Plato’s Reverent City

Plato’s Reverent City PDF Author: Robert A. Ballingall
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031313038
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
This book offers an original interpretation of Plato’s Laws and a new account of its enduring importance. Ballingall argues that the republican regime conceived in the Laws is built on "reverence," an archaic virtue governing emotions of self-assessment—particularly awe and shame. Ballingall demonstrates how learning to feel these emotions in the right way, at the right time, and for the right things is the necessary basis for the rule of law conceived in the dialogue. The Laws remains surprisingly neglected in the scholarly literature, although this is changing. The cynical populisms haunting liberal democracies are focusing new attention on the “characterological” basis of constitutional government and Plato’s Laws remains an indispensable resource on this question, especially when we attend to the theme of reverence at its core.

Plato’s Reverent City

Plato’s Reverent City PDF Author: Robert A. Ballingall
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031313038
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book offers an original interpretation of Plato’s Laws and a new account of its enduring importance. Ballingall argues that the republican regime conceived in the Laws is built on "reverence," an archaic virtue governing emotions of self-assessment—particularly awe and shame. Ballingall demonstrates how learning to feel these emotions in the right way, at the right time, and for the right things is the necessary basis for the rule of law conceived in the dialogue. The Laws remains surprisingly neglected in the scholarly literature, although this is changing. The cynical populisms haunting liberal democracies are focusing new attention on the “characterological” basis of constitutional government and Plato’s Laws remains an indispensable resource on this question, especially when we attend to the theme of reverence at its core.

Plato's Reverent City

Plato's Reverent City PDF Author: Robert A. Ballingall
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783031313042
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"The Reverent City is among the best studies of Plato's Laws. Ballingall argues convincingly that reverence or awe plays a far greater role in classical political thought than is ordinarily understood." -Mark Lutz, Director, Society for Greek Political Thought and Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA "A subtle and penetrating interpreter of Plato, Ballingall shows that Plato's Laws has important lessons to teach our irreverent age. This is a book for serious students of Plato, but also for those concerned about the drift of our politics away from all things respectful and reverent." -Devin Stauffer, Professor and Associate Chair, Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin, USA "Ballingall's astute study of Plato's Laws addresses the puzzles and covers all the aspects of reverence while offering a thoughtful tribute to this unlikely friend of reason." -Harvey C. Mansfield, Kenan Professor of Government, Harvard University, USA This book offers an original interpretation of Plato's Laws and a new account of its enduring importance. Ballingall argues that the republican regime conceived in the Laws is built on "reverence," an archaic virtue governing emotions of self-assessment-particularly awe and shame. Ballingall demonstrates how learning to feel these emotions in the right way, at the right time, and for the right things is the necessary basis for the rule of law conceived in the dialogue. The Laws remains surprisingly neglected in the scholarly literature, although this is changing. The cynical populisms haunting liberal democracies are focusing new attention on the "characterological" basis of constitutional government and Plato's Laws remains an indispensable resource on this question, especially when we attend to the theme of reverence at its core. Robert Ballingall is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Maine, USA. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard University and Allan Bloom Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow for Research in Classical Political Thought at the University of Toronto, where he also earned his PhD.

The Reverent City

The Reverent City PDF Author: Robert Alexander Ballingall
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
As a virtue, reverence seems to have disappeared. People who speak highly of it are suspected of an obtuse fanaticism or of adherence to some eccentric New Age cult. If reverence lives on in mainstream culture, it does so either as a term of abuse or-more typically-through its antonym, whose merits are loudly broadcast. But what if reverence is a quality without which civilized life becomes impossible? Do societies like ours neglect reverence at their peril? Plato, at any rate, suggests they do. This study elucidates Plato's reasons for thinking so. These appear in the seldom studied Laws, the most important treatment of reverence in the tradition of Western political philosophy. Building on exciting developments in classical studies and political theory, The Reverent City sheds new light on this long-neglected dialogue, and on its significance for our irreverent times. On my interpretation, Plato looks to reverence as the root of ethical learning in all-too-human citizens. Political life depends on such learning, but the Laws shows how powerful currents in human nature incline most of us away from it. To acquire and practice the virtues that are its fruit thus demands refusing the inclinations that are its bane, and it is reverence-the capacity to show due respect for what exceeds and circumscribes the human-that supplies the needed impetus on Plato's account. I bring out the enduring relevance of this argument by highlighting the prescience of its warnings. He shows how the Laws anticipates with remarkable foresight the cynicism, apathy, and nativism to which democratic publics are increasingly prone in modern societies. By recovering a novel diagnosis for these trends in the neglect of a forgotten virtue, The Reverent City affords a richer understanding of our worrying politics, and blazes a promising path for future research.

Laws

Laws PDF Author: Plato
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 573

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Book Description
The Laws is Plato's last, longest, and perhaps, most famous work. It presents a conversation on political philosophy between three elderly men: an unnamed Athenian, a Spartan named Megillus, and a Cretan named Clinias. They worked to create a constitution for Magnesia, a new Cretan colony that would make all of its citizens happy and virtuous. In this work, Plato combines political philosophy with applied legislation, going into great detail concerning what laws and procedures should be in the state. For example, they consider whether drunkenness should be allowed in the city, how citizens should hunt, and how to punish suicide. The principles of this book have entered the legislation of many modern countries and provoke a great interest of philosophers even in the 21st century.

