I love to read (full stop). And especially, I love to read Plato in English and in Greek, by myself and with others. I studied Plato for my doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge (in England) because in his dialogues, one finds all the dimensions of philosophy coming together. Why does thinking about how to live lead not only to ethics and political philosophy, but also epistemology (what we can know), aesthetics (what is beautiful), and metaphysics (what is the nature of reality)? Having read Plato with third graders, graduate students, business leaders, and retirees, I find that people of all kinds respond to his works.
This book blows the cobwebs off Plato. It shows him to have been a force in remaking the terms of the Athenian political imagination and public life.
Allen tracks how images and words that Plato crafted made their way into the public speeches through which Athenians pursued personal vendettas and debated public policy. This book proves that Plato was no ivory tower philosopher. On the contrary: “Plato wrote unacknowledged legislation” and was “the western world’s first think-tank activist and message man”.
Why Plato Wrote argues that Plato was not only the world's first systematic political philosopher, but also the western world's first think-tank activist and message man.
Shows that Plato wrote to change Athenian society and thereby transform Athenian politics
Offers accessible discussions of Plato's philosophy of language and political theory
Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2011
This book hit me like a thunderclap as an early-career faculty member studying Plato. Ober trained a sociological lens on Greek philosophers, showing how the democratic constitution of ancient Athens was the backdrop against which many of them were reacting and responding in very different ways.
The book charts the difference between criticism that is constructively offered by those who identify with a given constitutional type and criticism that is far-reaching in rejecting the existing terms of constitutional debate.
I love how this contrast illuminates political debate today.
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…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Who would have expected a chapter on money in a book on Plato?
This book persuaded me that the effects of money on souls and societies alike were central to Plato’s ideas. Money distracts from deeper values. It produces false equivalences. It enslaves our reasoning power to the aim of mere accumulation. At a social level, it drives imperialism and war, as Plato saw that it did in ancient Athens.
While there is so much in this book, I find myself going back to this chapter again and again, and finding new insights about Plato’s world and ours each time.
The Founders of Modern Political and Social Thought series presents critical examinations of the work of major political philosophers and social theorists, assessing both their initial contribution and their continuing relevance to politics and society. Each volume provides a clear, accessible, historically informed account of a thinker's work, focusing on a reassessment of the central ideas and arguments. The series encourages scholars and students to link their study of classic texts to current debates in political philosophy and social theory.
In this authoritative general account of Plato's political thought, a leading scholar of ancient Greek philosophy explores its key themes:…
Plato speaks in the Republic of the “old quarrel between poetry and philosophy”–yet he was a writer of imaginative prose himself. This book shows how seriously Plato took poetry: how many of the crucial ideas in the dialogues grow out of Socrates’ commentary on lines of poetry from Homer, Hesiod, or other archaic Greek authors.
Jill Frank reads Plato very differently from me: she thinks that the Republic is signaling its readers to reject the political ideals that the dialogue seems to propose, in favor of the democratic authority of the individual. But while I don’t agree, I always learn so much from her astute insights as a reader of Plato’s writings.
When Plato set his dialogs, written texts were disseminated primarily by performance and recitation. He wrote them, however, when literacy was expanding. Jill Frank argues that there are unique insights to be gained from appreciating Plato's dialogs as written texts to be read and reread. At the center of these insights are two distinct ways of learning to read in the dialogs. One approach that appears in the Statesman, Sophist, and Protagoras, treats learning to read as a top-down affair, in which authoritative teachers lead students to true beliefs. Another, recommended by Socrates, encourages trial and error and the formation…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Unity is Plato’s political and psychological goal. Without unity in a society, people will be at each other’s throats, and society will become a dystopia. Without unity in a soul, no one can achieve anything worth doing or lead a life worth living.
This short introduction to Plato highlights how profound an insight lies in Plato’s commitment to unity as a value. I have recommended this book to generations of students, and they always appreciate its brevity and perspicacity.
Plato and the City is a general introduction to Plato's political thought. It covers the main periods of Platonic thought, examining those dialogues that best show how Plato makes the city's unity the aim of politics and then makes the quest for that unity the aim of philosophy. From the psychological model (the city is like a great soul) to the physiological definition (the city is a living being), the reader can traverse the whole of Plato's oeuvre, and understand it as a political philosophy. The book is designed to be an undergraduate textbook but will also be of interest…
Of Rule and Office uncovers Plato as a constitutionalist thinker. In new readings of the Republic, Statesman, and Laws, it explains how Plato understood the purpose of political power as serving the good of the ruled, and the different models explored in his dialogues for how officeholders and rulers can be prevented from acting corruptly.
Its novel insights into Platonic political thought include demonstration of how the Republic casts rulers as waged public servants, values freedom and friendship as goods that can be most securely produced through the rule of law, and yet, also warns against the deterioration of office and law into pantomime shadow-play.
