political practice. (shrink)

In this book a distinguished philosopher offers a comprehensive interpretation of Plato’s most controversial dialogue. Treating the _Republic _as a unity and focusing on the dramatic form as the presentation of the argument, Stanley Rosen challenges earlier analyses of the _Republic _ and argues that the key to understanding the dialogue is to grasp the author’s intention in composing it, in particular whether Plato believed that the city constructed in the _Republic _is possible and desirable. Rosen demonstrates that the fundamental (...) principles underlying the just city are theoretically attractive but that the attempt to enact them in practice leads to conceptual incoherence and political disaster. The _Republic, _says Rosen, is a vivid illustration of the irreconcilability of philosophy and political practice. (shrink)

This interpretive introduction provides unique insight into Plato's Republic. Stressing Plato's desire to stimulate philosophical thinking in his readers, Julia Annas here demonstrates the coherence of his main moral argument on the nature of justice, and expounds related concepts of education, human motivation, knowledge and understanding. In a clear systematic fashion, this book shows that modern moral philosophy still has much to learn from Plato's attempt to move the focus from questions of what acts the just person ought to perform (...) to the more profound questions of what sort of person the just person ought to be. (shrink)

Republic is the central work of the western world's most famous philosopher. Essentially an inquiry into morality, Republic also contains crucial arguments and insights into many other areas of philosophy. It is also a literary masterpiece: the philosophy is presented for the most part for the ordinary reader, who is carried along by the wit and intensity of the dialogue and by Plato's unforgettable images of the human condition. This new, lucid translation by Robin Waterfield is complemented by full explanatory (...) notes and an up-to-date critical introduction. (shrink)

Les philosophes, disait Robert Musil, sont des êtres violents qui, faute d'avoir une armée à leur disposition, se soumettent le monde en l'enfermant dans un système. Il peut aussi leur arriver de vouloir atteindre leurs objectifs en devenant les conseillers d'un prince. Ils s'exposent, en ce cas, à de pénibles frustrations, car le prince (" bon " roi ou " méchant " tyran) n'a que faire des conseils d'un naïf philosophe. Si je reviens ici sur les temps forts de cette (...) histoire (Platon et Denys, Descartes et Christine, Voltaire et Frédéric, Heidegger et Hitler, etc.), ce n'est pas pour inviter les philosophes à s'éloigner de la politique. C'est, au contraire, pour tenter d'instituer, entre le pouvoir et la pensée, un véritable dialogue. Encore faut-il, pour que celui-ci soit possible, que soit reconnue la nature paranoïaque de la démarche philosophique. C. D. (shrink)

Il s'agit, dans cet ouvrage, de faire deux choses en meme temps. D'un cote, determiner les differents sens donnes par Platon au terme philosophia : denommant, dans les premiers dialogues, l'activite propre et la force qui anime un personnage, Socrate, la philosophia recoit du Phedon jusqu'au Phedre ses dimensions interieures et est pensee comme nature; ensuite, sa modalite dialectique se precise tandis que s'opere sa deduction politique et cosmologique. De l'autre, lire chaque dialogue comme l'exercice d'une philosophia, ce qui signifie (...) ne pas s'encombrer de theses, de theories et de methodes et lire avec scrupule et liberte les textes les plus subtilement ironiques, les plus volontairement fragmentes, les plus multiplement mediatises qui soient. (shrink)