Plato's Threefold City and Soul

Plato's Threefold City and Soul PDF Author: Joshua I. Weinstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316761991
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Plato's 'Republic' constructs an ideal city composed of three parts, parallel to the soul's reason, appetites, and fighting spirit. But confusion and controversy have long surrounded this three-way division and especially the prominent role it assigns to angry and competitive spirit. In Plato's Three-fold City and Soul, Joshua I. Weinstein argues that, for Plato, determination and fortitude are not just expressions of our passionate or emotional natures, but also play an essential role in the rational agency of persons and polities. In the Republic's account, human life requires spirited courage as much as reasoned thought and nutritious food. The discussion ranges over Plato's explication of the logical and metaphysical foundations of justice and injustice, the failures of incomplete and dysfunctional cities, and the productive synergy of our tendencies and capacities that becomes fully evident only in the justice of a self-sufficient political community.

Philosophy as Drama

Philosophy as Drama PDF Author: Hallvard Fossheim
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350082503
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Plato's philosophical dialogues can be seen as his creation of a new genre. Plato borrows from, as well as rejects, earlier and contemporary authors, and he is constantly in conversation with established genres, such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, and rhetoric in a variety of ways. This intertextuality reinforces the relevance of material from other types of literary works, as well as a general knowledge of classical culture in Plato's time, and the political and moral environment that Plato addressed, when reading his dramatic dialogues. The authors of Philosophy as Drama show that any interpretation of these works must include the literary and narrative dimensions of each text, as much as serious the attention given to the progression of the argument in each piece. Each dialogue is read on its own merit, and critical comparisons of several dialogues explore the differences and likenesses between them on a dramatic as well as on a logical level. This collection of essays moves debates in Plato scholarship forward when it comes to understanding both particular aspects of Plato's dialogues and the approach itself. Containing 11 chapters of close readings of individual dialogues, with 2 chapters discussing specific themes running through them, such as music and sensuousness, pleasure, perception, and images, this book displays the range and diversity within Plato's corpus.

Plato's Mythoi

Plato's Mythoi PDF Author: Donald H. Roy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498571581
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Recently, in the past thirty years, there has been an upsurge in serious treatment of Platonic mythoi, which were once thought to be only literary decoration and/or the simplistic presentation of philosophic conclusions for the demos (dummies in effect). Nevertheless, the dominant tendency in the exegesis of Platonic mythoi still is to subordinate them to philosophic logos (reason) and not to recognize that such mythoi are philosophic in themselves in the broad sense of “the love of wisdom”. There is something conversional about Plato’s philosophic mythos, reformulating and superseding traditional Greek mythos and then charting the drama of the human soul from Socratic aporia, up and out of the cave, and into the beyond, the Idea of the Good. The late Professor Eric Voegelin understood this existential drama, and his exegesis of Platonic mythos, from engendering pathos to symbols, is revelatory to say the least. My understanding is that logos (reason) is a fundamental and necessary check on mythos, but logos and mythos are complementary via medias; neither are dispensable nor reducible, one to the other. Also crucial to my study of Platonic mythoi is the “analogy of being,” that Voegelin only touches on, but Erich Przywara explores and develops. The relationship between the human and the divine is analogical (likenesses but also significant unlikenesses), and Plato certainly explored the play of opposites and affinities covering the difficult philosophical problems of becoming and being and the temporal and the eternal. Most philosophic commentators on Plato ignore the suffusive presence of the divine in Plato’s love of wisdom. Perhaps only Platonic mythos at its best offers the philosophic imagination the vision of transcendence.

Recovering Reputation

Recovering Reputation PDF Author: Andreas Avgousti
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197624081
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Andreas Avgousti considers the modern problem of reputation by turning to the dialogues of Plato, to show that reputation is not only an issue for political elites, but that it is a quality that helps the wider citizenry to cohere, bringing together citizens and non-citizens. Avgousti argues that reputation is worth thinking about because it is a power that circulates among the many, linked to and sustained by myths and rumors, and it is a power that the many exercise through the social mechanisms of praise and blame.

Brill's Companion to the Legacy of Greek Political Thought

Brill's Companion to the Legacy of Greek Political Thought PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004679340
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
A wealth of political literature has survived from Greek antiquity, from political theory by Plato and Aristotle to the variety of prose and verse texts that more broadly demonstrate political thinking. However, despite the extent of this legacy, it can be surprisingly hard to say how ancient Greek political thought makes its influence felt, or whether this influence has been sustained across the centuries. This volume includes a range of disciplinary responses to issues surrounding the legacy of Greek political thought, exploring the ways in which political thinking has evolved from antiquity to the present day.

Plato's 'Republic': An Introduction

Plato's 'Republic': An Introduction PDF Author: Sean McAleer
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1800640560
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
It is an excellent book – highly intelligent, interesting and original. Expressing high philosophy in a readable form without trivialising it is a very difficult task and McAleer manages the task admirably. Plato is, yet again, intensely topical in the chaotic and confused world in which we are now living. Philip Allott, Professor Emeritus of International Public Law at Cambridge University This book is a lucid and accessible companion to Plato’s Republic, throwing light upon the text’s arguments and main themes, placing them in the wider context of the text’s structure. In its illumination of the philosophical ideas underpinning the work, it provides readers with an understanding and appreciation of the complexity and literary artistry of Plato’s Republic. McAleer not only unpacks the key overarching questions of the text – What is justice? And Is a just life happier than an unjust life? – but also highlights some fascinating, overlooked passages which contribute to our understanding of Plato’s philosophical thought. Plato’s 'Republic': An Introduction offers a rigorous and thought-provoking analysis of the text, helping readers navigate one of the world’s most influential works of philosophy and political theory. With its approachable tone and clear presentation, it constitutes a welcome contribution to the field, and will be an indispensable resource for philosophy students and teachers, as well as general readers new to, or returning to, the text.