Concerned especially with the work of making a democracy of distinction, Frank shows that such a democracy requires freedom and equality achieved through the exercise of virtue.

At least since John Locke, writers have pitted power against lawfulness, championing the rule of law for its protection of the political order against both popular and governmental overreaching. Aristotle is often cited as the source of this opposition between power and lawfulness insofar as he takes law to constrain the overreaching characteristic of human nature, the rule of law to exemplify reason’s moderation of desire, and the constitution to be the source of the rule of law. Offering an interpretation (...) of Aristotle which challenges the opposition between reason and desire driving most formulations of the rule of law, this Article argues that Aristotle understands the rule of law as itself a practice of political power, issuing from practical wisdom, which combines reason and desire. Treating the rule of law, in this way, as the rule of men as well raises the possibility that the question of political authority, at the heart of debates about constitutionalism, is at the same time a question of political authorship and accountability — accountability to, and of, both a regime and a people. (shrink)

This essay examines the political trials through which, according to Machiavelli's Discourses, republics should punish magistrates and prominent citizens who threaten or violate popular liberty. Unlike modern constitutions, which assign indictments and appeals to small numbers of government officials, Machiavelli's neo-Roman model encourages individual citizens to accuse corrupt or usurping elites and promotes the entire citizenry as political jury and court of appeal. Machiavellian political justice requires, on the one hand, equitable, legal procedures that serve all citizens by punishing guilty (...) parties and discouraging retaliatory reprisals, including foreign intervention. On the other hand, frankly acknowledging the power disparities that exist in every republic, Machiavelli outlines how political trials enable pro-plebeian magistrates and populist reformers to thwart patrician-generated smear campaigns and oligarchic conspiracies. (shrink)

Prologue: learning to read -- Reading Plato -- Poetry: the measure of truth -- A life without poetry -- The power of persuasion -- Eros: the work of desire -- Dialectics: making sense of logos -- Epilogue: poetic justice.

This essay argues that the Republic is, among other things, a meditation by Plato on the proximity of philosophy and war and on the dangers of that proximity for philosophy and politics. It is also Plato's reflection on the conduct, execution, and impact of a particular war, the panHellenic Peloponnesian War, in whose aftermath the dialogue was written and against whose backdrop it is set. Destabilizing settled rules of engagement and categories of identification, that war made especially urgent the practice (...) of independent judgment and its virtues, whose inculcation, I show, amount to the education to philosophy that is the dialogue as a whole. (shrink)

This essay argues that the Republic is, among other things, a meditation by Plato on the proximity of philosophy and war and on the dangers of that proximity for philosophy and politics. It is also Plato's reflection on the conduct, execution, and impact of a particular war, the panHellenic Peloponnesian War, in whose aftermath the dialogue was written and against whose backdrop it is set. Destabilizing settled rules of engagement and categories of identification, that war made especially urgent the practice (...) of independent judgment and its virtues, whose inculcation, I show, amount to the education to philosophy that is the dialogue as a whole. (shrink)