On Tyranny is Leo Strauss's classic reading of Xenophon's dialogue, Hiero or Tyrannicus, in which the tyrant Hiero and the poet Simonides discuss the advantages and disadvantages of exercising tyranny. This edition includes a translation of the dialogue, a critique of the commentary by the French philosopher Alexandre Kojève, Strauss's restatement of his position in light of Kojève's comments, and finally, the complete Strauss-Kojève correspondence. "Through [Strauss's] interpretation Xenophon appears to us as no longer the somewhat dull and flat author (...) we know, but as a brilliant and subtle writer, an original and profound thinker. What is more, in interpreting this forgotten dialogue, Strauss lays bare great moral and political problems that are still ours." —Alexandre Kojève, Critique "On Tyranny is a complex and stimulating book with its 'parallel dialogue' made all the more striking since both participants take such unusual, highly provocative positions, and so force readers to face substantial problems in what are often wholly unfamiliar, even shocking ways." —Robert Pippin, History and Theory "Every political scientist who tries to disentangle himself from the contemporary confusion over the problems of tyranny will be much indebted to this study and inevitably use it as a starting point."—Eric Voegelin, The Review of Politics Leo Strauss (1899-1973) was the Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. (shrink)

This book explores a little-noticed tradition in the history of European political thought. From Plato to Aristotle to Tacitus and Machiavelli, and from Tocqueville to Max Weber and Hannah Arendt, political thinkers have examined the tyrannies of their times and have wondered how these tyrannies come about, how they work, and how they might be defeated. In examining this perennial problem of tyranny, Roger Boesche looks at how these thinkers borrowed from the past—thus entering into an established dialogue—to analyze the (...) present. Although obviously tyrannies are not identical over time, we can learn partial lessons from past thinkers that can help us to better understand twentieth-century tyrannies. (shrink)

Ruling Passion is the only book-length study of tyranny, statesmanship, and civic virtue in three major Platonic dialogues, the Georgias, the Symposium, and the Republic. It is also the first extended interpretation of eros as the key to Plato's understanding of both the depths of human vice and the heights of human aspirations for virtue and happiness. Through his detailed commentary and eloquent insights on the three dialogues, Waller Newell demonstrates how, for Plato, tyranny is a misguided longing for erotic (...) satisfaction that can be corrected by the education of eros toward the proper objects of its pleasure: civic virtue and philosophy. (shrink)

Author Ken Dorter, in a passage-by-passage analysis traces Plato's depiction of how the most basic forms of human functioning and social justice contain the seed of their evolution into increasingly complex structures, as well as the seed of their degeneration. Dorter also traces Plato's tendency to begin an investigation with models based on rigid distinctions for the sake of clarity, which are subsequently transformed into more fluid conceptions that no longer sacrifice complexity and subtlety for clarity.

Outstanding translations by leading contemporary scholars--many commissioned especially for this volume--are presented here in the first single edition to include the entire surviving corpus of works attributed to Plato in antiquity. In his introductory essay, John Cooper explains the presentation of these works, discusses questions concerning the chronology of their composition, comments on the dialogue form in which Plato wrote, and offers guidance on approaching the reading and study of Plato's works. Also included are concise introductions by Cooper and Hutchinson (...) to each translation, meticulous annotation designed to serve both scholar and general reader, and a comprehensive index. This handsome volume offers fine paper and a high-quality Smyth-sewn cloth binding in a sturdy, elegant edition. (shrink)

Paul Ludwig examines how and why Greek theorists treated political passions as erotic. Because of the tiny size of ancient Greek cities, contemporary theory and ideology could conceive of entire communities based on desire. A recurrent aspiration was to transform the polity into one great household that would bind the citizens together through ties of mutual affection. In this study, Ludwig evaluates sexuality, love, and civic friendship as sources of political attachment and as bonds of political association.

Plato's thinking on courage, manliness and heroism is both profound and central to his work, but these areas of his thought remain under-explored. This book examines his developing critique of both the notions and embodiments of manliness prevalent in his culture, and his attempt to redefine them in accordance with his own ethical, psychological and metaphysical principles. It further seeks to locate the discussion within the framework of his general approach to ethics, an approach which focuses on concepts of flourishing (...) and virtue, rather than on consequences or duty. The question of why courage is necessary in the flourishing life in its turn leads to Plato's bid to unify the noble and the beneficial and the tensions this unification creates between human and divine ideals. The issue of manliness also raises problems of gender: does Plato conceive of the ethical subject as human or male? (shrink)