Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Timeline
- CHAPTERS AND NARRATIVES
- 1 Meaning in context: how to write a history of Greek political thought
- 2 The Greek invention of the polis, of politics and of the political
- Narrative I The prehistoric and protohistoric Greek world, c. 1300–750 BCE
- Narrative II The archaic Greek world, c. 750–500 BCE
- Narrative III The classical Greek world I, c. 500–400 BCE
- Narrative IV The classical Greek world II, c. 400–300 BCE
- Narrative V The Hellenistic Greek world, c. 300–30 BCE
- Narrative VI ‘Graecia capta’ (‘Greece conquered’), c. 146 BCE – CE 120
- APPENDIX I Selected texts and documents
- APPENDIX II The ‘Old Oligarch’: a close reading
- Bibliographical essay
- References
- Index
2 - The Greek invention of the polis, of politics and of the political
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Timeline
- CHAPTERS AND NARRATIVES
- 1 Meaning in context: how to write a history of Greek political thought
- 2 The Greek invention of the polis, of politics and of the political
- Narrative I The prehistoric and protohistoric Greek world, c. 1300–750 BCE
- Narrative II The archaic Greek world, c. 750–500 BCE
- Narrative III The classical Greek world I, c. 500–400 BCE
- Narrative IV The classical Greek world II, c. 400–300 BCE
- Narrative V The Hellenistic Greek world, c. 300–30 BCE
- Narrative VI ‘Graecia capta’ (‘Greece conquered’), c. 146 BCE – CE 120
- APPENDIX I Selected texts and documents
- APPENDIX II The ‘Old Oligarch’: a close reading
- Bibliographical essay
- References
- Index
Summary
[P]olis andra didaskei (‘a polis teaches a man’ [to be a citizen]).
(Simonides, quoted by Plutarch, Mor. 784b [Should Old Men Govern 1] = eleg. 15, David Campbell 1991: 517)Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
(Ambrose Bierce, A Devil's Dictionary, 1911)THE PRIMACY OF POLITICS?
In my own relatively short lifetime at least two so-called ‘Ends’ have been widely canvassed – the End of Politics (in the 1950s) and the End of History (in the late 1980s) – not to mention several ‘post's (postmodernism, -structuralism, etc.). Is politics really ending, though – or is it rather evolving, possibly out of all recognition? Does the fact (if it is a fact) that hierarchy, certainty, bureaucracy, homogeneity, class affiliation, centralisation and the State are giving way, to some degree, in developed Western polities to market egalitarianism (so-called), uncertainty, diversity, heterogeneity, multiple identity, decentralisation and globalised confusion mean or imply a terminus of politics? Or, rather, does it mean the opposite – that is, more individualism, more democracy (however defined precisely), in the service of a genuinely consensual and free-willed politics? Advances in an undoubtedly democratic sense can most obviously be detected in the politics of, say, Germany, Japan and Italy, especially as compared to their dictatorships or authoritarian regimes of the 1930s.
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- Information
- Ancient Greek Political Thought in Practice , pp. 11 - 24Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009